Does Substack Have A Nazi Problem?
A letter to Substack is making the rounds but it leaves me with one burning question
Yesterday I received multiple copies of a letter to the founders of Substack. It followed on the heels of a story titled Substack Has a Nazi Problem, published in The Atlantic a couple of weeks ago.
The writer of the piece in The Atlantic found at least 16 newsletters on Substack that use overt Nazi symbols, including the swastika, in their logos or header graphics.
Several of those newsletters are run by white nationalists, and “at least 4” are run by organizers of the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Virginia.
The writer acknowledges that these hate newsletters are a tiny fraction of the over 17,000 paid writers on Substack. But some of those newsletters have thousands or tens of thousands of subscribers, the writer said.
Thus, given their reach, the letter to Substack’s founders says:
“It is unfathomable that someone with a swastika avatar, who writes about “The Jewish question,” or who promotes Great Replacement Theory, could be given the tools to succeed on your platform.”
It is really unfathomable?
Because to me, it’s not. Not in the current political climate. What’s unfathomable to me is that we live in a world where this is happening. Where companies shrug and say meh, free speech.
I do not support hate groups or hate speech. I cannot wrap my head around that kind of thinking. It goes against everything I stand for.
Some of that comes from how I was raised. My grandfather was a Jewish man who fell in love with a Ukrainian girl. Left his religion, his family, and his country and fled to Canada.
In Canada, no one said you can’t love him, he’s a Jew. No one said you can’t love her, she’s not a Jew. He was long gone when the Nazis knocked at their door, but I remember asking him once, as a child, where his family was and the way he cried. Those who didn’t get out were exterminated.
Swaths of family, wiped out, some just children with their lives unlived.
And right now, while the war wages in Ukraine, I have blood there, too. Cousins. Kin I’ve never met. Many will perish before it’s done.
Hate is not what I was raised on. It’s not who I am as a person.
***
The letter making the rounds says several prominent Substackers have left Substack in protest because they don’t want to be on a platform where people with far-right, white nationalist, Nazi ideologies are permitted to congregate and profit.
Neither do I. But please, tell me — where can you go to find a platform with zero tolerance for hate speech? It’s everywhere.
It’s on Apple and Google Podcasts. On Spotify and YouTube. Spotify is trying to get rid of the worst of it. It’s hard, they said, because it’s buried in hours of audio. It’s like a losing game of whack-a-mole. Many companies, like Apple and Google, aren’t even trying.
The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) discovered that Bing promotes the neo-Nazi network known as Active Clubs through its Artificial Intelligence (AI) program. Oops?
You know where else is a problem? Facebook groups. Many of the alt-right and other hate groups are private, so you wouldn’t know they exist unless someone told you.
Great, so you leave. Leave Facebook, Apple, Google, Spotify, YouTube & Substack. Leave everywhere that you “know” allows that stuff.
You can write on Medium, they do take down hate posts there, but your followers aren’t your own, they’re theirs.
You can start your own site. But the Wikipedia page on hate groups says there are over 10,000 vile hate and terrorist websites online. So it’s possible the hosting company you’re paying is also hosting hate sites.
Do you hear what I’m saying? How pervasive it is? How frustrating to try find a place where you’re not paying companies who profit off hate?
Maybe you can just forget about the internet and go play a game, yeah?
But no. They’ve infiltrated online gaming, too.
75% of adults and 15% of children aged 10–17 reported being exposed to white supremacist ideology in online games according to the ADL. If you are a gamer and haven’t been exposed to it, you’re in the minority.
They. Are. Everywhere. We need companies to do better.
***
Have you heard the story about the guy at the bar? It was posted on reddit by a guy called #iamragesparkle. It came from a series of tweets.
Some guy went to a shitty little bar for an after-work beer. He’s nursing his beer, minding his own business when another guy sits down at the bar. The bartender tells the guy to get out. The guy says what? I’m not doing anything.
The bartender reaches under the bar for a baseball bat and repeats himself. Get. Out. So the guy leaves. First guy asks what that was about.
The bartender says you didn’t see the shit on his vest. Iron crosses and stuff. He’s a Nazi. You have to nip that shit in the bud. Because they come in acting all polite. But if you let them stay, they eventually bring a friend. And then they bring another friend. And before you know it, you’re a Nazi bar.
Right now, there are at least 838 known hate groups in America. According to an article in The Hill, most of their communications happen through encrypted programs that make it hard to find and trace them.
California has 74 known hate groups. 68 in Florida, 54 in Texas, 37 in New York, 36 in Pennsylvania, 34 in Tennessee, 33 in Virginia, 29 in Georgia, 29 in North Carolina and 26 in Arizona. Those are just the states with most, every state across America has known hate groups.
America is a Nazi bar.
***
You know what the real problem is? According to the American Library Association, there’s no legal definition of “hate speech” under U.S. law.
Generally speaking, we all know what hate speech is.
It’s when people vilify, humiliate, or incite hatred against a group of people on the basis of race, religion, skin color, sexual identity, gender identity, ethnicity, disability, or national origin. We know that. Generally.
But there is no “legal” definition under U.S. Law.
You know what stance the FBI takes on hate speech? Here you go:
“Hate groups are investigated only when a threat or advocacy of force is made; when the group has the apparent ability to carry out the proclaimed act; and when the act would constitute a potential violation of federal law.”
Read that again.
The FBI will only investigate a hate group if
a) they threaten or advocate use of force, and
b) the group has the ability to follow through, and
c) the act would be a violation of federal law
Then they will investigate. Otherwise? They won’t even investigate.
Here’s the policy at Substack.
Looks like what the FBI says, yeah? Basically, the laws are crap. They allow hate to fester and corporations who mirror those laws pour fuel on the fire of hate.
Except, corporations aren’t the government. A corporation isn’t beholden to or by First Amendment Rights. Only the government is. Corporations get to make their own rules. If they want to ban hate speech, they can. So when they choose not to, it speaks volumes.
***
Maybe you know this.
In the 1920s and 30s, as Hitler and leaders of the Third Reich were creating official German policies, they studied American federal and state laws that discriminated against Black people, Native Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Puerto Ricans, and other “undesirable” groups. They learned from America.
Nazi ideology started in America.
It’s as American as apple pie.
One of the letters I read yesterday pointed out that one protestor alone has an audience of 166,000. Collectively, the writers protesting Nazi ideology on Substack have a reach of hundreds of thousands of readers, if not more.
Hundreds. Of. Thousands.
Hundreds of thousands of people reading the same demand.
Get rid of those 16 newsletters, Substack. So we don’t have to move. I can’t help but wonder what more could have been done with that collective reach. Socially. Politically.
Nothing, maybe. I don’t know.
Maybe it’s just too pervasive. Some days, it gets to me.
I agree we need to pressure companies to do better.
But what if they don’t?
What’s the contingency plan?
If Substack doesn’t comply, if writers leave because Substack founders won’t get rid of the hate groups — where do those writers plan to go?
I ask that question sincerely, not rhetorically or sarcastically. I ask it because I’m half terrified there’s no where left to go that isn’t filled with hate groups because they are profitable.
It’s easy to say “fix this or we’ll leave” but no one named one single place where there isn’t an infiltration of hate groups.
If you know any, can you let me know? I’d like to support them.
On Medium…
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xo,
Linda
Thanks for this, Linda. I co-signed that letter and helped with an addition but I don’t think most or even many of us are planning to leave. It’s an option but overall I’m happy here.
The letter was meant to be a wake-up call and I hope it is. It’s a stain on an otherwise fine website.
One thing we need to be clear of is to distinguish the genuine advocates of Hitlerian hate from those who are just labeled "Nazis" as a pejorative by others for spite. Because too many people get away with that and don't get punished for enacting slander (if the "Nazis" are nothing like that).
I object to Nazi beliefs, but I also object to other people on the platform starting a civil war among us for no good reason...
The best way to get rid of them all would have been at the start of all of these platforms, if the founders had clearly stated: "No Nazis need apply." But it's too late for that.