Substack has a problem with the N-word?
No, not that N-word - the one associated with ridiculous moustaches and comb-overs.
Well, if you abbreviate SubStack to SS - then it’s clear it has a problem!
Is it a big problem or one of smaller size?
Apparently, the platform SS is under fire because bona-fide nasty Nazis are allowed to post and publish their stuff1.
I haven’t, personally, seen any, but then again I don’t go looking for stuff like that.
There have been calls for the SS chiefs to introduce much stricter content moderation. Can’t allow those Nazis to speak up can we?
Which leads me to the question of the day; why not?
Now, I kind of get why people would want to ban certain things. I mean, who wants to read such abhorrent stuff? Would we allow an Epstein enthusiast to argue that having sex with children is a good thing?
Which makes me wonder; who, exactly, does want to read such stuff?
Now, call me naïve if you like, but how many people upon reading the Nazi drivel of Adolf McGitface, say, are going to be, like “wow, that’s awesome. I think I’ll be a Nazi from now on”?
Is there this huge “undecided middle” who haven’t yet figured out whether being a Nazi is a good or bad thing?
Are we really worried that huge numbers of people are going to be swayed by the deranged scribblings of a few abhorrent nutjobs?
Apparently, we are.
But it also kind of depends on who gets to be viewed as abhorrent, or a nutjob.
The ADL (Anti Defamation League) that was originally established to counter anti-semitism has waded in on the issue in their piece “Antisemitism, False Information and Hate Speech Find a Home on Substack”.
They open the piece with the dire warning :
Substack, a subscription-based online newsletter platform for independent writers, continues to attract extremists and conspiracy theorists who routinely use the site to profit from spreading antisemitism, misinformation, disinformation and hate speech.
OMG - sounds grim doesn’t it? Wonder who these terrible people are that are writing such dangerous stuff?
The first example they give, under the heading of “Extremism & Hate Speech” - and you’d think they’d pick a real doozy to lead with, wouldn’t you? - is, erm, erm, . . .
Calvin Robinson
I kid you not.
20 minutes later, after my convulsive giggling fit had subsided, I was able to read more.
If you don’t know who Calvin is - he’s a Christian commentator and ordained minister who is definitely not the first person you’d think of upon hearing the word “extremist”.
Libs of Tik Tok, the leading cause of stochastic terrorism in the US2, also gets a mention in this section. She falsely accused, according to the ADL, the Boston Children’s Hospital of performing gender-affirming hysterectomies on minors3.
But, tellingly, the ADL were not happy with SS, stating that
Significantly, Substack did not suspend her for these claims.
I do not know whether these operations were actually performed on minors, or whether the people LoTT spoke to were just misinformed, but LoTT was absolutely correct to bring these matters to public attention and scrutiny.
We can be thankful for small mercies I suppose; JK Rowling doesn’t get a mention, but I don’t think she’s on the SS platform, so that might be why.
In the section “MIS/DISINFORMATION & CONSPIRACY THEORIES” those anti-vaxxers are targeted (quelle surprise). Steve Kirsch comes under fire and in their write-up the ADL say that
Kirsch’s articles focus heavily on vaccine misinformation, alleging that big pharma and the CDC are hiding insidious information about vaccines, which are proven to be safe and effective [my emphasis]
Proven? I must have missed that “proof” somewhere along the way.
It could be correct, but only if the word effective means “godawful shite that makes you more likely to catch covid”.
I can no longer find the notifications (my SS email notifications number in the thousands - I really need to tidy this up) but I understand that at least one organisation in the US is recommending a 6th booster shot for the CoronaDoom™ - which would make 8 shots of the useless goo in total.
These people have a seriously messed-up notion of what the word “effective” means.
So we’ve started with the Nazis and ended up with Kirsch. If people like the ADL had their way - they’d all be packed onto the censorship train to the internet isolation camp. I hope Calvin is able to avoid having to sit next to Adolf McGitface.
They start with Nazis - because pretty much 99.9% (and probably more) of the population think that Nazis are a bunch of cretinous shitbags. Who can object, eh? Nasty stuff - ban it.
But they never stop there, do they?
The ADL is just one example of this “mission creep”.
Anything that gets to be labelled as misinformation or conspiracy or hate - that’s who they want removed from the SS platform.
And who gets to do this labelling? That’s the real question isn’t it?
So, as much as I think Nazis are vile and disgusting specimens, I think we have to defend their right to publish stuff.
Because you (and me, in all likelihood) will be next.
Stand firm SS - we need your principles to stay fast.
One of the main criticisms of SS appears to be that they profit from such “hate” publications. Well, I hope they do. It would be the only thing Nazis were ever useful for.
On the off-chance you didn’t spot this, this is sarcasm.
You can listen to the conversation LoTT had with workers at Boston’s Children Hospital here. It’s clear that the workers she spoke to saw no problem with an elective gender-affirming hysterectomy on someone younger than 18 years of age and confirmed that these procedures had, in fact, been done on this age group. Subsequent official statements from the hospital denied that such procedures had ever been carried out on persons younger than 18.
I have friends who were raised by super-fundamentalist “Christian” parents (who are anything but), and the push of modern “liberals” (who are anything but) reminds me of these fearful, grasping parents. It’s a self perpetuating cycle: indoctrinate children out of fear, shield them from all different ways and views out of fear, control them through strict punishment and ostracizing. Sow seeds of fear and judgment and hope they grow because the alternative— conversations, questions, education, critical thinking— might lead to the “wrong” conclusions and decisions.
The problem, as fundamentalist parents often discover and as the modern left is now finding out, is that when you raise your children to be incapable of discernment, fearful, and small-minded, they might slip out of your hands and fall into the grip of other people with small-minded, reactive, undiscerning, stupid ideologies. And you just haven’t given them the tools to be full humans— thinking, discerning, churning— you’ve tried to train them like dogs. Hence the need for control and censorship.
Don't know if you ever bothered with child psychology-stuff when your kids where wee but the binary thinking of 1/0 (or whatever labels you use) is typical of the 2-4 age group; hence all the tantrums and declarative absolute statements so common to kids of that age.
Of course, since we raise kids by telling them the truth in a way they can understand and always endavour to be a good example to them by living up to our word, children quickly learn more nuanced thinking, eventually developing the ability to think in abstract concepts and to utilise meta-cognition too (typically age 20-25).
(It is at this point in class the usual suspects compulsively exclaims that /they/ were earlier, later, different, whatever seems to make them better and special, not realising that their outburst just proved them wrong.)
Now, since adults have retreated from the stage to be replaced with pereptual 14-year olds, ever since the 1940s generation had their 40-years crises in the 1980s (the 1940s generation being the original eternal 14-year olds), simplistic binary pre-pubescent thinking has become the norm in many places, especially in branches and sectors where that type of mind is an advantage (media, politics and corporate business).
Hence the logic of "Politically correct or nazi" you encounter more and more. Just as with racist, sexist, misogynist, whateverist it will drain the concept used as bogeyman of all meaning, only serving to gradually make it into just another word, eventually possibly even redeeming it like a wolf in sheep's clothing (as evidenced by US corporate and academia-culture and their questionnaires where one must state race, sex, gender, et cetera in even more detail than the actual nazis ever bothered with).
Just look at what non-white US academics and celebrities and urinalists have said - publicly, because saying it on Twitter and Fecesbook and such is saying it in public - about jews, asians and whites the last years.
What's in a name? That which we call a nazi by any other name would be just as vile.