The Atlantic Publishes Baseless Claim Arguing Substack Has a “Nazi Problem”

Jan 10

Journalist Jonathan Katz recently argued in his piece “Substack Has A Nazi Problem” for the Atlantic that Substack has “become a home and propagator of white supremacy and anti-Semitism.” Katz’s piece was then elevated by other publications, like The New York Times, that warned that The Atlantic “found that at least 16 Substack newsletters had ‘overt Nazi symbols’ in their logos or graphics, and that white supremacists had been allowed to publish on, and profit from, the platform.”

Platformer’s Casey Newton stated that on “Substack…extremists can post for money.” Newton had met with Substack to press his case that neo-Nazi content should be removed from the service, and he has effectively been running a campaign to get Substack to start removing offensive material from its site. As part of that campaign, he announced that he had sent a list of Substacks to the service’s owners that he believed violated the company’s policies against incitement to violence.

However, a Substack spokesperson told Public that Newton’s list contains just 6 Substacks with 29 paid subscribers between them, a tiny fraction of the more than 2 million paid subscribers the service has today. The spokesperson added that Substack will be reviewing whether these 6 publications violate the platform’s pre-existing policy against incitement to violence.

Further, Katz’s article reveals how little reach these substacks have in the first place. One Substack he cites that contains an anti-Jewish rant about vaccines had no likes or shares and just one comment on it during the entire month of December – and that comment was left by the author himself, who decided to add an addendum to his post. Additionally, Patrick Casey, who was previously a leader in the American white nationalist Identity Evropa movement, runs a Substack page that gets a tiny amount of engagement from readers. His most popular post of all time, as ranked by the number of likes, has only 10 likes and no comments.

Ultimately Katz could produce 16 unpopular Substacks that feature neo-Nazi symbols in their branding, out of the thousands of Substacks that are available for subscribers to browse through.

https://public.substack.com/p/censors-are-trying-to-trick-you-into

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Update (Posted 1/19/2023)

Journalist Jesse Singal— who writes on the Substack Singal-Minded— published a piece to his page on January 12, 2024, further uncovering factual inaccuracies in Katz’s Atlantic article. Singal’s investigation discovered that Casey is banned from Stripe, meaning he cannot profit from Substack.

This contradicts Katz’s original reporting, where he had stated Casey made a comfortable income on Substack. As a result, Katz updated the article to report it is unclear how Casey’s substack presence contributes to his livelihood.