- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
More than 200 Substack authors asked the platform to explain why it’s “platforming and monetizing Nazis,” and now they have an answer straight from co-founder Hamish McKenzie:
I just want to make it clear that we don’t like Nazis either—we wish no-one held those views. But some people do hold those and other extreme views. Given that, we don’t think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away—in fact, it makes it worse.
While McKenzie offers no evidence to back these ideas, this tracks with the company’s previous stance on taking a hands-off approach to moderation. In April, Substack CEO Chris Best appeared on the Decoder podcast and refused to answer moderation questions. “We’re not going to get into specific ‘would you or won’t you’ content moderation questions” over the issue of overt racism being published on the platform, Best said. McKenzie followed up later with a similar statement to the one today, saying “we don’t like or condone bigotry in any form.”
Honestly? Unless I’m missing something, this sounds fine.
The internet I grew up on had Nazis, racists, Art Bell, UFO people, software pirates, and pornographers. The ACLU defended KKK rallies. Some of the people who were allowed a platform, that “everyone hated” and a lot of people wanted to censor, were people like Noam Chomsky who I liked hearing from.
I think there’s a difference between “moderation” meaning “we’re going to prevent Nazis from ruining our platform for people who don’t want to hear from them” – which, to me, sounds fine and in fact necessary in the current political climate – and “moderation” meaning “if you hold the wrong sort of views you’re not allowed to express them on my platform.” The Nazi bar analogy, and defederating with toxic Lemmy instances, refers to the first situation. If I understand Substack’s platform properly, it’s the second: Only the people who want to follow the Nazis can see the Nazis. No? Am I wrong in that?
I’m fully in agreement with McKenzie that not allowing “wrong” views to be expressed and legitimately debated makes it harder to combat them, not easier. They’re not gonna just evaporate because “everyone agrees they’re bad” except the people who don’t.
I realize this is probably a pretty unpopular view.
Substack is not just allowing Nazis to use their product.
Substack is not just paying the hosting costs for Nazi essays.
They are paying the authors of those Nazi essays.
That goes way beyond “not censoring” Nazis.
It is active, monetary support.
Substack is a venue where you can make money by writing Nazi essays.
I don’t really understand Substack or fully grasp the issues involved; I’m just gonna say how I see it. I looked over their monetization page, and it kind of looks like the way it works is that the Nazi’s readers (other Nazis, presumably) can sign up for a subscription, and Substack I assume takes a cut, and the rest goes to the Nazi. So it kind of sounds like the Nazis are paying each other, with a cut of that going to Substack. Do I have that right? It sounds like the Nazis (in the aggregate) are paying Substack. Nobody at Substack is raising money and using it to subsidize any Nazis. The Nazis are subsidizing hosting for random other publishers who don’t have subscriptions. I think.
Irregardless of all that, I just have this general dislike of “demonitization” and the modern ethos of publishing on the internet. The demonitization on Youtube is totally weird. You can’t say “suicide” or refer to sexual abuse or have gunshot sounds or say “fuck” in the first thirty seconds, except sometimes you can, and some content which is clearly harmful is allowed, and other stuff gets randomly taken away. Everyone lives under the constant threat of saying the wrong thing and suddenly getting, essentially, fired. One extremely popular Youtuber I liked left because he couldn’t say what he wanted. John Stewart got “demonetized” from Apple+ just recently because he said something about China. The whole thing is stupid. Just let people say stuff. If it’s illegal, take it down and prosecute them. If it’s not, then let them say it. Yes I know the letter of the first amendment only applies to the government. I’m just saying I like the spirit, too. This culture’s developed of policing what people can and can’t say to a degree I find really off putting.
I get how we got here. You don’t want people saying not to take the COVID vaccine or that the election was stolen, and producing real harm in the real world. But the landscape we’ve wound up at is stupid. Just let people be Nazis if they’re Nazis. They’re going to be Nazis, whether you allow them to or not. In fact, letting them participate in an open forum of ideas makes it more likely that they’ll reform than chasing them away to a Nazi-only forum. If they’re being toxic to other users, or doing something illegal in addition (which, to be fair, Nazis often are), then prosecute them for that behavior, not for being Nazis.
One of the really earthshattering moments for me on the early internet was reading posts from people who were “the enemy” in a shooting war that at the time I thought my country was “the good guys” of. It really blew my mind once I realized that Hamas is allowed to be on the internet, and North Korea, and Israel and The Daily Stormer and Hugo Chavez and Noam Chomsky. They’re all allowed to have their web site. The modern internet is becoming more and more siloed, so that “I’m allowed to run a web server if I want” is less and less a determiner of whether that culture can continue. For better or worse, we’re more than a little dependent now on whether big corporations who run the infrastructure want to let that chaotic “the bad guys are allowed to be here too” nature continue. They don’t seem like they want to, and I don’t like that.
Again, maybe this is an unpopular view, but that’s how I see it.
Simply put propaganda works. If you allow people to spread hate then it grows. I don’t think you have ever been a person on the receiving side of hate where a group of people want you to cease to exist, to take your rights away, or to torture you.
In our modern world if you spread intolerance you are shunned and deplatformed. That is a big improvement compared to the past. It is not perfect either.
You mentioned people get silenced unfairly or cut short because of pushing boundaries. This weighs heavy on your thought process imagining bogey men taking away people’s freedoms.
It is ultimately a naive and impractical viewpoint though borne out of privilege and lack of experience. This whole freedom of speech movement is a red hearing for hate speech and you bought into it trying to be reasonable. There is no reasoning with them and you are simply wrong.
"Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate.” -Thomas Jefferson
Professionally produced and packaged propaganda to sway public opinion is absolutely a critical modern problem. I won’t say I have the solution. I can tell you from experience interacting with people who have been victimized by propaganda that they will happily follow the propaganda-sources off the “responsible” content networks who are censoring them and onto some other network that’s still willing to host them.
Put it another way: Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube all have policies designed to combat the spread of election denial and COVID denialism, by limiting people’s ability to post it on their networks. How’s that worked?
If you’re intending this as some sort of trump card, where you’re allowed to have an opinion on the matter and I’m not (when you have no idea what I have or haven’t been on the receiving end of), then don’t respond to this message and we can go our separate ways. If you’re interested in talking with me about it, then I’m happy to do that, and take what you say on your own merits and not come up with external reasons to dismiss it.
(Edit, since I just saw it in another comment: If you’re real into certain people being allowed to express their views when other people aren’t, here’s Edward Snowden, among other people, telling you that you’re wrong. Has he had a group of people want to take his rights away? They did promise not to torture him but I’m not sure that was a truthful statement.)
Oh, good. So intolerance’s spread on the internet is getting progressively smaller over time, is it? Thank God, it seemed for a while like that was a problem.
Sometimes, yes. There are a bunch of conservative people in the US who use “free speech” in a very particular way as a red herring for something much different and much darker. Why do you assume that I’ve been swayed by them? I spent some time yesterday and today arguing with one of them, I actually got annoyed that he didn’t seem to want to engage with me when I was eager to tell him about how he was wrong.
I notice, also, that you haven’t spent too much time responding to what I actually said; you told me a bunch of things about me, and reasons why my views can be discounted. Like I say, if that’s the way then we don’t need to talk.
Welp. Glad we cleared that up.
Oh, well that makes it okay then. It’s Substack earning money from Nazis.
Let’s take the Web out of the equation.
Let’s imagine this is all being done using the old-school printing press.
Let’s say Substack is a magazine publisher.
If you publish a Nazi magazine, that Nazis pay you to subscribe to …
… and you pay the Nazi authors of the Nazi articles in your Nazi magazine …
… then you’re a material supporter of Nazism.
Happy to.
With you so far.
Sounds good. The situation’s a little different because the publisher exercises editorial control over what they’re publishing, can get sued if it crosses certain lines, and so on, whereas literally any random person can publish stuff on Substack with some legal and technical differences. But it’s a pretty close analogy.
With you.
This is where it breaks down for me. This would be something like Substack Pro, where Substack really is subsidizing and organizing the make the Nazi content happen, instead of just hosting it like a Lemmy instance hosts a community. If they were giving Substack Pro to Nazis, then yes, I’d have a problem with that. That would fit very well with what you’re describing.
I would describe this part of the analogy as applying a little more sensibly to something like, Substack is the print shop that typesets the material for the Nazi magazine on behalf of the Nazi that wants to publish it. The Nazi is organizing their subscribers. The Nazi is putting out the content. The print shop is taking a cut, and willing to do business with Nazis. Are they free to say no? Absolutely. Actually in that analogy I’d probably refuse to typeset the magazine as well, for what it’s worth. Are they also free, though, to say, no, this is a free speech issue and we believe the KKK is allowed to have rallies and the Nazis are allowed to publish magazines? Sure. That to me would be a sensible thing to say. I don’t like Nazis any more than you do. But I do think they should be allowed to publish magazines, yes, and I think that applies to making it actually possible for them to publish, and not just the government telling them they have permission, but the system they’re placed within making it impossible for it to actually happen.
In financial flow terms, the Nazi subscribers are supporting Substack through the 10% cut that Substack takes. No money is flowing out of the Substack account to the Nazis without having first flowed in from other Nazis, and Substack keeps some of it. Right? That’s why I think the print shop analogy is a little more fitting in this case.
Removed by mod
Where out of my message did you get that I was talking like it was harmless opinions? I get it that my tone was casual and I can apologize about that. Let me take it a little more seriously, then:
I have a decent amount of Jewish ancestry and a Jewish name. I’m not practicing or anything. My parents had a friend who had the numbers tattooed on her arm.
Part of the reason I’m so casual about literal modern Nazis is that the modern threat of extremism isn’t specific to Jewish people. Hispanic people are probably more at risk; under Trump, ICE detention centers became temporarily something that any informed person would describe as for-real concentration camps. I think if it does start to happen in a big way in the US, it will probably start with trans and Hispanic people and continue from there.
But every single one of us, Jewish or LGBT or Hispanic or just Democrat-supporting, is at risk under a second Trump presidency or whatever the next iteration after Trump is. That’s not some abstract “I know your struggle” type of statement; I literally believe that Nazi-type violence and mass incarceration of “the enemy” are on the table according to a much wider swathe of the US populace than official-Nazi supporters.
Okay, let me ask you, then. I have Facebook friends who make posts about getting themselves amped up for civil war if “the Democrats” keep it up. I would describe that as an atrocity. Dead is dead. A Jew in a concentration camp is just as dead as a Democrat who got shot by his neighbor because they got radicalized and decided today was the day (which has already happened, it’s just on a tiny scale at this stage).
Most of the way I talk about this issue is colored by that. I do take the threat of extremism seriously, because it’s already alive and well here, and growing. I think that figuring out what to do about the form in which it’s most likely to become a horrifying reality is fairly important. If Jews wind up going into modern-day concentration camps, they won’t be the first. They’ll be an afterthought, long after Trump’s political enemies and big segments of Hispanic (and maybe arab) people have gone in. If you’re serious about the threat to Jewish people and want me to take it seriously (which is fair), can I ask you to be serious about the threat to all the rest of us?
What is your solution to the people who want to write “shoot the Democrats because they stole the election and took away your country”? People who say that every day and platforms that give them voice? My feeling on it is the same as what I said to you about Nazis. But what, according to you, should we do that will work? I am more concerned about that, as a present-day urgent issue, than about “put the Jews into gas chambers” propaganda, although that’s clearly also horrifying.
This might blow your mind a little bit: depilatform them. Hatespeech is hatescppech, a call to violence is a call to violence. Neither is protected by your first amendment, and both should be completely and utterly illegal.
This isn’t some difficult mystery to figure out. There’s no catch 22 or irreconcilable conflict of rights going on here. Its pretty cut and dry. Anyone whether they’re a traditional nazi, neo nazi, maga nazi does not have the right to call for peoples deaths or for violence against them.
Germany has had restriction on Nazis for a long time now. And hasn’t had issues with censoring non-nazi speech. So why can’t your country?
And also, if you allow for Nazi speech, how far do you take it? do you let them draw up plans and organise gangs to hunt down undesirables? Only intervening when the physical violence actually starts?
If you do not work to prevent atrocities, and turn a blind eye to those trying to commit them then you are in fact tacitly complicit in those atrocities.
A lot of the thinking on things like free speech by the founding fathers was that it wasn’t like a “grant” of something the government is letting you do. It’s an acknowledgement of some simple physical realities of what thinking beings are going to do whether you “let them” or not. Nazis are going to talk to other Nazis. If you come into their Nazi place saying “whoa whoa whoa you can’t say that!”, they’re not going to just suddenly go, oh, my bad, you’re right, we won’t say that anymore. You might hate that the KKK is “allowed to exist” when their whole thing is violence, torture, basically organized evil. But, the government isn’t “allowing them to exist” in the same way it might let someone have a driver’s license. It’s more just that people good or bad are going to do certain things, and the government is acknowledging the reality.
I would actually put some other things in this list, sex work and drugs among them. For pretty much exactly the same reasons. I think as a matter of the fundamentals of law, they should be sort of in a “can’t be illegal” list, because it’s so weird and invasive to people’s liberty to even try.
The US had robust protections on speech by the KKK and the American Nazi party, before during and after World War 2. In Germany, before and after the war, it’s legal for the government to allow and forbid particular political parties, as they currently do with the Nazis. Fair enough. Which country was it that actually had a holocaust again? Why didn’t the Nazis do it in the US, where they had such robust protections on their ability to speak and organize?
So you can punish speech advocating for violence. It’s a tricky thing, because people will just speak in code, which is now happening all over the place. (I see that on Facebook – people will say, I can’t really say what I want to have happen, but we all know what the answer is. Things like that.) But yes, if someone says we have to kill the Jews, I think that should be illegal, whether or not they’re a Nazi. Talking to an associate to plan a robbery is illegal, publishing a newsletter planning a new holocaust is illegal. Saying the holocaust is a lie, I think should be legal. Saying Hitler was right, I think should be legal. That’s where I would draw the line.
It sounds – tell me if I’m wrong – like you think that I just don’t care about hate speech, or I don’t see why it might be a problem, or it’s not worth worrying about. Absolutely it’s a problem. On all this urgency you’re expressing, I 100% agree with you. I am saying that banning it makes that problem worse. Basically, my opposition to banning hate speech is because I don’t want it to “win.” The original internet (like Usenet era), the one I talked about way up there in my original comment, didn’t have anywhere near the level of embittered extremism that we see now. I think that’s because everyone was on the same network. Someone could go on and say “Hitler was right” and people pile on to tell that person why they were wrong. But you could say whatever you wanted. It’s like people who go to college and get less racist because they’re thrown into this big multicultural situation. There will still be racist people, yes. But things will be much worse, and people will be a lot less honest with you about their racist views, if the instant some person says something racist the college administation tells them they’re not welcome on campus anymore and they have to find a new society to be a part of that isn’t so multicultural. They get isolated and fester and find like-minded people to fester with. Which is what’s happening now on the internet.
I am sorry for talking so long; this is just important to me. The one last thing I’ll say – one main reason I’m so concerned about this is that I have a feeling that it won’t stop at Nazis; that as soon as Nazis are deplatformed they’ll start coming for the Joe Rogans and the Dave Chappelles on Substack, someone who is far from calling from a holocaust, but just has said something that someone decided isn’t allowed. Literal Nazis tend to call for genuine crimes, and tend to not attract as many followers as the kill-the-Democrats-oho-I-didn’t-mean-it-literally-wink crowd, so they’re easier to deal with. My main concerns are, please don’t try to censor the non-Nazis, and please what the fuck do we do about the new brand of extremists. I can’t literally agree with you that we should deplatform all my Facebook friends who call for violence in coded ways. I won’t claim to know what’s the right thing to do about this new type of propaganda but that doesn’t seem like the answer.
That is incredibly flawed reasoning you can use to justify literally anything. People have a tendency to murder each other, should we just acknowledge thats the reality and not bother trying to stop it?
This is not a good faith argument. Nazis weren’t outlawed in Germany until after the holocaust and you know that. They were able to come to power BECAUSE they enjoyed protections at the time. and US Nazis had a lot of influence in the US. Jews in the US were subject to much the same treatment as they were in pre-war Europe. American Nazis were effective in minimising US contributions to the war before Pearl Harbour. And thats not even to mention groups like the KKK and the Jim Crow era that came about because of them.
This is exactly the problem I have with Liberals. Its almost as if you only care about your own plausible deniability. “I didnt know he was planning on murdering Jews, all he did was say Hitler was right and shouldnt have been stopped (which is perfectly acceptable) I couldnt have known he would kill all those Jews, so my conscience is clean for putting in no effort to stop them”
Like seriously, if there was a prominent Nazi in your community saying shit like that. And someone you know personally came to you, saying they were scared the Nazi is going to hurt them, what would you do? Give them a nice long lecture on how the founding fathers wanted people to be able to be Nazis so they just have to deal with it? If then the next day, that Nazi killed them after you did nothing, would it weigh on your conscience at all? Or would your enlightened take of free speech keep it clean and let you hold your head high?
You can say this all you want, but if you dont take action and just turn a blind eye to it, then it does not matter in the slightest what you think. If you’re walking down the street and you see someone being beaten and you think to yourself “wow, violently beating someone is a problem” then carry on walking, are you any different than someone that enjoys seeing it?
Literally completely the opposite of reality. and you can clearly see that with places that allow these shitheads to congregate. Do you think twitter has become a place of enlightenment and de-radicalisation since Musk took over and went on his freedom of speech circle jerk? or do you think its gotten worse? Or how about 4Chan? Is that a bastion of mulitculturalism and understanding because they allow nazis? Because the PAINFULLY obvious reality is: If you allow nazis to communicate, find each other, spread their ideas and radicalise people who arent nazis, then OF FUCKING COURSE you just end up with more Nazis, that are better organised and have like minded people that can vindicate them, back them up and make them feel like theyre in the right. Like its such an obvious outcome that im struggling to believe you dont get and are acting in good faith. Like you talk about universities making people less racist, then say how bad it would be if the expelled Nazis, WHICH IS WHAT THEY CURRENTLY DO, and it WHY they are places that make people less racist, because theres no Nazis there to influence them and groom them to be massive racists.
I mean 1. thats a classic slippery slope fallacy, and 2. If they came for Rogan it would be for his misinformation, rather than hatespeech, which is a whole different kettle of fish.
I had a long day, so I don’t have time to do much more than some quick responses:
Humans naturally tend to talk to one another and communicate. Any amount of obstacles you try to put between them, they’ll find ways around unless you put way more effort in than is reasonable or safe into stopping them. With some rare exceptions, you should just let them communicate. It’s better. I don’t feel the same way about murder.
The US has strong protections for abhorrent-to-the-majority political speech. It’s one of its notably unique features, and was virtually un-heard-of in other governments as of the early 20th century. Once the Nazis were in the majority in Germany, of course their speech was going to be protected, but I’m saying that their rights as a minority party, before they came into power, weren’t formally protected by law in Germany in the same way they were in the US. There was no German ACLU making sure that they couldn’t get in trouble for having rallies. And yet, somehow, they made it work and took control in Germany. And yet, somehow, in the US where they were allowed to have rallies and publish newspapers and etc before during and after the German Nazis lost the war, they were never able to take over. That leads me to think that them having a platform or not isn’t as critical a factor in their spread as it sounds like you’re saying it is.
My family was Jewish, earlier than pre-war, in Europe. It depended on your specific part of Europe, but as a general rule, this isn’t even close to accurate. That’s why we came to the US. This is a pretty good high level summary.
I hate Nazis. I’m not saying all this because I want Naziism to grow in the US. I’m saying it because I consider Nazi speech so abhorrent that giving it a good airing will turn people against it more than it will attract people to it. I don’t think people are as simple-minded as “I saw Nazi stuff” -> “am Nazi now”. I have a hard time believing your summary of how it works on college campuses if you don’t kick out the Nazis. Who are some examples of students who’ve been kicked out of their colleges because they were Nazis? Thus protecting the rest of them? I just have trouble believing that it happens the way you’re describing.
I’ll say this – the one person I know who comes to mind offhand who’s interacted with a real IRL neo-Nazi, it was in Germany, not in the US.
On 4chan, you kind of have a point. 4chan has specific features (primarily anonymity) that are attractive to Nazis and encourage their spread. Twitter has full-throated support for Nazis built into it from the founder. I think those factors are important too, not just the failure to kick out Nazis. I do think there’s a good case to be made there to contrast different ways of designing networks so that they won’t form breeding grounds for Nazis. My personal belief is that something like “Substack with Nazis” would be very, very different from 4chan and modern Twitter. My evidence? Substack today is Substack with Nazis, and it’s very very different from 4chan and modern Twitter.
Letting them communicate is different to giving them a soapbox and a club house. Which is why even the 1st amendment rights you hold in such high regard as exception protection for hate speech, doesnt force private companies to allow it.
Why though?
The Nazis were allowed to hold rallies and publish newspapers in Germany too. Thats how they became so powerful, and how they became powerful in the US too, that is until the bombing of pearl harbour and the government raiding the headquarters of The German American Bund and arresting their leaders. After which American Nazi’s lost all their influence. funny that. And then they’ve never been able to gain power in any country that has taken a strong stance against them. And you can use communism as an example too, communists were never able to gain influence in the west and especially America, despite how popular the idea was because of the active effort that went into stopping them.
I agree, thats why im not against talking about Nazis and the things they do and why its so abhorrent, but nazis dont convert people by just showing them a swastika and thinking it will hypnotise them, they have deceptive propaganda and sophisticated methods of bringing people over to their side. Like if you’ve ever hear the idea of a “pipeline” you’ll know what im talking about. They will take people (young white men) and prey on the problems they have, giving them “solutions” to them that put the blame on others and vindicate their existing belief’s to get them to go along with it and then start to tell them that their life’s problems are because of [The Enemy] and convince them to direct all their frustrations on them. and slowly radicalise them, until theyre fully on board with being nazis.
Well I wouldnt know any off the top of my head, but a quick google shows plenty of results
https://news.sky.com/story/warwick-students-expelled-and-fined-after-racist-messages-11402539#:~:text=The Midlands university expels three,declaring love for Adolf Hitler.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/11/23/a-self-proclaimed-nazi-is-banned-from-his-college-campus-in-florida-but-allowed-to-remain-a-student/
and again to use communism as a counter example, universities are where many people become socialist/communist because the organise there and can get the word out. If Nazis were allowed to do the same you would have much higher rates of kids becoming nazis.
Can you show any examples of universities that allow nazis to enrol and form clubs and organise?
But the point is it wouldnt be better than a “substack without nazis”. Like not every board on 4 chan is overrun with nazis, not every section of twitter is controlled by chuds. There are "good’ parts to each website, just like substack. But if they removed nazis from their site entirely then all 3 would only get better.
Like your core argument is that its better to let them shout their propaganda as it will actually hinder them right?
Then can you name a single website or hell even a physical publication or space or anything of the sort that went from “Nazis arent tolerated” to “Nazis are tolerated” and actually got better? That helped people de-radicalise instead of just serving Nazi propaganda, giving them money and helping them recruit?
Again, it doesn’t matter what you think. Because you’re completely unwilling to actually do anything about it. and its the same with any issue, its all well and good if you’re against homelessness, but if you dont give to charities or vote to build homeless shelters etc. Then what does it matter? You can justify it by saying “But letting people see homeless people on the streets is actually a good thing because it will air the issue out and let people come to their own conclusions about homelessness being bad.” if you want, but that doesnt change anything.
Im non binary, and have many trans friends. People used to not give a shit until the right organised together to hate us. Now because of your glorious free speech they have been given a pass to be awful disgusting human being and spread their hate and ive lost 3 friends in 5 years to suicide because of it, because of things you think should be not only protected by law, but actively given a platform, advertised and monetised by companies like sub stack. Is the lives of those people a good trade for you? are you just going to ignore this question like ignored all the other questions that would have uncomfortable answers for you?
(Eh, fuck it, I already spent this much time on it. Part 2:)
Pretty much any forum that includes Nazis will get worse as a result, yes. Absolutely 100%. That’s why I wouldn’t ever “force” a forum operator to include Nazis if they don’t want to. But:
Yes. Absolutely yes. With a caveat but mainly, yes.
Nazi ideology is abhorrent. Most people hate it. Most people, if they find out it’s going on in their community, are going to be fucking disgusted, and curious to know more about where the fuck is this even coming from. I absolutely think that Nazis feeling like they can be open about being Nazis is way better than keeping secretive and doing the same shit they would be doing, just without associating in the public sphere. I’d be happy to check with experts on extremism to make sure that they feel the same, if you’re open to hearing it.
Basically, if a forum is open to signing up to be the lightning-rod of bad faith they’re going to get from the Nazis, and abuse they’re going to get from the wider community, and degradation their forum is going to suffer as a result, in order to let the Nazis into the public sphere so that people can see for real what’s going on, and talk back to the Nazis directly instead of having all the Nazi-to-Nazi communication go on in some other place that the public isn’t privy to, I think that’s a good thing. 100%. I think that’s going to hurt the Nazis. Again, I’d be happy to check with experts on extremism to make sure that they feel the same, if you’re open to hearing it.
The caveat: That doesn’t mean I’m naive about the danger of letting these ideologies have a good foothold in society. You said “let them shout their propaganda”… I think combating Nazi propaganda is an important thing to do, yes. I think putting Nazis out of business or in prison because of their crime is fuckin’ fantastic.
I think it’s extremely important to combat Nazi propaganda when it comes in more subtle form, pipelines, engineered disinformation, or things without Swastikas (your TPUSAs and your Patriot Fronts). Those, to me, are much more dangerous than Substack blogs with swastikas. That’s a different thing from kicking the swastikas off Substack though.
I am sorry for your loss. I’ve lost a friend to suicide. It sucked.
I want to talk to you about this, because I take it pretty seriously and obviously the rise of hatred on the internet is a huge problem.
I’m a little hesitant to say more because I don’t want to sound like I’m probing for information about something so personal or using it to “debate” with you. That’s honestly not my goal here. If you’re open to talk more I can tell you what I think would be a good ways to actually reduce hatred on the internet. I’m going to say this with all the kindness in the world: Kicking the Nazi blogs off Substack isn’t going to do shit. Not in the sense of “too small but any little bit is helpful.” In the sense of “counterproductive, putting you and your friends in more danger.”
Tell you what – if you’re comfortable, explain it to me. What type of hatred has directly impacted you, what needs to happen to fix things in your view. Any level of detail that you’re comfortable with, if at all. My goal is more just to explain myself and hear you out as opposed to “debate,” so let me hear you out.
(Edit: Reframing it so we’re talking about “hatred against trans people on 4chan” and what to do about it instead of “Nazi philosophy on Substack” and what to do about it makes a lot of what you’re saying and how you’re reacting make more sense. Nazis are going to be pretty rare, although they’re out there. Anti-trans people are in the modern climate everywhere. That’s why I’m asking more directly for the root of what you’re talking about.)
Which questions didn’t I answer? I’ll address anything you want to ask me if I missed any questions before or anything.
I feel like you may be wanting to “debate” this, like until one of us “wins,” which isn’t my goal here. But if what I wrote before wasn’t a good enough explanation to understand my point of view, here goes:
I don’t feel the same way about murder because humans don’t naturally tend to murder each other. It does happen in certain circumstances, but there’s actually a massive resistance to it internally. Militaries have to do careful psychological training to make sure people are ready to kill because there’s so much resistance. Most people tell each other what they think at least once a day, and communication networks for formally sharing each other’s opinions get a lot of use. Most people go their whole lives without murdering one another other. Even in societies with permitted circumstances where people can kill each other and it’s fine, it’s a pretty rare thing.
In conclusion, using a communication network to share your ideas is a fairly natural thing. More so than murder.
Does that answer the question? Again, you don’t have to agree with me on this point of view, but it’s honestly a little hard for me to believe that my explanation wasn’t a coherent explanation of what I think. If you’re using “why” as code for “I want to argue, say something to ‘prove’ your side and convince me, let’s keep going back and forth about it,” I would prefer not to.
I think we may just not be able to see eye to eye on this.
(Side note, if that Wikipedia article is to be believed, the Black Panthers got treated way worse than the Bund. No one assassinated any Bund leaders like they did Fred Hampton, at least according to the article.)
Do you agree with what I just wrote so far? Agree that those three bullet points are factually accurate, at least? I feel like there’s so much gulf between how we see these events that it’s gonna be tough to find any type of common ground here.
(Edit: Ken Parker wasn’t expelled. He was still allowed to attend online classes, and presumably to speak in those classes and all. They just kicked him off campus because of physical safety concerns, which sounds pretty fucking justified)
Those people are being
expelledbecause of a wide variety of stuff, including Naziism, but also posting favorably about rape, holding assault rifles and saying he’ll “shut down” other students, a lot more than just “being Nazis.” It sounds like they wereexpelledfor things I’m fully in favor of expelling people for. I’m talking about someone like Richard Spenser – who says Nazi things but only rarely commits actual physical crimes (although often enough to put himself in trouble).It looks from a quick search like there are multiple universities that have invited him to speak, so it’d be surprising if any student who emulated him was instantly expelled right after they invited him to speak. Do you have an example of something like that?
I think we are simply too far apart in how we see the world to have this conversation. I’m getting sort of echoes of religious people who say “But if God isn’t there to punish you what’s to stop you doing rape and murder?”
Most people in my circle of people I know consider themselves “allowed” to start to follow Nazi ideology, if they want to. 0% of them do it because they’re not fucking psychopaths (or even if they are, not to that level). In college, it was the same. Communism as an ideology (the Karl Marx version at least) doesn’t involve exterminating any inferior races, so people are more into it. You really believe that if people were “allowed” to be Nazis, a lot of them would? The only reason communism gets more followers is communists are “allowed” and Nazis are not?
Let me ask you a 100% sincere question. Who is it that should decide what is “allowed” and not? The university administration? State or federal government? Student organization threatening boycotts if people start to “allow” the wrong types of ideologies? Who?
(Spent too much time on this, I’ll write up a part 2 that includes replies to the rest of your message later on.)