The “literal Nazis” he lists are Richard Spencer and Pat Casey, btw. Regardless of what you think about either figure, Spencer’s blog contains things like Depeche Mode album reviews, and Casey’s headlines aren’t meaningfully different from any mainstream, right-wing publication. They aren’t posting hateful screeds about genocide, as claimed.
Funny thing is, you probably *could* find self-described Nazis on Substack, who write to dozens of subscribers at most.
But that those two are his examples - names only recognizable if you were super tuned in to coverage of the far right 8 years ago - makes me think he’s just stomping his feet at the success of “heterodox” writers like yourself, Matt Taibbi, etc. who were “supposed” to be banished.
In his mind, Spencer may as well be David Duke who “surely, no one would support.” But there’s an extra dimension of creepiness to the game-- one, like you said, really it’s supposed to everyone to people like you. And two, Spencer renounced his extremist beliefs. What does it mean if people can’t walk it back and apologize? They have to be silenced to the extent they can’t share their thoughts about music on their blog? Who does that serve?
The whole premise is that you can use Ghost on your own server without giving Ghost one red cent. Ghost doesn't profit off of it. You can run the software on any number of webhosts, and they profit from it-- as you said, a server in Chechnya, for example. And then (so the premise goes) we can all look askance at Those Bad People Over There, over whom the authorities to whom we can appeal have no power.
That might be factually mistaken, but your claim that it is confused is confused. If this widely-held and foundational premise of open source and distributed internet movements, for decades, is factually a false promise, okay, then dispute that. Great. But I read you as saying not only that Ghost actually profits from everyone using it, but that all of us already knew this all along. That's bizarre.
I genuinely don’t know what happened in between like gamergate and now. Like it was not even that long ago pretty normal to hear about people, including my spouse getting death threats for expressing completely normal opinions like I wish these video games had more options for player's like me and now. Voice chat in games used to be a kind of bonfire and idk when I’m on discord it’s almost always fine now.
Some strategy of fencing off the internet—and me giving up on Twitter and to a lesser degree Tumblr seems to have been able to take it out of life. Like I never post a TikTok about pop music or D&D and get slurs and threats the way that I did years ago. But I can’t really say what exactly happened.
Readers only have so much money. I dropped the insulars--NYer, Atlantic, Harper's, Nation, TNR, Slate-- because their carousel of writers is tiresome, and they all have the same world view.
This gives me $$ for Substack journalists like Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger. I like the free speech people. The $400 or so I spent on the insular outlets I now spend on Substack writers.
=
X/Twitter is OK for book prize announcements. and Michael Orthofer! and sports scores.
Some librarian posters at X/Twitter send out images of rare books or illuminated manuscripts each day. It takes a bit of effort to curate X/Twitter and it is fine for me. But sometimes it is super-fine--My affection for the x/Twitter feed of "Sander from the Netherlands." who provides relief from the world-- knows no bounds. https://twitter.com/buitengebieden
People's politics are often determined by one core principle: whether they feel like they're insiders or outsiders. Everything else flows from this central smugness or grievance. This is why neither the left nor the right truly believe in free speech, as is shown by various flip-flops depending which side feels like their guy and their culture are on the ascendancy.
The Tumblr/Twitter crowd's only real beef with Substack is that it seems to be something of a desirable space yet they're not the ones who get to choose the wallpaper, the furnishings, the music playlist. The constant evoking of Nazis is an intentionally hysterical claim to cover up their real and more mundane goal, which is they want a journalistic and literary clubhouse where everything revolves around and caters to them. It's a litnerd civil war (something I wrote about in my most recent Substack piece).
Deplatforming extremists doesn’t “work” but neither does platforming them. I don’t know that anything “works” other than time, during which one flavor of extremism dies out to be replaced with another flavor.
I don’t have any illusions about the power of the market over principles. I still use Spotify even though they pay stupid money to malignant twat tumor Joe Rogan
Just don’t wrap it a flag of free speech principles. All these online free speech warriors give zero shits when government right wingers engage in real world viewpoint suppression by punishing companies and college professors for criticizing them, or opening investigations against media companies for negative coverage of TwiX, or banning library books with gay characters, continually calling journalists traitors and enemies of the people, etc etc etc. The online freedom fighters just want freedom from content moderation so they wallow in all their white grievance right wing conspiracy stupidity.
Leave. Stay. Do whatever. It’s a business decision. It’s not about anything noble and righteous.
I must be the only person here who actually enjoys Twitter under Elon’s regime. I see so much more acknowledgment of reality there than when censorship ruled. Trying to turn Substack into the old Twitter would kill it. If someone doesn’t want to see something in either place, fucking block it yourself you lazy wuss.
Many of the complaintants against Substack are now implying that Substack is hosting the Bad People, not out of the kindness of their hearts or some abstract dedication to free speech, but because of sheer, capitalistic self-interest. Because they know it's a good business decision.
Which is... probably right. Did they expect a for-profit company to strangle its own golden goose because its least reliable members, ones who can easily pack up and get a job elsewhere, are angry?
People are realizing that ignoring the hectoring class is good for business. That's done more to weaken what Freddie terms "the Village" than any abstract argument about the value of free speech.
"Do you remember the cry that rang out when Trump was elected and in the first years of his presidency? “This is not normal!” As if “normal” ever meant anything, and as if there was some benevolent clockmaker watching over it all who could adjust the dials and fix it so that our country was normal again. How on earth so many educated and successful professionals continue to believe that there is some celestial authority out there who will eliminate fascism if only we pass the right legislation, I cannot understand."
This is literally how their brains work. Most people's brains actually. They use some amount of their grey matter compute hosting a hive mind that is built out of and exists in social norm space, and that hive mind largely controls their perception of reality. If input contradicts the hive mind the memetic parasite flags it as unreal, impossible, or otherwise nonsensical. They literally can't understand it. They are under the illusion that they are critical thinkers but they're not critically examining reality, they're looking at the AR projection of the hive mind parasite that overlays their senses.
This is true for the right too, and moderates, and most humans.
The “literal Nazis” he lists are Richard Spencer and Pat Casey, btw. Regardless of what you think about either figure, Spencer’s blog contains things like Depeche Mode album reviews, and Casey’s headlines aren’t meaningfully different from any mainstream, right-wing publication. They aren’t posting hateful screeds about genocide, as claimed.
Funny thing is, you probably *could* find self-described Nazis on Substack, who write to dozens of subscribers at most.
But that those two are his examples - names only recognizable if you were super tuned in to coverage of the far right 8 years ago - makes me think he’s just stomping his feet at the success of “heterodox” writers like yourself, Matt Taibbi, etc. who were “supposed” to be banished.
In his mind, Spencer may as well be David Duke who “surely, no one would support.” But there’s an extra dimension of creepiness to the game-- one, like you said, really it’s supposed to everyone to people like you. And two, Spencer renounced his extremist beliefs. What does it mean if people can’t walk it back and apologize? They have to be silenced to the extent they can’t share their thoughts about music on their blog? Who does that serve?
I’m surprised that Wordpress didn’t get more flak for not taking down the Zoe Post, which sparked Gamergate.
The whole premise is that you can use Ghost on your own server without giving Ghost one red cent. Ghost doesn't profit off of it. You can run the software on any number of webhosts, and they profit from it-- as you said, a server in Chechnya, for example. And then (so the premise goes) we can all look askance at Those Bad People Over There, over whom the authorities to whom we can appeal have no power.
That might be factually mistaken, but your claim that it is confused is confused. If this widely-held and foundational premise of open source and distributed internet movements, for decades, is factually a false promise, okay, then dispute that. Great. But I read you as saying not only that Ghost actually profits from everyone using it, but that all of us already knew this all along. That's bizarre.
I genuinely don’t know what happened in between like gamergate and now. Like it was not even that long ago pretty normal to hear about people, including my spouse getting death threats for expressing completely normal opinions like I wish these video games had more options for player's like me and now. Voice chat in games used to be a kind of bonfire and idk when I’m on discord it’s almost always fine now.
Some strategy of fencing off the internet—and me giving up on Twitter and to a lesser degree Tumblr seems to have been able to take it out of life. Like I never post a TikTok about pop music or D&D and get slurs and threats the way that I did years ago. But I can’t really say what exactly happened.
Freddie is da man doe
Articles like this are why I started funding Nazis, err, I mean, subscribing to Freddy deBoer's Substack. Keep it up.
Posts like these are what keep me subscribing to this blog. Happy New Year Freddie!
TL:DR "We get to be the gatekeepers!"
Readers only have so much money. I dropped the insulars--NYer, Atlantic, Harper's, Nation, TNR, Slate-- because their carousel of writers is tiresome, and they all have the same world view.
This gives me $$ for Substack journalists like Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger. I like the free speech people. The $400 or so I spent on the insular outlets I now spend on Substack writers.
=
X/Twitter is OK for book prize announcements. and Michael Orthofer! and sports scores.
Some librarian posters at X/Twitter send out images of rare books or illuminated manuscripts each day. It takes a bit of effort to curate X/Twitter and it is fine for me. But sometimes it is super-fine--My affection for the x/Twitter feed of "Sander from the Netherlands." who provides relief from the world-- knows no bounds. https://twitter.com/buitengebieden
One of the funniest FdB pieces.
People's politics are often determined by one core principle: whether they feel like they're insiders or outsiders. Everything else flows from this central smugness or grievance. This is why neither the left nor the right truly believe in free speech, as is shown by various flip-flops depending which side feels like their guy and their culture are on the ascendancy.
The Tumblr/Twitter crowd's only real beef with Substack is that it seems to be something of a desirable space yet they're not the ones who get to choose the wallpaper, the furnishings, the music playlist. The constant evoking of Nazis is an intentionally hysterical claim to cover up their real and more mundane goal, which is they want a journalistic and literary clubhouse where everything revolves around and caters to them. It's a litnerd civil war (something I wrote about in my most recent Substack piece).
Deplatforming extremists doesn’t “work” but neither does platforming them. I don’t know that anything “works” other than time, during which one flavor of extremism dies out to be replaced with another flavor.
I don’t have any illusions about the power of the market over principles. I still use Spotify even though they pay stupid money to malignant twat tumor Joe Rogan
Just don’t wrap it a flag of free speech principles. All these online free speech warriors give zero shits when government right wingers engage in real world viewpoint suppression by punishing companies and college professors for criticizing them, or opening investigations against media companies for negative coverage of TwiX, or banning library books with gay characters, continually calling journalists traitors and enemies of the people, etc etc etc. The online freedom fighters just want freedom from content moderation so they wallow in all their white grievance right wing conspiracy stupidity.
Leave. Stay. Do whatever. It’s a business decision. It’s not about anything noble and righteous.
Great post. You may be too kind in even assuming any real desire for impact.
Coherency is never required for social positioning, which appears to be all that’s happening.
Just like Indiana Jones movies, you don’t even need real Nazis, you just need someone to punch.
I must be the only person here who actually enjoys Twitter under Elon’s regime. I see so much more acknowledgment of reality there than when censorship ruled. Trying to turn Substack into the old Twitter would kill it. If someone doesn’t want to see something in either place, fucking block it yourself you lazy wuss.
Many of the complaintants against Substack are now implying that Substack is hosting the Bad People, not out of the kindness of their hearts or some abstract dedication to free speech, but because of sheer, capitalistic self-interest. Because they know it's a good business decision.
Which is... probably right. Did they expect a for-profit company to strangle its own golden goose because its least reliable members, ones who can easily pack up and get a job elsewhere, are angry?
People are realizing that ignoring the hectoring class is good for business. That's done more to weaken what Freddie terms "the Village" than any abstract argument about the value of free speech.
"Do you remember the cry that rang out when Trump was elected and in the first years of his presidency? “This is not normal!” As if “normal” ever meant anything, and as if there was some benevolent clockmaker watching over it all who could adjust the dials and fix it so that our country was normal again. How on earth so many educated and successful professionals continue to believe that there is some celestial authority out there who will eliminate fascism if only we pass the right legislation, I cannot understand."
This is literally how their brains work. Most people's brains actually. They use some amount of their grey matter compute hosting a hive mind that is built out of and exists in social norm space, and that hive mind largely controls their perception of reality. If input contradicts the hive mind the memetic parasite flags it as unreal, impossible, or otherwise nonsensical. They literally can't understand it. They are under the illusion that they are critical thinkers but they're not critically examining reality, they're looking at the AR projection of the hive mind parasite that overlays their senses.
This is true for the right too, and moderates, and most humans.