Substack's Supposed Nazi Problem
Or If You Can't Refute Them, Call Them Nazis and Try to Censor Them
The operation began in November 2023 with a (now paywalled) article by
in The Atlantic. After extensive research, Katz claimed to have found “scores of white-supremacist, neo-Confederate, and explicitly Nazi newsletters on Substack.” Scores - as in multiples of twenty. That soon became “16 of the newsletters that I reviewed have overt Nazi symbols, including the swastika and the sonnenrad, in their logos or in prominent graphics.” The late radio talk-show legend, Rush Limbaugh, was famously known for being accurate only 99% of the time, so Substack exhibits previously unparalleled levels of excellence according to The Atlantic’s own analysis. Despite this, Katz insisted that “to overlook white-nationalist newsletters on Substack as marginal or harmless would be a mistake,” and argued many Substack creators are threatening to “follow previous outflows of writers who quit in protest.” To that end “Substackers Against Nazis” answered The Atlantic’s call and lobbied to “deplatform Nazis” in an open letter published December 14.
Given that Substack has grown from more than one million paid subscribers in late 2021 to more than 2 million as of earlier this year, the platform must be doing something right. This at a time when legacy media, like The Atlantic, which had 833,410 paid subscribers in 2021 and hoped to increase to one million subscribers by 2024, struggle to maintain viability. Many of Substack’s writers insist The Atlantic’s obsession with a handful of fringe creators isn’t about the financial threat Substack offers to legacy media, but rather something more important to them.
“They’re fighting for a principle which does matter, namely making sure there isn’t even one small platform allowed to make its own decisions about content. It’s incredible how determined they are to bring everyone under the same heel,” argues
in a recent piece, “Tireless Busybodies Again Target Substack.”Katz declined to list the supposed “Nazi” Substacks he identified, and independent auditors were unable to validate Katz’s claims. Of the supposed sixteen “Nazis” only six of were specifically mentioned, only three of those six had Nazi content, and none of those three had paid subscribers).
While the number of actual Nazis quickly evaporated away into irrelevancy, the true motives of the self-proclaimed anti-Nazi campaigners soon became evident. Popular Substacker
pushed back with the obvious point that the campaign was not about the trivial number of supposed Nazi Substackers.
“Nazi” means anyone with whom the “Substackers Against Nazis” disagree. Including those who disagree with their campaign.
As Substacker
notes, they’re already telegraphing that “Nazis” includes those who disagree with the COVID narrative, too.Substack co-founder
confirmed in a December 21 post that the platform would continue to ban content that violated their guidelines, including incitements to violence, but he declined to ban the supposed Nazis.A few days ago,
wrote a most disingenuous piece for Platformer claiming to have reviewed “dozens of active, monetized publications that advance violent ideologies, including anti-Semitism and the great replacement theory.” Newton further claimed that Substack was “removing some publications that express support for Nazis…” pointed out how misleading this reporting was. Despite claiming “dozens” of publications advocating violent ideologies, Platformer only submitted six for review, five of which Substack removed for inciting violence. hit the nail on the head when he said:No one who wants to prevent others from speaking ever has a benign reason for doing so. Liars want you to shut up because they don’t want you explaining how they’re lying. Censors want to silence you because they know that their ideas cannot survive open challenge by better ideas. They are hothouse flowers that wither when taken out of the greenhouse.
And that brings me to my take on the topic.
The Substackers Against Nazis movement are symptomatic of a deeper cultural problem: the fact that the self-proclaimed “woke” are increasingly incapable of intellectually defending their positions. One way to see this in action, is to ask people to answer moral and political questions the way they imagine those on the other side would answer them. That study’s already been done.
The results were clear and consistent. Moderates and conservatives were most accurate in their predictions, whether they were pretending to be liberals or conservatives. Liberals were the least accurate, especially those who described themselves as “very liberal.”
It’s not difficult to see why. You can regurgitate a mainstream woke perspective and professors and pundits alike give you a pat on the head. Oppose the woke-scolds and the skittle-hair chorus does their best to shout you down. The result is that the woke have become intellectually flabby and unable to defend their positions. They don’t understand those who oppose them, and they assume any opposition must be either evil or ignorant. And because they have no counter-arguments, the only tool they have left is to call for censorship of dissenting opinions.
The woke have become their own parody of the supposed ignorant rabble they portrayed as their opposition in the classic play and movie, Inherit the Wind. That’s the dramatization of the Scopes Monkey Trial in which a Tennessee high school teacher was put on trial for teaching the theory of evolution in defiance of a state law forbidding teaching any theory that denied the divine account of creation.
And that was the foundation of an epiphany I had watching Inherit the Wind a couple of years ago. The tables have turned. And now, it is the woke who are flailing haplessly against logic, reason, and the facts of biological science in their advocacy of transgenderism.
Matt Walsh brilliantly identified this phenomenon in his documentary, What is a Woman? Walsh interviewed supposed transgender experts who were unable to answer even the most simple questions, like “What is a woman?” Here’s a sample.
Proverbs 11:29 tell us:
He that troubleth his owne house, shall inherit the wind: and the foole shall be servant to the wise of heart.
In my novel, The Wise of Heart, I set out to bring the Scopes Monkey Trial into the twenty-first century. Taking the original trial transcript as my starting point, I crafted a courtroom drama pitting biological science against the transgender ideology.
What I found honestly surprised me.
There are certainly solid defenses of biological science in opposition to the gender ideologues. The Project Nettie Declaration of scientists supporting biological sex is excellent in this regard. However, there is nothing on the other side. There are no coherent, logically consistent defenses of or explanations for transgenderism - at least none that I could find. The entire field is based on a pseudo-scientific imposition of the linguistic concept of gender on top of the biology of sexual differentiation. In order to portray an engaging courtroom drama with balanced sides, I had to devise my own internally consistent and plausible case for transgenderism, because there was no such case I could draw upon in the literature.
And what rebuttal did the transgender advocates have to offer me?
My crowdfund campaign for a story of a biological scientist cancelled from his job for teaching the facts of biological science was itself cancelled by Kickstarter: cancelled after having been previously approved, fully funded, and just days from closing.
What first appeared to be a setback soon became a windfall. The resulting publicity from Fox News, The Blaze, and elsewhere boosted the campaign, replatformed on FundMyComic, to well over double the backing it had when originally cancelled.
I’ve serialized the entire story of The Wise of Heart on Substack. The final episode posts tomorrow, Saturday January 9, 2024, and all episodes are available for free. Paid subscribers can even download the audiobook production made possible by the Trust and Safety Commissars of Kickstarter whose publicity made funding the audiobook possible.
No crystal ball is required to make this New Year’s prediction: we will see more attempts to tar those who disagree with the woke as Nazis, and we will hear more calls for censorship of ideas the woke cannot otherwise refute.
Whether it’s the hot button issue I touched upon of the incompatibility of transgenderism with biological science, or critiques of the COVID narrative, or opposition to unrestricted immigration, or even objections to the woke-scold’s attempts at censorship, I predict more attempts to control the narrative by tarring opponents as “Nazis” and calling for them to be silenced.
Provided Substack’s management remains true to their founding principles, however, those attempts will be met with the robust rebuttals and ridicule they deserve from those of us who have come to value the free and open exchange of divergent viewpoints made possible by the Substack platform.
Follow Me Online:
You may also follow my most recent Substack.
And you may follow me online elsewhere as well:
Telegram: 𝔸𝕖𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕣𝕔𝕫𝕒𝕣'𝕤 𝔸𝕖𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕣𝕤𝕥𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕞
Gab: @aetherczar
Twitter: @aetherczar
Amazon Author Page: Hans G. Schantz
One of the fiction writer groups on Substack decided to go all in on censorship without any queries to the membership. I quit the group and left a comment on their pro-censorship post saying so. When I went back later to see what the other comments were, mine was gone.
You want to see anti-semitism? Go to Gab.