Yesterday I highlighted something Jesse Singal had pointed out about a site called Platformer which, until yesterday, was hosted on Substack. Platformer is a tech journalism site which decided to deplatform itself because of Substack’s alleged Nazi problem. I won’t rehash the whole thing, you can read it here. The gist is that Platformer’s own investigation into the problem turned up a grand total of six pro-Nazi sites, none of which were earning a dime from subscribers on Substack. Rather than reveal that rather pitiful evidence to readers, Platformer hid the actual numbers involved to make the problem sounds worse than it was.

But as I mentioned yesterday, the real start of the moral panic over Substack’s Nazi problem was a piece published by the Atlantic titled “Substack Has a Nazi Problem” by Jonathan Katz. Katz claimed to have identified 16 pro-Nazi sites on a site which hosts well over 20,000 different authors. Nevertheless, that was considered shocking enough that an open letter was circulated.

Today, Jesse Singal is back with an in depth look at Katz’ reporting for the Atlantic. What he has found is that one of the central claims made in his story is completely misleading. First, here’s what Katz wrote about a Substack author named Patrick Casey:

The platform has shown a surprising tolerance for extremists who circumvent its published rules. Patrick Casey, a leader of Identity Evropa, a defunct neo-Nazi group, had been banned from Twitter and TikTok and suspended from YouTube after running afoul of those platforms’ terms of service. (Elon Musk, Twitter’s owner, subsequently announced an “amnesty” that restored Casey’s account, among others.) Perhaps most damagingly to a content creator, Stripe had prohibited Casey from using its services.

But Substack was willing to let a white supremacist get back on his feet. Casey launched a free Substack newsletter soon after the 2020 election. Months later, he set up a paywall, getting around Stripe’s ban by involving a third-party payment processor. “I’m able to live comfortably doing something I find enjoyable and fulfilling,” he wrote on his Substack in 2021. “The cause isn’t going anywhere.” Casey’s newsletter remains active; through Substack’s recommendations feature, he promotes seven other white-nationalist and extremist publications, one of which has a Substack “bestseller” badge.

It turns out most of these claims are either misleading or outright false. Patrick Casey did not circumvent published rules and Substack did not help get him back on his feet. Casey did not circumvent a ban by Stripe (the company that handles subscriber payments for Substack) and most glaringly, the quotes Katz used were take completely out of context. Let’s start with the claim that Substack helped Casey get back on his feet.

…if you go to Patrick Casey’s page, which points readers to his publication, Restoring Order, you’ll see he is listed as having 800 subscribers…

This confused me, because no one is “liv[ing] comfortably” on 800 total subscribers.

Those 800 subscribers are mostly free subscriptions. In fact, it seems Casey wasn’t making any money directly from Substack at the time because of the ban by Stripe. Jesse Singal was able to find the original post by Casey from which Jonathan Katz pulled the quotes used in the Atlantic piece. I’m not going to quote the entire post by Patrick Casey but here’s the key section with the quoted pulled by Katz in bold:

Aside from the unfortunate realities of deplatforming, my life is going fairly well. I’ve been blessed with a growing network of friends and political contacts, I’m in great health, and I’m able to live comfortably doing something I find enjoyable and fulfilling. Again, long term I’ll likely have to find something else to do, but I’m more than content doing this for now.

I do plan to use this Substack more often for both paywall and non-paywall posts. Given that I’ve been banned from Stripe, which Substack uses for its paid subscriptions, half of each paywall post will be available on Substack, while the other half will be accessible via SubscribeStar.

Lastly, I sincerely hope that everyone reading this has been able to stave off any feelings of despair or hopelessness that may have arisen in the wake of Biden’s inauguration. It’s perfectly normal to check out from politics for a while if needed. However, we mustn’t forget that we all have a role to play in our eventual victory, however seemingly slight or insignificant. Spread the message on social media, create content, support content creators and activists, get active in local politics, and, above all else, ensure that you’re taking the necessary steps to achieve your goals. If you’re obese, addicted to substances, lacking good career prospects, or failing to take steps to create a family, then you should fix these problems first and foremost before trying to save the world. The cause isn’t going anywhere — remember that.

Notice what Casey isn’t saying. He isn’t saying he’s living comfortably thanks to Substack.

It’s pretty clear, in context, that Casey was not saying that his “comfortable living” came from Substack, given that he couldn’t make any money off of Substack! Rather, this referred to some other source of income. Casey confirmed this when I emailed him, and you don’t need to take his word for it, because again, we know that he has a paltry 800 total Substack subscribers — information Katz surely could have found and shared with his readers had he chosen the path of competent and transparent journalism.

As for the claim that Casey got around Stripe’s ban, that’s also very misleading. As you can see, what he did was link to another site, Subscribe Star, where he was not banned. His paid content was hosted there, not on Substack. Finally, Katz’ use of the final quote about “the cause” was also very misleading. As a reminder, here’s how Katz presented it:

“I’m able to live comfortably doing something I find enjoyable and fulfilling,” he wrote on his Substack in 2021. “The cause isn’t going anywhere.”

Everyone who reads this would assume that Katz was doing so well thanks to Substack that he was confident his neo-Nazi cause wasn’t going anywhere. In reality, he was a) talking about some outside source of income because his income from Substack was zero and b) he was separately advising like-minded readers to take a break if necessary to focus on their career or starting a family. “The cause isn’t going anywhere” wasn’t an upbeat sign of someone flush with success, it was permission to forget about the whole thing for a few years for people feeling depressed.

In context, Casey’s insistence that “The cause isn’t going anywhere” is basically the far-right equivalent of a call for his sad-sack readers to practice self-care and stop posting white nationalist stuff if they have mental or physical health problems to take care of first, or want to start a family. It has nothing to do with Substack. He’s clearly saying If you need a break, take one — our idiotic struggle to make America white again will be here when you get back.

Singal points out that Katz was even more dishonest on his own Substack site where he ran the two quotes together like this: “I’m able to live comfortably doing something I find enjoyable and fulfilling. The cause isn’t going anywhere.” That’s some pretty spectacular dishonesty from someone who clearly knew those quotes were separated by two whole paragraphs.

Finally, Singal asked Katz about all of this and he shrugged it off saying he was too busy to bother. The Atlantic made slightly more effort and revised the story slightly so that it now reads (changes in bold):

Substack was willing to let a white supremacist get back on his feet. Casey launched a free Substack newsletter soon after the 2020 election. Months later, he set up a paywall, getting around Stripe’s ban by involving a third-party payment processor. The extent to which this workaround—and Casey’s presence on Substack more generally—contributed to his livelihood is unclear. “I’m able to live comfortably doing something I find enjoyable and fulfilling,” he wrote on his Substack in 2021. “The cause isn’t going anywhere,” he declared in the same post.

Is it really unclear or does the Atlantic just not want to bother looking? Readers still don’t get the original gist of Casey’s statement which was that he was comfortable doing something else besides Substack to make money which undermines the original point of this entire paragraph. And the use of “The cause isn’t going anywhere” is still very misleading and taken out of context. In fact, as Jesse Singal put it, “All the key, false assertions are still there.”

I once was interviewed for an Atlantic article and I remember the fact-checker calling me to verify everything carefully before publication. I was impressed with how seriously they took it, not wanting to make any mistakes about what I’d said. The Atlantic claims they contact Substack and didn’t get a reply but that sounds like a lame excuse. Jesse Singal was able to check all of this with a little Googling. How hard would that have been?