Substack is not a safe place

Aw, damn….how do I even start?

Did you know that Substack is one of the last big online platforms that does not ban white supremacist hate propaganda? No? Me, neither. I was clueless until two weeks ago.

The Atlantic wrote about it in November:

Soon after, hundreds of Substack writers posted and shared a letter to Substack’s founders:

And I was thinking:

If Substack turns a blind eye, anyone who isn’t white, straight, and unconcerned will move away from this platform. What you’re soon going to have is a space run by straight white people for straight white people.

Sounds familiar?

This morning, Substack’s CEO Hamish McKenzie finally published a statement. And it wasn’t what I and many others had hoped for:

He sounds a lot like “I’m not racist, but…”

You know I’m German. And that comes with a heavy load of history. I vividly remember my granddad’s and grandma’s stories about the Nazis and the war, and I can tell you that you don’t want this shit to return. Not even halfway. Not even a small bucketful.

So what’s this thing about free speech, then? Does it mean it’s okay to throw threats and insults at you because you have a bit more melanin than a caucasian and you love differently than what’s sanctioned by the Catholic church?

Fuck, no!

To maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance.

This is the paradox of tolerance, proposed by Karl Popper in 1945, as he was trying to explain how millions of people could allow a fascist regime to come to power.

Seems that Substack’s CEOs never heard of it.

Substack profits and will keep profiting off white nationalist hate propaganda. So it comes as no surprise that there’s yet another exodus of BIPOC, LGBTQIA2S+ and their allies.

I will no longer support Substack.

This is a no-brainer.

I respect and understand if some of you want to leave Substack and my newsletter immediately. But if you hang in there just until after the holidays: I’m about to move Annelie Writes to Beehiiv, making the transition as smooth for you as possible. You won’t have to unsubscribe and resubscribe, and you probably won’t even notice the move.

If you are a paid subscriber, you will get a notification from Stripe when I activate the migration to Beehiiv.