Why is Naomi Klein Funding Substack’s Hate Machine?

I've already explored how Substack executives are generally terrible people who coddle white-supremacists, transphobes, and nazis to goose clicks, engagement, and revenues. This is extremely well documented at this point.

Numerous Substack newsletter authors openly feature swastikas while heaping praise on Hitler, spreading antisemitic or white supremacist conspiracy theories, attacking gay or trans Americans, and spreading ignorant dipshittery.

Once you've subscribed to that hateful slop, Substack's algorithm happily shovels you to countless others. You know, to broaden your horizons (and take a ten percent cut).

This was all brought up in a damning Atlantic article in 2024, culminating in a mass writer exodus from the platform after execs made it clear they simply didn't give a shit about morals or ethics. Earlier this year The Guardian confirmed nothing has really changed. Substack has simply stopped commenting.

Like most fascist or fashy-adjacent tech bros (Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg), Substack execs previously tried to hide behind pseudo-noble claims they just really love free speech. In reality, they're turning a blind eye to hateful, white supremacist, anti-trans ideology and bigotry to make an extra buck.

So if I see someone building a new media company on the back of Substack in 2026 – especially if you're purporting to be an ethical, truthful author with a keen grasp of politics and modern media – I'm going to have questions.

Questions like: "did you do literally any platform research whatsoever?" Or: "if you were aware of the platform's well-documented management problems, what was the reason you decided to ignore them?"

Enter Naomi Klein, whose books like No Logo were transformative for me as a youngster in New York City. This week, Klein announced she was launching her new newsletter, Patterns, on Substack.

In a parade of well-manicured posts on platforms like Facebook, Klein insists she launched a new newsletter on Substack to "help one another understand these turbulent times in history."

Klein is also a contributor to Zeteo, a relatively new media outlet by Mehdi Hasan that launched on Substack in 2024, not long after it had been broadly established that the company's executives were a bunch of opportunistic assholes keen on propping up the most diabolical corners of the modern asshole economy.

Hasan, one of the smartest, toughest interviewers in modern media (which is why he got demoted by MSNBC), went uncharacteristically mute when repeatedly asked by folks on social media (including myself) why he'd chosen a platform that so enthusiastically validates and elevates hateful chucklefuckery.

The uncharacteristic silence raises the question: is Substack doling out fat cash advances to prominent authors in exchange for memory holing the company's dodgy reputation and shitty business practices?

It wouldn't be the first time; back in 2020 it was found that Substack was giving large cash advances to all sorts of folks under its "Substack Pro" program, including prominent bedwetters Michael Tracey and Matt Taibbi. Contrarian troll Matt Yglesias got a cool quarter million. The names, price tags, and conditions of payment were not publicized. Substack Pro was discontinued in 2022.

We do know there are ample alternatives to Substack run by more ethical people that provide authors more control over their own audience and work. The platform this newsletter runs on, Ghost, is open source, easy to use, and its founders don't openly coddle fascist assholes (it also has tools making it easy to migrate from Substack). Beehiiv, Buttondown, and Wordpress are additional options.

In many cases, self-publishing on these platforms is significantly cheaper than Substack once you hit just sixteen paid subscribers:

Often you'll see Substack authors construct elaborate intellectual scaffolding to justify why these platforms aren't suitable replacements, but as alternatives have improved, American fascism has gotten worse, and our shared information spaces have been devoured by bigotry and propaganda, the excuses have grown thin.

There are no shortage of resources helping you get off Substack. Sometimes it just comes down to whether you're willing to do the right thing.

So many modern writers, academics, and journalists aren't. You'll still routinely see prominent journalists happily babbling away on Elon Musk's right wing propaganda and white supremacist emporium, unwilling to take any meaningful stand against fascist information spaces lest it erode potential engagement reach (for what it's worth Klein announced the new newsletter on X, but not Bluesky).

Being an ethical consumer isn't easy. Every American company you interact with throughout the day has no shortage of closet corpses. Often you're dealing with enshittified monopolies and may not have options. But there's options here. You can control the platform bones you build a new media empire on.

If you're going around lamenting fascism and the lack of quality American journalism and information spaces while simultaneously driving tens of thousands of dollars in new revenue through platforms run by greasy extremism-coddling opportunists – it might be time for some light introspection.

Substack executives, like much of Silicon Valley, are simply obsessed with engagement at impossible scale. They couldn't give any less of a shit about the broader societal, democratic, or cultural impact of the mindless quest for more clicks. You've seen quite broadly how this works out for online spaces.

But it's also clear that just like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of AirBnB, and countless other affluent techno shitgoblins barfed from the self-serving bowels of pre-MAGA Silicon Valley libertarianism, there is very clear sympathy to broadening the structural definitions of "acceptable discourse" to ensure misogyny and racism have ample representation.

One way Substack cofounders like Hamish Mackenzie avoid being honest about the two previous paragraphs is by claiming we must allow fascist ideology into the marketplace of ideas to be debated. But trying to bridge with or debate fascism is like trying to develop an intimate relationship with a running chainsaw.

The inevitable carnage is decidedly unpleasant, but it sure does get those clicks.

I thought tech entrepreneur Anil Dash put it well in his 2024 piece laying out the case for why Substack executives are disingenuous pieces of shit:

Substack is, just as a reminder, a political project made by extremists with a goal of normalizing a radical, hateful agenda by co-opting well-intentioned creators' work in service of cross-promoting attacks on the vulnerable.

So generally, launching your new media venture on Substack in 2026 sends several messages to people who are informed, none of them good.

1. You're not politically attentive enough to know Substack is run by white supremacy and fascism-coddling assholes.

2. You know Substack is run by white supremacy and fascism-coddling assholes and don't care or are too lazy to do anything about it.

3. You're getting paid an extra cash commission to lend credibility to the platform and ignore all of its warts (see #2).

Eventually I suspect some scoop-oriented journalist will gain access to the agreements these larger new Substack contributors are signing, at which point we can see whether taking big cash advances in exchange for unethically ignoring Substack's shitty choices is part of the contractual equation.