Katz has painted himself into a nasty corner. Here is how this will play out. He’ll post a story about how, after some deep soul searching, he had decided to remain on Substack because he believed the best way to fight against Nazis is to speak out against them on this platform. Thereby de facto acknowledging that those that opposed his demands for censorship were, in fact, right all along when they contended that the best way to combat speech we abhor is not to ban that speech but to counter it with speech we adore. Katz knows what fattens his bank account and his moral outrage has financial limitations.
Since apparently actual sightings of Nazis are so rare on Substack, and so much hysteria being generated about newsletters we can't find, and are so rare as to be apparently statistcally nonexistent, I have decided that this so-called anti-Nazi movement is made of the usual suspects who in fact somply hate Taibbi, Weiss, Shellenberger et al's reporting on the Censorship Industrial Complex. And so many behave like bots with a one-note party line.
Great post. We on SubStack must continue to stand for free speech. All these drama kings and queens are too much - just like Twitter and mainstream media.
I probably should, but I can't, take any of these censorious twerps seriously, for a whole slew of reasons.
1 - These arguments have been had already. The censors lost.
Read the Supreme Court in Brandenburg v. Ohio, or Texas v. Johnson, or the "Fuck the Draft" case, or even the series of pornography cases. SCOTUS gave up on the notion that it could police speech in any principled way.
2 - The Censors always argue like that Harvard, grad-student, d-bag archetype in "Good Will Hunting". e.g. They can all wrongly quote Schenck to say "you can't shout fire in a crowded theater!1!!" HOWEVER....
3a - Worse than that d-bag Harvard guy, they haven't even read Schenck. (First off, the complete, correct line is actually "FALSELY yelling fire in a crowded theater". Kinda key omission.)
3b - They don't know what Schenck was about (socialists distributing pamphlets and draft protesters over the conscription for WW1).
3c - They have no idea about the Progressive Era of the Supreme Court and just how many truly abysmal decisions were produced (including by Holmes) out of those Courts.
3d - No one who has finished the ABA requisite two semesters of Con Law looks at Schenck as anything other than an abysmal opinion already relegated to the dustbin of history. I dare someone to find all of the Supreme Court and appellate court decisions citing Schenck in the last 50 years.
And yet here they come again, screeching and braying with as much intellectual dishonesty and rhetorical foot-stamping immaturity as possible.
4 - They never acknowledge the idiotic unstated premise of their entire argument (that's probably why): That the lumpenproletariat simply can't be trusted to hear Nazi messaging without turning into Nazis. Their fragile brains are incapable of resisting the call. That's what got Hitler into power, the censorists believe. The Little Corporal just whispered the magic Nazi words in the right incantation and *poof*, the Germans just all became Nazis.
5 - Talk about an unconscious confession. Yikes. They think everyone is as weak-minded and weak-willed as they are.
I don't give a fuck what you think or say or write so long as it helps precipitate the end of this boring construct you thrive in by sowing maximum confusion and encouraging maximum chaos in a nation of miserable fucks who prefer their right to shoot holes in shit that doesn't even annoy them to letting other people vote between the more profitable of two equally terrible business models.
Thank you for providing the list of newsletters promoting censorship. I had received two SAN emails from publications I was subscribed too. I promptly unsubscribed from both.
Going through your list today, I found one more censorship supporter, so was able to promptly unsubscribe from that one as well.
I have no desire to waste my time reading cowardly and submissive writers who are longing to live under totalitarianism.
As someone who co-signed the letter, here are my answers to a few questions in this article:
"And so I put the question to the so called Substackers Against Nazis: Do you understand the second danger Mr. Taibbi speaks of?"
Yes, but it's a misleading question. The co-signers aren't saying we want to decide what does and doesn't get written on Substack. We're asking the site's leadership why they are comfortable profiting off Nazis when they've already said they moderate the content (they disallow spam and certain types of porn).
"So tell me, Substackers Against Nazis, where does this kind of thing stop? Where is the line drawn regarding “problematic” content?"
Everyone will have their own line, but Nazism is a good place to start. This is essentially a slippery slope fallacy. Slippery slope arguments are wrong because they ignore human judgement. People can distinguish between a writer claiming "I'm voting for Ron DeSantis because of his economic policies" and "I'm voting for Ron DeSantis because he'll restore the proper racial hierarchy." To pretend humans cannot and have not done this is untrue.
"Who gets to apply the label, “Nazi?”"
This isn't a problem, considering these people openly call themselves Nazis and use the insignia.
I'll finish by saying this isn't a call for censorship. ≈200 people asking a private company why they are promoting vile ideologies while disallowing sex content. Clearly, Substack is not an "unlimited free speech platform," as they already disallow certain content. Asking them to clarify their stance is about as far from "censorship" as something could get.
Kudos for posting the list of stacks that signed this letter!
Katz has painted himself into a nasty corner. Here is how this will play out. He’ll post a story about how, after some deep soul searching, he had decided to remain on Substack because he believed the best way to fight against Nazis is to speak out against them on this platform. Thereby de facto acknowledging that those that opposed his demands for censorship were, in fact, right all along when they contended that the best way to combat speech we abhor is not to ban that speech but to counter it with speech we adore. Katz knows what fattens his bank account and his moral outrage has financial limitations.
Since apparently actual sightings of Nazis are so rare on Substack, and so much hysteria being generated about newsletters we can't find, and are so rare as to be apparently statistcally nonexistent, I have decided that this so-called anti-Nazi movement is made of the usual suspects who in fact somply hate Taibbi, Weiss, Shellenberger et al's reporting on the Censorship Industrial Complex. And so many behave like bots with a one-note party line.
Great post. We on SubStack must continue to stand for free speech. All these drama kings and queens are too much - just like Twitter and mainstream media.
Let us see if I'm not censored!
https://postimg.cc/hJTJ8X84
That's a huge list of modern moron slaves ALL pretending to NOT like NAZIS while acting like one.
I probably should, but I can't, take any of these censorious twerps seriously, for a whole slew of reasons.
1 - These arguments have been had already. The censors lost.
Read the Supreme Court in Brandenburg v. Ohio, or Texas v. Johnson, or the "Fuck the Draft" case, or even the series of pornography cases. SCOTUS gave up on the notion that it could police speech in any principled way.
2 - The Censors always argue like that Harvard, grad-student, d-bag archetype in "Good Will Hunting". e.g. They can all wrongly quote Schenck to say "you can't shout fire in a crowded theater!1!!" HOWEVER....
3a - Worse than that d-bag Harvard guy, they haven't even read Schenck. (First off, the complete, correct line is actually "FALSELY yelling fire in a crowded theater". Kinda key omission.)
3b - They don't know what Schenck was about (socialists distributing pamphlets and draft protesters over the conscription for WW1).
3c - They have no idea about the Progressive Era of the Supreme Court and just how many truly abysmal decisions were produced (including by Holmes) out of those Courts.
3d - No one who has finished the ABA requisite two semesters of Con Law looks at Schenck as anything other than an abysmal opinion already relegated to the dustbin of history. I dare someone to find all of the Supreme Court and appellate court decisions citing Schenck in the last 50 years.
And yet here they come again, screeching and braying with as much intellectual dishonesty and rhetorical foot-stamping immaturity as possible.
4 - They never acknowledge the idiotic unstated premise of their entire argument (that's probably why): That the lumpenproletariat simply can't be trusted to hear Nazi messaging without turning into Nazis. Their fragile brains are incapable of resisting the call. That's what got Hitler into power, the censorists believe. The Little Corporal just whispered the magic Nazi words in the right incantation and *poof*, the Germans just all became Nazis.
5 - Talk about an unconscious confession. Yikes. They think everyone is as weak-minded and weak-willed as they are.
Could not agree more Phisto,… there can be no line in the sand ever, since who gets to draw the line is the issue..
scott
I don't give a fuck what you think or say or write so long as it helps precipitate the end of this boring construct you thrive in by sowing maximum confusion and encouraging maximum chaos in a nation of miserable fucks who prefer their right to shoot holes in shit that doesn't even annoy them to letting other people vote between the more profitable of two equally terrible business models.
Maximalist free speech? This is about ad revenue is it not?
This is a long list of useless NPCs. Substack will lose nothing if they decide to leave.
🤡
Thank you for providing the list of newsletters promoting censorship. I had received two SAN emails from publications I was subscribed too. I promptly unsubscribed from both.
Going through your list today, I found one more censorship supporter, so was able to promptly unsubscribe from that one as well.
I have no desire to waste my time reading cowardly and submissive writers who are longing to live under totalitarianism.
As someone who co-signed the letter, here are my answers to a few questions in this article:
"And so I put the question to the so called Substackers Against Nazis: Do you understand the second danger Mr. Taibbi speaks of?"
Yes, but it's a misleading question. The co-signers aren't saying we want to decide what does and doesn't get written on Substack. We're asking the site's leadership why they are comfortable profiting off Nazis when they've already said they moderate the content (they disallow spam and certain types of porn).
"So tell me, Substackers Against Nazis, where does this kind of thing stop? Where is the line drawn regarding “problematic” content?"
Everyone will have their own line, but Nazism is a good place to start. This is essentially a slippery slope fallacy. Slippery slope arguments are wrong because they ignore human judgement. People can distinguish between a writer claiming "I'm voting for Ron DeSantis because of his economic policies" and "I'm voting for Ron DeSantis because he'll restore the proper racial hierarchy." To pretend humans cannot and have not done this is untrue.
"Who gets to apply the label, “Nazi?”"
This isn't a problem, considering these people openly call themselves Nazis and use the insignia.
I'll finish by saying this isn't a call for censorship. ≈200 people asking a private company why they are promoting vile ideologies while disallowing sex content. Clearly, Substack is not an "unlimited free speech platform," as they already disallow certain content. Asking them to clarify their stance is about as far from "censorship" as something could get.
Excellent essay. Someone telling you that what you say or think is wrong and you don't have a RIGHT to voice your thoughts freely is hate in itself!
So am I