Some Questions Are Not Difficult

A couple weeks ago, I signed onto the “Substackers Against Nazis” open letter to the owners of Substack. The people who run this platform were asked a simple question: do you want to support Nazis on Substack?

And they answered: actually, yes.

One more time for those who seem to have trouble understanding the concept: this isn’t about the right of Nazis to say what they want. I’ve been writing almost my whole life, and I have been on the receiving end of censorship and deplatforming and whatever else you want to call it. The first alt-weekly I worked for had its papers stolen in giant batches when people were offended by whatever we’d published. Our newsracks were banned from government property and we were denied press credentials. I’ve been threatened with libel lawsuits and jail over my reporting. I’ve also been threatened by Nazis — the kind with shaved heads and swastikas and white power tattoos.

I believe people can say and think whatever they want, as odious as I might personally find it.

But I don’t have to support it.

Substack isn’t just allowing free speech, or failing to censor Nazi content. It’s making money off people like alt-right troll Richard Spencer. It takes a ten percent cut of every paid subscription.

Substack has every right to profit off white supremacists and racists publishing on its platform. But when you’re making money off Nazis, you’re not a valiant defender of free speech. You’re a business partner.

And if you can’t find the common sense and basic knowledge to say Nazis are bad, I don’t trust your judgment in anything else.

I don’t think this is a particularly brave or controversial stance, but then again, I didn’t think the presence of Nazis on Substack was a difficult question, either. A lot of people will say this doesn’t matter. That it’s an empty gesture.

But the easy questions are how we train for the hard ones. The little gestures are a good way to know how people will stand when the bigger fights start.

So in the new year, I’ll find a new way to deliver this newsletter to you.

Thank you, as always, for reading.