Salty like a grilled cheese sunset

My gold fillings ache

I realize that this is the beginning of a bright, beautiful new year. The cold crisps up the edges of the sunsets & sunrises like a spectacular grilled cheese sandwich oozing over the crust.

Sunrise in Joshua Tree, a place I hope to write more about soon.

Even so, I can’t let the moment completely pass without noting how utterly and completely salty I’m gonna be if Substack makes me move this newsletter to some other platform — probably losing some of y’all, my lovely readers, into the bargain — because it wants to play host to Nazis.

For those of you unfamiliar with the controversy, others have written about it better than I can. I’ll point you to some of those resources below.

Let me just say up top here that I have gold fillings in my teeth because my Dad told me that Jews never get porcelain fillings, only gold, because you carry your teeth with you when you run.

My paternal grandparents never till the day they died bought any kind of real estate because it seemed foolish to them to invest in something that you couldn’t swallow.

I know I’m not the only person to come from a stranger-in-a-strange-land bloodline. For many writers, the idea of having to virtually cash out a molar so that Nazis of all the goddamn people can take their place at the Substack table … that can be hard to stomach.

Instead, I hope Substack follows the overwhelming response from its writers as well as the evidence that deplatforming works, and takes the action it needs to take to deplatform the Nazis.

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A collective letter:

Dear Chris, Hamish & Jairaj:

We’re asking a very simple question that has somehow been made complicated: Why are you platforming and monetizing Nazis? 

According to a piece written by Substack publisher Jonathan M. Katz and published by The Atlantic on November 28, this platform has a Nazi problem: 

“Some Substack newsletters by Nazis and white nationalists have thousands or tens of thousands of subscribers, making the platform a new and valuable tool for creating mailing lists for the far right. And many accept paid subscriptions through Substack, seemingly flouting terms of service that ban attempts to ‘publish content or fund initiatives that incite violence based on protected classes’...Substack, which takes a 10 percent cut of subscription revenue, makes money when readers pay for Nazi newsletters.”

As Patrick Casey, a leader of a now-defunct neo-Nazi group who is banned on nearly every other social platform except Substack, wrote on here in 2021: “I’m able to live comfortably doing something I find enjoyable and fulfilling. The cause isn’t going anywhere.” Several Nazis and white supremacists including Richard Spencer not only have paid subscriptions turned on but have received Substack “Bestseller” badges, indicating that they are making at a minimum thousands of dollars a year.

From our perspective as Substack publishers, it is unfathomable that someone with a swastika avatar, who writes about “The Jewish question,” or who promotes Great Replacement Theory, could be given the tools to succeed on your platform. And yet you’ve been unable to adequately explain your position. 

In the past you have defended your decision to platform bigotry by saying you “make decisions based on principles not PR” and “will stick to our hands-off approach to content moderation.” But there’s a difference between a hands-off approach and putting your thumb on the scale. We know you moderate some content, including spam sites and newsletters written by sex workers. Why do you choose to promote and allow the monetization of sites that traffic in white nationalism? 

Your unwillingness to play by your own rules on this issue has already led to the announced departures of several prominent Substackers, including Rusty Foster and Helena Fitzgerald. They follow previous exoduses of writers, including Substack Pro recipient Grace Lavery and Jude Ellison S. Doyle, who left with similar concerns. 

As journalist Casey Newton told his more than 166,000 Substack subscribers after Katz’s piece came out: “The correct number of newsletters using Nazi symbols that you host and profit from on your platform is zero.” 

We, your publishers, want to hear from you on the official Substack newsletter. Is platforming Nazis part of your vision of success? Let us know—from there we can each decide if this is still where we want to be.

Signed, 

Substackers Against Nazis

Thanks for reading. If this letter resonates, please share this post with others. If you’re a publisher who would like to join this collective effort, we encourage you to repost the letter on your own Substack.

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Margaret Atwood’s commentary on how you can slide towards a dystopian nightmare or you can be a sequel to “Flopsy Bunny’s Very Busy Day,” but you can’t do both at once:

Substack's Dilemma

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I recently heard about a woman — on a radio story? A podcast? I can’t remember, unfortunately — who came from Brazil to Buffalo, NY on an asylum basis. It was the middle of winter. There were no leaves on the trees, everything was covered in thick white paste, hard to trudge through.

Back home, back in Brazil, the leaves never so much as turned brown. After a week, she thought she might die if she didn’t see something green.

She didn’t have much money but after buying coats for her and her young son, she bought a houseplant. It got her through that first winter.

Nature, of course, is not here for our comfort or amusement or joy. It exists for itself, and on its own merits. Still, nature often provides moments of comfort and amusement and joy. Often these are moments of refuge from human-created circumstances. 

Nature doesn’t have to be large to do this — often, the more human-scaled the better. A houseplant works fine.

Here’s some nice moments I’ve experienced recently:

Nutria eating dinner.

Waves.

I hope you’ve had some lovely moments too. Please feel free to share them if you like in the comments below.