Another Attack on Substack Over Free Speech
About Those Nazis on Substack
Recently, an Atlantic article by Jonathan Katz excoriating Substack over the presence of Nazis on the platform touched off a heated debate over Substack’s free speech policies – which are the reason the Nazis are there in the first place. They’ve been banned almost everywhere else. Because Substack doesn’t ban them and other platforms do, naturally white nationalists will end up on a platform where they aren’t banned. Substack has gone ahead and banned certain Nazis for violating the terms of service (calling for violence), but has allowed others to remain on the platform.
Katz sees himself as inheritor of a long tradition of muckraking – journalists dedicated exposing the seedy underbelly of successful businesses (often with exaggerated or made-up claims). Until recently, he was also a writer on Substack. He was heavily active on Notes, and starting very shortly after he joined the platform – long before he wrote the article – was complaining on Notes about having to share the platform with racists and bigots and other unsavory characters.
Let’s be clear about something up front. Katz went on a fishing expedition. He went looking for what he wanted to find and he found it. Katz managed to hunt up some real, live Nazis to discredit Substack. Katz didn’t just stumble upon them. Substack’s “walled garden” environment makes it such that most people can spend years reading various newsletters without ever coming across Nazi propaganda. This includes people who use the app or the site (obviously it would be impossible for anyone who reads newsletters in their email to see Nazi content without signing up for a Nazi newsletter in the first place). It is also incredibly easy to block or hide newsletters and writers (including on Notes), meaning that no Substack user has to see content he or she finds offensive.
Indeed, Hamish McKenzie (co-founder of Substack) has reiterated that Substack believes its writers and readers are capable of exercising free choice and self-control, and that we can all very easily vote with our feet and our dollars (unfollow or unsubscribe). In fact, he argues that this is the best solution to the problem.
But let’s take a step back, because this debate isn’t really about the particulars of the latest controversies. This debate is essentially the same one that has been had every couple years since Substack launched. It is the same debate that I wrote about a little over two years ago. It is about free speech, control, and a new media environment (and business model) which challenges both the traditional gatekeepers and the ideology of the people who run them.
Same Old Song and Dance:
When I wrote two years ago, two of the names receiving the most attention by the anti-free-speech, anti-Substack crowd were Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald, both left-wingers with a serious bone to pick with their own side (and their former publications).1 Both were provocative, and Greenwald in particular had a thing for conspiracy theories, but they were within the general bounds of acceptable discourse.
This time, the debate is over no-kidding white nationalists like Richard Spencer, as well as more-prominent-but-mainstream figures like Richard Hanania. In particular, many people have criticized McKenzie’s decision to host Hanania on his podcast last year.
Hanania is a right-wing provocateur. McKenzie has hosted plenty of left-of-center guests, but Hanania isn’t really a run-of-the-mill right-winger, but a troll. When it came out that years ago Hanania held some truly disgusting racial views (for which he has recanted and apologized), McKenzie said that he probably wouldn’t have hosted Hanania had he known.
I won’t defend Hanania – he admits he just says things to make people angry even if he doesn’t believe them. And I didn’t defend Greenwald – who seems to reflexively take the side of all the bad guys of the world whenever they have some beef with America. But I did defend the principle of free speech which allows individuals like them to have a voice, and I will defend that principle again.
A principle isn’t a principle if you abandon it when you get an outcome you don’t like. Defenders of free speech know that a policy of free speech will allow some bad outcomes (Nazis getting to speak), but believe that having a rule that individuals are allowed to speak their minds is worth the occasional bad outcome.
In response to growing calls to introduce strict censorship to Substack, opponents of Substack’s free speech policies put together an open letter entitled “Substackers Against Nazis,” which includes Katz as a signatory, calling on the company to ban the likes of Richard Spencer. They decry the fact that Substack – which takes a cut of paid subscriptions to all newsletters, without respect to the content thereof – makes money off of extremist newsletters. Of course, if Nazis pay for Mailchimp, Mailchimp makes money off of Nazi newsletters, too, but Substack is a public platform, not merely a newsletter tool.
What the Debate is Really About:
Some of the signatories of the Substackers Against Nazis letter point out that Substack does restrict some First-Amendment-protected expression, namely pornography. They object that this indicates Substack is willing to draw a line, just one that censors porn while allowing white nationalism. Some of them are upset because they want Substack to ban Nazis. Others are upset because they want Substack to allow porn.
However, Substack has very legitimate reasons for banning porn. Their payment processor, Stripe, refuses to do business with platforms that allow porn. More importantly, if they allowed porn they would have to do far more policing of the content of newsletters. Purveyors of pornography have serious problems on their platforms with child porn, rape videos, and other nonconsensual content (i.e., videos and images taken without individuals’ consent). Removing all of this noxious stuff requires major policing efforts, and still terrible material gets by. It is far easier for Substack to have a blanket ban on porn, which is easy to enforce, than to allow porn and then comb through every newsletter every day in order to root out illegal and immoral material to make sure that only pornography involving consenting adults gets by.
Right now, Substack’s speech policies allow them to perform a “night watchman” role: generally allowing writers to publish what we want and police ourselves, while occasionally enforcing clear lines (i.e. no porn) which are easy for everyone involved.
Just like when the Nazis marching in Skokie, the defenders of free speech universally abhor Nazi speech, but end up defending their right to speak based on the principle that it’s better to err on the side of censoring as little as possible than to allow for the censorship of Nazis today, only to see the censorship of more mainstream viewpoints tomorrow. Some signatories of the Substackers Against Nazis surely do mean “just Nazis.” But some of them don’t mean “just Nazis,” and really would turn around and try to censor more mainstream viewpoints tomorrow. Indeed, in criticizing Substack’s decision, one prominent figure, Ken White, admits that he uses “Nazis” “as a shorthand to refer to an array of right-wing bigots and assholes” because “doing so will offend and annoy the people I intend to offend and annoy.”2
The problem with censoring Nazi speech is that everyone to the right of Barack Obama has been called a Nazi at some point (and given that Obama ran in 2012 on opposition to gay marriage, and the Overton window moves at light speed these days, it’s only a matter of time before he’s a “Nazi,” too).3 This isn’t a semantic point. Whenever human beings decide some group or thing is beyond the pale, they will begin using that group or thing as a term of insult in order to discredit their ideological opponents. The reason “Nazi” is used universally against right-wingers (and, say, “Falangist” isn’t) isn’t because it’s particularly apt, but because it works (most Americans don’t know what a Falangist is and wouldn’t know whether it’s supposed to be good or bad). When Harry Truman compared Thomas Dewey to Hitler, three years after the end of the Second World War, Dewey lost an election he was predicted to win.
Ever since, “fascist” or “Nazi” has been deployed as an epithet to discredit even people who bore no relation to Mussolini or Hitler. For instance, against all credulity, President Javier Milei of Argentina has been called a fascist for defeating the Peronistas – a party literally founded in the 1930s by fascists.
If Substack ends its free speech policies in order to restrict Nazis, the Nazi epithet will have worked once again. Substack will have guaranteed that the label will continue to be deployed, this time against people who aren’t Nazis (but who might be “TERFs,” “climate deniers,” Trump supporters, traditionalist Catholics, etc.). It will continue to be deployed as a weapon until it no longer works, or until those using it chase anyone who isn’t in their tribe off of Substack.
The debate is really about control. The overuse of the words “fascist” and “Nazi” as an epithet can sometimes be chalked up to ignorance about the literal meaning of those terms, but is usually an attempt (sometimes successful) to deploy a shibboleth in order to control conversation and shut down dissent.
Similarly, the debate over Nazi newsletters on Substack is a proxy for a debate over control of the discourse. White compares Substack’s policy banning “doxxing,” or posting someone’s address online for the purposes of encouraging anonymous hordes to harass them,4 to their decision not to ban Nazis.
“Substack has decided that Nazis are okay and porn and doxxing isn’t. The fact that Substack is engaging in a common form of free-speech puffery offered by platforms doesn’t make it true.”
I find this remarkably tendentious. It is said that behind every double-standard is an unrevealed single standard. The single standard here is that any tactic is okay so long as one side is able to weaponize it against the other side. When censorship advances the cause, it is fine. When harassment is performed against “terrible people,” it is fine. When free speech furthers the cause, free speech is a cherished value and must be defended against “book banning” and similar things. When free speech gets in the way of the cause, repressive tolerance becomes radical intolerance.
For those of us who defend free speech qua free speech, it isn’t in service of something else. If free speech is valuable for its own sake, it is valuable whether or not it is good or bad for any particular side. Of course, there are other things which are also valuable for their own sake and which may take precedence, but when free speech is not in conflict with a higher value, it should apply equally to all, regardless of their background.
As I have written many times, Substack is running a business and their property rights take precedence over free speech on the platform. They have a few simple rules, and beyond that give us free rein. Some of their critics allege that those few simple rules disqualify them from claiming to have “free speech,” as if anything short of literal anarchy on the platform means free speech was always a myth, and therefore that justifies much more drastic interventions.5 If we’re going to have one regulation why not have one hundred and fifty? In practice, a few simple rules are clearer, more straightforward, easier to enforce, easier to comply with, easier to understand, harder to game, and result in a single standard applied fairly across the board to everyone – even Nazis.
How Bad Is the Problem Really?
In a turn of events which perhaps should have been unsurprising, independent journalists dug into Katz’s Nazis and found them underwhelming. Most white nationalists aren’t, in fact, making a good living off of their Substack newsletters. Katz claimed there were sixteen neo-Nazi publication. One publication, Platformer, which left Substack over the controversy, found six Third-Reich-style publications, five of which were subsequently banned for violating Substack’s terms of service (i.e., advocating violence), but was unable to verify the other ten.
According to Substack’s response to Platformer about the six, “None of these publications had paid subscriptions enabled, and they account for about 100 active readers in total.” To put that in context, Substack has millions of active readers and makes zero dollars off of publications which don’t offer paid subscriptions. Every social media platform has a bigger problem with extremists, perverts, criminals, and propaganda by dictatorial regimes and terrorist groups.
To make a long story short, this should have been a nothingburger. A platform with free speech policies has a small number of Nazis who appeal to a tiny number of people. This is, of course, to be expected. If we are against free speech for Nazis, we are against free speech and we could have left off the modifying clause. If we are for free speech, that means we will be willing to tolerate speech we personally find offensive or immoral. Free speech for “mainstream voices” or “people we like” isn’t free speech, especially since we have seen that the Overton window is constantly weaponized. A principle (free speech) isn’t a principle if we give up on it when things get hard.
In Conclusion:
The debate in 2021 seemed an attempt by the Columbia Journalism crowd to shut down an alternative to the traditional gatekeepers, and this debate is the same – another reputational assault by the “gatekeepers” on an alternative platform which is developing a strong reputation right at the moment that many gatekeepers are trashing theirs.
For those inclined to think that The Atlantic wouldn’t publish a story based on such flimsy evidence, The Atlantic is living on an inherited reputation and has been a hotbed of sensationalism for years. We are living in a moment when storied institutions from Harvard to Scientific American are hell-bent on cashiering their reputations. The Atlantic seems unwilling to apologize to Substack and we can probably expect that they will apologize when The New York Times returns the Pulitzer Prize Walter Duranty won for covering up the starvation of millions in Ukraine on behalf of Stalin (which is to say, never). For that matter, when it comes to how this incident should factor into Substack’s reputation, between Substack and the New York Times, only the New York Times employs people who praise Hitler and the Holocaust.
As I wrote in 2021, in defending Substack, I have no desire to tear down other institutions. Too many of those institutions are tearing themselves down. The institutionally-minded should hold important institutions to a higher standard, not make exceptions for them in the misguided belief that we “need” them and therefore can’t afford to keep them accountable. Reputations should be earned. Substack is earning a good one, despite the bad faith attacks it has been subject to ever since it launched.
Meanwhile, on Substack, plenty of burgeoning institutions are growing stronger and more vibrant. Even with the hot debate inside the tent, there is plenty of collegiality. Many writers signed an opposing open letter to “Substackers Against Nazis,” defending free speech, and more of us added our names to a running list on Notes. We like Substack’s decentralized, hands-off approach. We think the folks who run the platform do a pretty good job.
In this recent controversy, many of the most ardently pro-Substack, pro-speech voices have been “anti-woke” leftists who are increasingly bold in their willingness to challenge anything perceived as cancel culture.
To which he adds, “Merry Christmas!”
For that matter, FDR and Norman Thomas (presidential candidate for the Socialist Party) were called fascists by Stalin’s American henchmen.
As he puts it, “Is it bad to find a terrible person and post their phone number so people can call and denounce them? Maybe.”
Akin to the argument that since the government isn’t going to stop owning the roads, the government should do four thousand other things.