On Substack’s Nazi Problem, and Ours
Happy New Year! We are off to a depressing start with a reflection on how to navigate the moral quandaries of social media extremism and tech bro idiocy – and a plea to my readers to stick with me through it all.
New piece:
🧵1/
https://thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/on-substacks-nazi-problem-and-ours
On December 21, Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie explicitly justified the decision to platform Nazis – and profit from platforming Nazi extremism – as a heroic act of defending free speech. It’s all quite disgusting, really. 2/
McKenzie claims he must defend free speech. But in doing so, he makes the category error of discussing Substack’s obligations as if it were the state. But the matter at hand is not one of the government restricting speech, but of a private company moderating content. 3/
Everyone agrees there are limits to what is acceptable public speech: The real question is always where those are, and who gets to define them. In fact, Substack is not actually taking a completely neutral, value-free position on what to platform. 4/
Substack already prohibits speech that is allowed by the First Amendment, including pornography and sex work. McKenzie is making value judgments all the time, and he is making one here as well, deciding not to act against Nazis. 5/
Moreover, Substack is also actively pushing certain content, certain people, by making recommendations to its users. Infamously, Hamish McKenzie hosted vile reactionary extremist Richard Hanania on his podcast in June, praising him as an “enlightened centrist.” 6/
Censoring extremist views, McKenzie claims, makes the problem worse. But deplatforming actually works. Or does he think it radicalizes them further? Are self-identified Nazis becoming more moderate because Substack lets them use their platform? Lol. Come one. 7/
And then there is, finally, McKenzie’s claim that extremists must not be censored, but defeated in the marketplace of ideas. But there is no mythical “marketplace” in which ideas are being judged purely by their intrinsic quality. There is power, and status, and access. 8/
It also implies there is still something worth considering about Nazism, something that has not been defeated yet – as an idea, as a way of ordering society. But, look, no ideology has been studied more, and the first half of the twentieth century actually happened. 9/
We know what these ideas lead to in practice. They have been defeated in every way you can imagine, including on the literal real-world battlefield. Don’t take anyone seriously who tells you Nazis need to be defeated in debate club settings. 10/
As Substack has made it clear it will not act against Nazis using the platform, the crucial question becomes: What should we do? We who use Substack to disseminate our writing, we who use it to access the work of writers? 11/
I understand wanting to punish Substack and not wanting to have anything to do with people who are ok with monetizing Nazis. I very much share that general sentiment.
But I do not think that abandoning Substack, and doing so immediately, is the only acceptable choice. 12/
First of all, the situation on Substack is not as bad as what’s been happening on/to Twitter since Musk took over. On Ex-twitter, extremist trolls are omnipresent and it is impossible to engage with any kind of political content without constantly getting attacked by them. 13/
On Substack, I generally don’t encounter any extremists. I’m assuming most of my readers share that general experience – most probably don’t interact with Substack as a platform at all, aside from receiving newsletters in their email. 14/
On Ex-Twitter, the guy in charge is himself an aggressive rightwing extremist whose goal it is to purge his leftwing enemy from the platform. I have no sympathy for the Substack leadership, the tech bro world in general, the worldview that animates them. But Substack is not Twitter. 15/
@tzimmer_history
I think it's strange that here you point to the odious politics of Musk while offering nothing on the leadership of substack, despite earlier making the case that substack leadership is actively embracing Nazis... maybe McKenzie is only defending Nazis now but will go full Musk later, or maybe he will keep his personal politics out of the business forever; in any case the difference between substack and twitter certainly looks to be more about the mechanics of the service sold rather than inclinations of the man at the top.
