Substack scares the hell out of legacy media, of all stripes, because it's the biggest threat ever to their control over information and its concomitant benefit, money. I've made more from Substack in two years that I did in decades as a columnist in legacy media AND I don't get 22-year old copy editors censoring my ideas they find uncomfortable.
Liberals of the 1970s (I'm thinking ACLU supporters) were adults who'd lived through (and often served in) wars, depressions, violent civil strife etc, and knew that the only way to build and defend a durable liberal democracy and civil society was to apply equal rights to all, no matter how stupid or odious, because the only other choice was once again setting up an omnipotent arbiter, which is just another form of dictatorship—they also had faith that their fellow citizens weren't potential monsters because they'd lived and mixed among all types and classes, and hadn't been raised in an ivory tower where unapproved thoughts and opinions were considered intolerable moral pollution;
Liberals of the 2020s are coddled infants raised in safe spaces under the auspices of their helicopter parents and received educations crafted to make sure they never felt unsafe, uncomfortable or "unseen". They think of every place or forum they attend as akin to the Chuck E. Cheese they had their 8th bday party in—not only do they want mom and the manager to kick that yucky kid out, they want him out of the parking lot and maybe even expelled from school and/or jailed. They simply cannot rest easy until the world and everyone in it is transformed into a self-flattering mirror where everyone agrees with them and also agrees that they're wise, compassionate and superior.
The former group helped bequeath us a flourishing liberal democracy with a vibrant creative culture; the latter group would have us all live inside a totalitarian playpen, as long as they get to pick the toys and crayons.
Tell Jonathan Katz the cities are crawling with Jew haters, they're out and about protesting almost every night—if he really is the reincarnation of Simon Wiesenthal, he should put down the computer and hit the streets. Something tells me that would make him feel even more "unsafe".
It's worth considering that the Nazi attacks might be just an excuse to delegitimize Substack so they can limit its reach and eventually shut it down. That's how the censorship/propaganda industrial complex has been working, and now it seems to be focusing its Sauron gaze on the only corners of free speech left: Substack and Rumble
From the Twitter/X Files to the Substack files: "A source at Substack told Public that Newton’s list contains just 6 Substacks with 29 paid subscribers between them, a tiny fraction of the more than 2 million paid subscribers the service has today." 29/2,000,000 = 0.001%.
Perhaps we should hall monitor the hall monitors, or subvert the subverters if you will. Newton has suspiciously low engagement rates for 174,000 subscribers; most of his posts get under 100 likes. Many left-leaning Substacks have similarly weak ratios, though I'm sure the Nazi hysteria helped them all gain new readers who like and comment on censorship. Same goes for Katz and Princeton plagiarist Kevin Kruse, both of whom have not left Substack despite their threats.
This is just deflection from the other topics they don't want to discuss. Capture of Harvard and the education industrial complex, deflect. Government funded censorship, deflect. Health policies that probably killed more people than they helped, deflect. Don't you see, its the hate speech that is causing all the problems!!
The fantastic irony that it is the captured institutions, especially main stream media and university presidents, cannot see that it is precisely their policies that have caused the lack of faith in institutions. Nope, must be the allowance of free speech. If we would all just shut up and listen, things would be great.
Also, greatly appreciated the historical context of how these laws backfire. Again, the irony is magnanimous and somehow entirely missed by those who can't use a mirror.
Since literally anyone who challenges establishment narratives is a Nazi I am pretty sure if Substack gave in more than just a few Substacks would be gone.
Welcome, Nazi D-bags. I’ve read your shit, and all I can say is I hope at some point in your lives you find peace in the world. All 29 of you?
Substack, I greatly appreciate you sticking to your guns and defending our right to free speech. Had you not, I’m guessing you would have been left with around 200 paid subscribers.
Don't you worry, the Feds will fix that lack of Nazis problem, posthaste!!!
Just like the Feds started White Supremacist conspiracy to kidnap Gov Whitmer and seeded the J6 crowd with lots of operatives to get that Insurrection going, they'll start pushing a Nazi agenda here on Substack, to prove America has a Fascism problem.
Meanwhile, let's ignore that pedophile problem over at Instagram, or the died suddenly pandemic from the vaccines, or the open border "immigration", or the real Nazi support in Ukraine, nope, let's worry about 26 Nazis on Substack.
The ability to speak freely and express idea literally despite how bad they maybe is critical to human flourishing. As has been said many time before. Free speech only matters if you are willing to defend speech you despise. As humans created in the image of God we must be allowed to think.
"The people clamoring for Substack to restrict Nazi speech.....<show> a knee-jerk inability to cope with things they dislike. "
You are being way to generous. They are authoritarians. By their words and actions they show themselves to be Nazis. They want to destroy dissent just like any totalitarian. Their focus on Nazis is a mask designed to hide their intent.
I've seen one Nazi on Substack but he alienates everyone, but I have seen about a thousand "anti-nazi's" acting like authoritarian's. Most of them when I point out this isn't about Nazis because they want to control Substack like Google and Meta, etc, they ban me just like they would if they controlled Substack.
The hypocrisy here is what rankles me. The same people and legacy media types who are soooo concerned with Nazi inciting violence from the written word of a tiny, tiny fraction of posts on this platform, seem to show very little concern for the many voices in major cities and U.S. college campus calling for literal genocide if the Jews. If one of the primary views of Nazism is antisemitism, why is the label not being given to the pro-Hamas protestors? Arguably, their protests would be MORE likely to incite violence than 6 newsletter with a minuscule amount of subscribers.
Forty years ago neo-Nazis wanted to march in Skokie, a heavily Jewish suburb of Chicago and the ACLU successfully defended their right to do so. Substack is carrying on that tradition, even if today’s ACLU isn’t. Bravo Substack..
"To say that Substack has a “Nazi problem” because of a handful of pages almost nobody reads – and the platform almost certainly barely makes any money off of – exist on the platform would be kind of like saying the 1st Amendment has a “Nazi problem” because there are a handful of white nationalists and neo-Nazis in America who have their rights to speech and assembly protected as well. "
The "Nazi problem" is a Trojan horse. They start there, knowing that most people find those ideas aberrant, but then they use the precedent to crack down on dissent, which is the real goal. It is a feature, not a bug. Look at how the laws in Germany have been misused to prosecute CJ Hopkins for criticizing the government, even though those laws are ineffective at preventing actual antisemitism, as you note.
Substack scares the hell out of legacy media, of all stripes, because it's the biggest threat ever to their control over information and its concomitant benefit, money. I've made more from Substack in two years that I did in decades as a columnist in legacy media AND I don't get 22-year old copy editors censoring my ideas they find uncomfortable.
Liberals of the 1970s (I'm thinking ACLU supporters) were adults who'd lived through (and often served in) wars, depressions, violent civil strife etc, and knew that the only way to build and defend a durable liberal democracy and civil society was to apply equal rights to all, no matter how stupid or odious, because the only other choice was once again setting up an omnipotent arbiter, which is just another form of dictatorship—they also had faith that their fellow citizens weren't potential monsters because they'd lived and mixed among all types and classes, and hadn't been raised in an ivory tower where unapproved thoughts and opinions were considered intolerable moral pollution;
Liberals of the 2020s are coddled infants raised in safe spaces under the auspices of their helicopter parents and received educations crafted to make sure they never felt unsafe, uncomfortable or "unseen". They think of every place or forum they attend as akin to the Chuck E. Cheese they had their 8th bday party in—not only do they want mom and the manager to kick that yucky kid out, they want him out of the parking lot and maybe even expelled from school and/or jailed. They simply cannot rest easy until the world and everyone in it is transformed into a self-flattering mirror where everyone agrees with them and also agrees that they're wise, compassionate and superior.
The former group helped bequeath us a flourishing liberal democracy with a vibrant creative culture; the latter group would have us all live inside a totalitarian playpen, as long as they get to pick the toys and crayons.
Tell Jonathan Katz the cities are crawling with Jew haters, they're out and about protesting almost every night—if he really is the reincarnation of Simon Wiesenthal, he should put down the computer and hit the streets. Something tells me that would make him feel even more "unsafe".
It's worth considering that the Nazi attacks might be just an excuse to delegitimize Substack so they can limit its reach and eventually shut it down. That's how the censorship/propaganda industrial complex has been working, and now it seems to be focusing its Sauron gaze on the only corners of free speech left: Substack and Rumble
From the Twitter/X Files to the Substack files: "A source at Substack told Public that Newton’s list contains just 6 Substacks with 29 paid subscribers between them, a tiny fraction of the more than 2 million paid subscribers the service has today." 29/2,000,000 = 0.001%.
Perhaps we should hall monitor the hall monitors, or subvert the subverters if you will. Newton has suspiciously low engagement rates for 174,000 subscribers; most of his posts get under 100 likes. Many left-leaning Substacks have similarly weak ratios, though I'm sure the Nazi hysteria helped them all gain new readers who like and comment on censorship. Same goes for Katz and Princeton plagiarist Kevin Kruse, both of whom have not left Substack despite their threats.
Are they all bots reading bots? https://substack.com/@yuribezmenov/note/c-46668227
This is just deflection from the other topics they don't want to discuss. Capture of Harvard and the education industrial complex, deflect. Government funded censorship, deflect. Health policies that probably killed more people than they helped, deflect. Don't you see, its the hate speech that is causing all the problems!!
The fantastic irony that it is the captured institutions, especially main stream media and university presidents, cannot see that it is precisely their policies that have caused the lack of faith in institutions. Nope, must be the allowance of free speech. If we would all just shut up and listen, things would be great.
Also, greatly appreciated the historical context of how these laws backfire. Again, the irony is magnanimous and somehow entirely missed by those who can't use a mirror.
Since literally anyone who challenges establishment narratives is a Nazi I am pretty sure if Substack gave in more than just a few Substacks would be gone.
Welcome, Nazi D-bags. I’ve read your shit, and all I can say is I hope at some point in your lives you find peace in the world. All 29 of you?
Substack, I greatly appreciate you sticking to your guns and defending our right to free speech. Had you not, I’m guessing you would have been left with around 200 paid subscribers.
Don't you worry, the Feds will fix that lack of Nazis problem, posthaste!!!
Just like the Feds started White Supremacist conspiracy to kidnap Gov Whitmer and seeded the J6 crowd with lots of operatives to get that Insurrection going, they'll start pushing a Nazi agenda here on Substack, to prove America has a Fascism problem.
Meanwhile, let's ignore that pedophile problem over at Instagram, or the died suddenly pandemic from the vaccines, or the open border "immigration", or the real Nazi support in Ukraine, nope, let's worry about 26 Nazis on Substack.
Christ, these propaganda bootlickers are clowns.
A great article. Thank you.
The ability to speak freely and express idea literally despite how bad they maybe is critical to human flourishing. As has been said many time before. Free speech only matters if you are willing to defend speech you despise. As humans created in the image of God we must be allowed to think.
"The people clamoring for Substack to restrict Nazi speech.....<show> a knee-jerk inability to cope with things they dislike. "
You are being way to generous. They are authoritarians. By their words and actions they show themselves to be Nazis. They want to destroy dissent just like any totalitarian. Their focus on Nazis is a mask designed to hide their intent.
I've seen one Nazi on Substack but he alienates everyone, but I have seen about a thousand "anti-nazi's" acting like authoritarian's. Most of them when I point out this isn't about Nazis because they want to control Substack like Google and Meta, etc, they ban me just like they would if they controlled Substack.
The hypocrisy here is what rankles me. The same people and legacy media types who are soooo concerned with Nazi inciting violence from the written word of a tiny, tiny fraction of posts on this platform, seem to show very little concern for the many voices in major cities and U.S. college campus calling for literal genocide if the Jews. If one of the primary views of Nazism is antisemitism, why is the label not being given to the pro-Hamas protestors? Arguably, their protests would be MORE likely to incite violence than 6 newsletter with a minuscule amount of subscribers.
Forty years ago neo-Nazis wanted to march in Skokie, a heavily Jewish suburb of Chicago and the ACLU successfully defended their right to do so. Substack is carrying on that tradition, even if today’s ACLU isn’t. Bravo Substack..
"To say that Substack has a “Nazi problem” because of a handful of pages almost nobody reads – and the platform almost certainly barely makes any money off of – exist on the platform would be kind of like saying the 1st Amendment has a “Nazi problem” because there are a handful of white nationalists and neo-Nazis in America who have their rights to speech and assembly protected as well. "
Don't give them any ideas.
Presuming Substack takes 10% of 29 subscribers at $8/mo that's $278.40.
Look how cheaply these fools demand we sacrifice our natural rights to the likes of them.
Hilarious!
The "Nazi problem" is a Trojan horse. They start there, knowing that most people find those ideas aberrant, but then they use the precedent to crack down on dissent, which is the real goal. It is a feature, not a bug. Look at how the laws in Germany have been misused to prosecute CJ Hopkins for criticizing the government, even though those laws are ineffective at preventing actual antisemitism, as you note.