God Damn It, Substack

You may have heard that Substack has a Nazi problem.

By “Nazi,” I do not mean someone on the far right with proto-fascist tendencies, or even genuinely fascist ones. I do not mean someone who votes for Trump. I mean actual goddamn Nazis, using actual Nazi symbols, advocating explicitly for Nazi beliefs. As explained in this Atlantic article, Substack is allowing these Nazis to monetize their newsletters, which means that Substack is directly profiting off of Nazi content.

This is very bad.

Substack’s co-founder, Hamish McKenzie, has responded to concerns about the Nazis with a brief statement. Here is the most relevant excerpt from that statement:

I am not an economist, but I am pretty sure that limiting the ability of Nazis to acquire money does not “make [the Nazi problem] worse.” I am pretty sure that money helps Nazis, actually. It certainly helps everyone else.

The question of free speech is often a challenging one — I wrote about this very recently — but whether companies ought to give Actual Goddamn Nazis a microphone is actually quite simple. Substack is not the government, they are an online newsletter platform that gets to decide who does and does not get to use their platform. By all accounts, they do not allow explicit adult content. They do not allow spam or phishing. They have, however, decided to explicitly welcome and profit off of creators who describe themselves as national socialists, use Nazi imagery in their branding, openly advance white supremacy, and debate “The Jewish Question.” Creators currently making significant amounts of money on Substack include Identity Evropa leader Patrick Casey and Richard “Hail Victory” Spencer.

Anyway, discerning readers will have noticed that this newsletter is, itself, a monetized Substack.

At time of publication, Substack nets me a little over $7000 a year. That may not sound like a lot of money to some people, but that’s 7 months of rent for me and a significant percentage of what I make in a year. It is the difference between being able to live in New York and freelance full time and not being able to do those things. I have worked for two years to build this Substack to where it is today. There are other newsletter platforms, but none of them have the cachet that Substack has developed. They are not as easy or as trustworthy for people thinking about supporting the newsletter, and they are not as easy to promote.

This is all starting to sound like an excuse, but it isn’t. I am trying to convey to you the position I find myself in right now, and why I have to weigh my options carefully instead of nuking this newsletter from orbit and hoping for the best.

After some preliminary weighing, I have decided to pause subscriptions for the month of January. If you are a paid subscriber, you will not be billed next month. I will continue to write on this platform for the next few weeks, but Substack will not make money off of my work — in fact, I will be a drain on their resources.

Throughout January, I'll be researching new platforms and watching to see which ones seem to work best for the many creators who are already jumping ship.

Unless something drastic happens, this Substack will cease to exist by February 1st.

The newsletter itself, on the other hand, will live on. One great thing about Substack: I can export my entire subscriber list and take it with me to wherever I end up going. So you, dear readers, will not have to do a thing. You will keep receiving my weird little takes in your inbox, I'll upload my entire archive to wherever I end up, and I’ll let you know where you can access that archive. Everything will be as exactly the same as possible. Who knows—maybe it'll be better.

If you are a monthly paid subscriber, there will be an opportunity to regain that warm and fuzzy feeling of supporting the [Insert New Platform Name Here] if you would like to. If you are a yearly subscriber, I’ll set it up so that you have a year’s worth of fuzzy feelings on the new platform without having to pay again.

I'm going to continue to include “subscribe now” buttons at the bottom of these posts for people new to the newsletter who would like to follow me to wherever I go next. In a few days, the “upgrade to paid” option will be disabled entirely, but for now it's still there. I would encourage you not to upgrade to paid at this time.

Thank you, a lot, to everyone who has supported this newsletter. As stated above, you have made it possible for me to live this life and write full-time. We didn't know. Now we do.

I'm pretty sad about all of this. I like this platform. It's easy to use, it's simple, it’s been an incredible outlet for me. But I will not do business with a company that cheerfully helps Nazis pay their rent. That's MY first amendment right.

Good night, McKenzie. Good luck with your horrible friends. I don't think you're going to like what happens when you turn your platform into a Nazi bar.