Why I'm Leaving Substack
Below is a short piece that's not what I will typically post on my new Beehiiv site. I will repost this article on Beehiiv after I close my Substack in about a week. Please don't subscribe to Substack
Hello, everyone! I hope you’re having a fine summer.
I’m leaving the Substack platform because of their policies and attitudes on hosting Nazi and other White supremacist organizations. They say it’s a matter of free speech.
(Click to read this 2023 Atlantic article: “Substack Has a Nazi Problem.”)
I am moving my work to Beehiiv, another writer’s newsletter platform.
If you are already a subscriber to this Substack site, thank you. I have moved your subscription to Beehiiv.
For all others, please visit my new site and subscribe, subscribe, subscribe for free:
John C Flavin | Personal Essays
I will upload a new life story called “Diane” by July 20, 2025.
Each story posted is a candidate to include in a book that I am writing about my life. It’s a “memoir-in-essays.”
(Links are added as sources. Read ‘em if you want.)
Why I’m Leaving Substack
Each of the Amendments in the Constitution have exceptions to the rights and liberties they guarantee. You have a right to bear arms, but you can’t own an F-22 Raptor. You have a right to legal representation, but you have to pay for the attorneys in fancy suits. You have the right to sell alcohol, but you can’t fill up a cooler with Busch Lights and hock them on street corners. You have a right to free speech, but you can’t block the path of grandma and shout in her face, “I’m gonna fucking destroy you!”
I think each of us understands the need for exceptions. They are constantly battled in the social, political, and legal spheres because that’s what defines our democracy: the right to fight for one’s freedoms.
Earlier this year, a racist won an academic award for a paper he wrote at the University of Florida. It argued that the Constitution applies only to white people.
An article on the Black Enterprise website explains:
“According to the New York Times, a Trump-appointed judge who taught the class awarded Damsky the highest honor for his paper. In his assignment, Damsky argued that ‘We the People,’ as first written on the Constitution’s Preamble, actually refers to white people. With this mindset, he defended the idea of stripping voting rights for nonwhite citizens.”
On X, this Nazi sympathizer, inspired by his academic achievement, posted that Jewish people must be “abolished by any means necessary.” X is a platform owned by fellow Nazi sympathizer1 Elon Musk, so he has nixed previous free speech limits imposed by the former platform, Twitter.
Does anyone remember what it meant for a political candidate or party if their primary financial supporter had clearly given the Nazi salute on national television? Their political career would be meat on a stick and only the most committed racist assholes would continue to support them. That’s how it used to be. The context of those days was such that, if you had any political aspirations, you never declared your bigotry, and you pretended to oppose it. Just ask David Duke.
But the president’s Republican base did not abandon him, nor did he have to hide it. The days are over when these assholes stewed in their basements like impotent maggots. Today, racists aren’t only comfortable in American society, but “a former F.B.I. agent who was charged with encouraging the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan 6 … to kill police officers has been named as an adviser to the [United States] Justice Department task force.”
Pardoned by the President of the United States; hired by the President of the United States. This is our country now.
It gets worse.
The federal government targets brown people to harass and deport, while offering amnesty for white South Africans.
White nationalism has grown 59.2% between October 2023 and June 2025.
The mainstreaming of hate in our public and political discourse has increased.
The State of Florida, where the racist student won his award, is crammed with Republican lawmakers who robotically outlawed diversity, equity, and inclusion (also a national trend). The judge who awarded him for his essay was appointed by a racist president, a fact that can’t be underestimated. Talk about a tone-setter.
It is therefore predictable that the student in Florida felt further emboldened to make the open and unabashed recommendation for genocide in America. He was unambiguous: “Jews must be abolished by any means necessary.”
“Abolish: formally put an end to (a system, practice, or institution).”
But, according to the article on Black Enterprise, “The jarring remark led to the University of Florida suspending him and barring him from campus. The university even boosted police presence at the law school.”
The University did the right thing. They had previously claimed “institutional neutrality” as their defense for his right to free speech, but then changed their tune after he articulated genocide as an imperative. His essay went from free thought in an intellectually neutral university environment, to an unveiled suggestion of Jewish obliteration.
This took place in full public view not because this particular racist is anyone who matters; it escalated like a gasoline fire because America is now a place where it is safe for bigots, and unsafe for everyone else, particularly our marginalized populations.
Would Substack host and promote such a person? Would Substack deem his language as a right to free speech?
Here’s what we know from the Atlantic article linked above:
“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.) … 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.”
Substack recommends them and gives them badges.
Substack is superior if I want to get my essays read by other writers, publishers, and literary agents. It is superior for getting my work shared and noticed, and hopefully lead to publishing my book.
I consider myself to be anti-racist, so leaving Substack is the kind of decision I choose to face. It does not make my life easier. It makes it more difficult.
I don’t want to leave Substack. I have to.
Please support my writing and subscribe to my Beehiiv site. As a writer, I rely on subscriptions, so if you choose a free subscription, it would help me a lot. No one will think less of you if you choose a paid subscription. (Smiley face)
Please visit my new site and subscribe for free:
John C Flavin | Personal Essays
Note: By offering your email to subscribe, you will NOT receive text messages or be put on some mysterious list. You will receive email notifications only when I post something new, which will be every few weeks. It’s a very low-impact commitment.
Thank you, again.
Musk is more than a sympathizer, I know.