The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

A Substack About Nothing

Posted on | July 1, 2024 | No Comments

Finally decided to try my hand at it:

A few months ago there was a lot of noise about an alleged Nazi problem on Substack. Certainly it is not the case Substack is pro-Nazi, but they are anti-censorship, and this distinction was apparently impossible for some self-described “progressives” to comprehend:

“Substack’s leaders … proudly disdain the content-moderation methods that other platforms employ … to limit the spread of racist or bigoted speech. An informal search of the Substack website … turns up scores of white-supremacist, neo-Confederate, and explicitly Nazi newsletters on Substack—many of them apparently started in the past year. These are, to be sure, a tiny fraction of the newsletters … But to overlook white-nationalist newsletters on Substack as marginal or harmless would be a mistake.” . . .

We’re living in a 21st-century Salem, and the folks who want to hang witches all claim to be “progressive.” Basically anybody who votes Republican nowadays is suspected of witchcraft — “white-supremacist, neo-Confederate, and explicitly Nazi”! — and whatever actual danger there may be from such extremism is obscured by the hysterical paranoia of self-appointed witch-hunters like Casey Newton.
If everybody is a Nazi, nobody is Nazi. If you start exaggerating the extent of extremism by expanding the definition to include anyone you disagree with, don’t pretend that your diminished credibility is anyone’s fault but your own. . . .

You can and should read the whole thing, which is 3,600 words long, but I figured if I was going to introduce myself to a new readership, the introduction should be thorough. By the way, I start out by explaining why my Substack newsletter is not yet monetized, so you can sign up for free, which I urge you to do, because eventually maybe it will be about more than nothing, and therefore worth paying to read.



 

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Category: Journalism

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