Part 62: Substack Has An Insurrection Problem – Extremism from Los Angeles to the Internet
Published January 8, 2024
Photo of the grave of abolitionist Owen Brown, son of John Brown in Altadena, California by author (GoPro Hero 11 Black).
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By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist
“I love LA!” The saying goes. In the land of the stars anything seems possible, but it would be hard to notice that Hollywood hasn’t become a little more diminished in our media landscape even before the writing and acting unions went on strike last year threatening to halt production. The effects weren’t immediate, and perhaps the highlight was Hear in LA journalist Tony Pierce capturing actor Ron Perlman rebuking studio executives who had been caught suggesting their striking workers should lose their homes. It was a watershed moment of mass frustration, of righteous anger.
“There’s a lot of ways to lose your house, some it is financial, some of it is karma, and some of it just figuring out who the fuck said that, and we know who said that, and where he fucking lives,” Perlman said in the viral video clip, in what some would later remark could be a threatening tone from the Sons of Anarchy actor. Perlman was talking about a studio executive, but the equation that loss is brought on my one’s own conduct, and that the source of a remark could be determined. Perlman didn’t know where the anonymous studio executive lived, but he was ready to take action in the fighting spirit of the common man being oppressed unduly by the overly powerful.
In the end, after 148 days the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers folded their cards and made a favorable deal with the Writers Guild of America, and after 118 days with Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. Substack didn’t even last that long when faced with resistance from their own writers, united under the Substackers Against Nazis banner following the November 28, 2023 publication in The Atlantic of an article entitled “Substack Has A Nazi Problem” more than 200 authors led by writer Marisa Kabas set out to pressure the social media platform to do something about the Nazis on their newsletter site.
The ”Substackers Against Nazis” letter was published on December 14, spread across the platform and yet the Substack management team of Christ Best, Jairaj Sethi and Hamish McKenzie pushed back against the pressure writing that the company was doing enough and “Our content guidelines do have narrowly defined proscriptions, including a clause that prohibits incitements to violence.” Seemingly, Substack had decided that the 16 accounts identified by Katz were better left in place, including the most notorious that of Richard Spencer, a well-known Nazi figure from leading the infamous Charlottesville Unite the Right rally in August 2017. A most noxious figure.
Even columnist Margaret Atwood would criticize the decision writing on December 27 satirically that “You can still have ‘Flopsy Bunny’s Very Busy Day,’ if you close your eyes tight and wish very hard” in condemning the lack of action to check the most obscene hatred on the platform. This cause had my full support! Even as I somewhat believe Substack’s management team that they aren’t actually in favor of Nazism, you have to wonder where they stand on Insurrectionism. You see Substack’s Content Guidelines don’t actually prohibit explicitly threats of political violence and the overthrow of the government. This simply isn’t what they want to deal with.
Last Friday January 5, Substack’s management team had a very important meeting with journalist Casey Newton of Platformer who sought to follow-up with Substack on this brewing scandal in a meeting. Result: Substack caved, and much faster than the AMPTP did when faced with the message from Perlman in the Hot Labor Summer that passed through Los Angeles and beyond in 2023. While Substack isn’t updating their Content Guidelines, they are taking action against several of the accounts flagged by Katz according to Newtown: “The company said this did not represent a reversal of its previous stance, but rather the result of reconsidering how it interprets its existing policies.”
My how the fortunes change as the winds shift! Even as die-hard supposed advocates of free speech sought to protect the publication of materials that do in fact inspire violence, can you really be a Neo-Nazi and not want to hurt someone? There was an apparent effort to dampen the news by misinformation and dismissal, with Substack’s McKenzie writing in a glib Note that “Friday night, 8.51pm PT. Time for everyone to stop having opinions until Monday.” This on the eve of the Third Anniversary of the January 6, 2021 insurrection by ex-President Donald Trump and his supporters, which left 148 police officers injured after a mob stormed the United States Capitol.
Like the great Ron Perlman, I’m a man of firm opinions. I couldn’t believe McKenzie’s arrogance even as I well understood that it’s part of a damage control strategy, after all, Substack previously defiant like a studio executive facing a strike now says: “We sincerely regret how this controversy has affected writers on Substack.” Thanks Substack! It remains unclear if the account “Alexandria” published by Spencer and Mark Brahmin will be among those restricted, even as it may not display the Nazi paraphernalia that Substack is willing to remove. They simply aren’t bannable.
For now, it seems Substack is content to allow normalized hatred so long it’s not directly threatening to remain, and it also seems completely unclear even as January 6, 2021 dominated this weekend’s Notes feed whether Substack and other social media platforms are remotely prepared to put a check on a the usage of their platform to plan a repeat attempt at seizing power by Donald Trump. I’m not going to stand here and wish very hard, and I hope that the nations law enforcement agencies will be better prepared this time for when the “Make America Great Again” mob of deplorables comes at them again with political violence. What will they do?
The writing is on the wall. The headlines have made that very clear in addition to emphatic speeches by President Joe Biden at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania on Friday and again today in Charleston, South Carolina at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston where a white gunman Dylann Roof killed nine Black churchgoers during Bible study nearly a decade ago. Roof is now on death row in U.S. Penitentiary, Terra Haute. Roof had a Facebook page that showed white supremacist imagery, and a website too, the Last Rhodesian, in reference to the former colony in Africa idolized by such individuals. Organized racism has many guises, but its symbols are prized.
You have to wonder, if a place like Substack puts out the welcome mat to people like Roof, what happens next in this divided country? What happens if Donald Trump manages to get re-elected? Just how much violence will we see driven by metastasized online hatred! The January 6th investigation conducted by Federal authorities to date has resulted in 1,250 people being charged with crimes, with more than 890 convictions according to NBC News. Despite this, 25% of adult voters falsely believe that the FBI actually organized and encouraged the attack, that’s just plain craziness, and Substack has no explicit restrictions against such dangerous ideas. Will social media providers again wait too long to intervene and put a check on this extremism again even in the face of continuing threats? It’s almost inevitable.
One Substack poster told me he wished that on January 6, the supposed “hostages” as Trump and his allies have taken to calling them now had sacked the White House. People on both sides of the aisle believe there will be bloodshed, and I think that’s entirely reasonable. Letting this go to the ballot box won’t solve it either, since Trump refused to respect the outcome of the election last time and surely won’t again, even as there must be credible fear that he will actually win somehow. Another Substack poster told me that they love Trump precisely because he is a criminal, how wonderful these times we live in are! Criminals are idolized, and good people are trashed, now that sounds like a Nazi Bar! Sadly though, this is the world we are living in today.
This takes us back to Los Angeles, because we actually have an expert in putting a handle on these matters here, Dr. Erroll Southers an expert in Homegrown Violent Extremism as they call it in law enforcement, with Southers publishing an eponymous book on the subject in 2013. It just so happens that I actually know Southers briefly from my time at the University of Southern California where he serves as Associate Senior Vice President for Risk and Safety Assurance in addition to his posting made by Mayor Karen Bass to serve as President of the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners having been nominated last February to succeed the outgoing Steve Soboroff, who was more blustery.
So there I was on Christmas night this year, and I won’t lie things haven’t been great since USC gave me the hatchet on August 26, 2022 and I went down pushing back on USC for threatening me in order to silence me as a whistleblower in relation to Title IX, which protects gender equity, and my efforts to get USC to do more on diversity, equity and inclusion. What USC didn’t know at the time, and what I wouldn’t disclose in the weeks that followed was that I had caught on to what I believed was a pending attempt to use leaked audio to influence the outcome of the November 2022 election and remake the political landscape here in Los Angeles, the LA Fed Tapes scandal.
Dr. Southers would be assigned by USC last year to take over this investigation from USC’s VP of EEO-TIX, and I would hear from him on January 6, 2022. Now I cooperated with Erroll until I couldn’t anymore because USC wouldn’t acknowledge that they had illegally sought to threaten me for the purpose of stopping me from speaking publicly. USC hired an outside attorney, who I gave several interviews along with my files to pursuant to this investigation, and after Southers dismissed my complaint for retaliation, I told him, what he should be thinking about is why I thought such a strange thing would happen that date based on my eyewitness observation.
What’s Dr. Erroll Southers, national expert in homegrown violent extremism looking for in my LinkedIn profile on Christmas Night, well only days earlier the Los Angeles Times journalists Libor Jany and Richard Winton reported allegations made by two LAPD Internal Affairs detectives in their December 20 article that LAPD Chief Michel Moore sometime after the November 2022 election had sought through two subordinates Internal Affairs Captain John Shah and his deputy Phil Tingirides to have them stop one investigation and start another. One-hand simply washing the other?
What did Chief Moore want IA to stop? An investigation into former LAPD Captain Cory Palka ostensibly according to the Times into how his daughter Cassidy Palka got an internship at CBS where Palka had assisted former executive Les Moonves attempt to cover-up a complaint of sexual assault made to him at the departments Hollywood Division. The reason this came up in the press much like Substack’s Nazi problem is because an outside actor intervened, in this case New York Attorney General Letitia James who would apparently surprise the LAPD with her investigation findings.
The November 2, 2022 press release states: “The OAG investigation uncovered that a captain at the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) informed CBS executives of a confidential sexual assault complaint against Mr. Moonves. Information obtained by OAG, including text messages between the LAPD captain, a CBS executive, and Mr. Moonves revealed that the LAPD captain shared confidential information and worked with CBS executives for months to prevent the complaint from becoming public.” LAPD would name this as Palka in LAPD Press Release NR22322ah writing: “The involved employee is retired Commander Cory Palka.” Thanks Chief Moore!
Palka was in fact quite famous even before this happened for taking a knee with protestors during the George Floyd aftermath in June 2020. While being later interviewed by KTLA he would allegedly throw up a white power hand sign gesture, with Knock LA journalist Jordan Lyric later noting his right-wing politics on the platform Twitter, now known as X, writing: “So was it a purposeful trolling tactic by Palka to let white supremacists know he was one of them, or just an “okay” sign made by a clueless boomer?” Is a single-hand sign enough to make you a Nazi?
Richard Spencer like Cory Palka isn’t quite a complete non-capitalistic knuckle dragger. I’m sure Spencer is making a pretty penny of Substack, and if Palka had every made it to the platform to write up his hobnobbing stories in three decades with the LAPD it would probably do quite well just like the television show Bosch for which he made two appearances in 2021. For what it’s worth, LAPD is still apparently investigating his misconduct for presentation of charges to the District Attorney’s office under embattled George Gascón who recently met with Rick Caruso according to journalist Elex Michaelson following a smash-grab robbery at his property.
LAPD has denied the Los Angeles Times report in Press Release NR23793bb dated the same day as the Times article, December 20, 2023, claiming that it’s a “False Media Report” and that the Times report on the two IA complaints, for which they’ve obtained copies, is “patently false.” Now I don’t mean to boast, but the Times article dwells heavily on the claim that Chief Moore then wanted Mayor Karen Bass investigated over her much criticized scholarship from USC, which former President of the Board of Police Commissioners Rick Caruso heavily focused on along with the Los Angeles Police Protective League using it as a vindictive political football.
Let’s see how long this Blue Wall of Silence lasts, and if Erroll Southers is looking for consulting gigs, or knows someone good perhaps Substack can hire them on, because the liability they’ll face if the next Dylann Roof is on their platform is significant. It’s worth noting that not all Nazis exactly wear military uniforms with Iron Crosses and Swastikas, I’m hardly the first person to suggest a Nazi cop trope, and while Richard Spencer unlike Palka has faced no legal jeopardy for his actions to date, I’m sure his time will come, even if he’s still allowed to write openly on Substack.
Link: Substack says it will remove Nazi publications from the platform
Link: Substack's Dilemma
Link: Detectives claim LAPD chief sought investigation of Mayor Bass over USC scholarship
Link: Meet LAPD Commander Cory Palka, Who is Totally Not a White Supremacist
Please support my work with your subscription or for direct aid use Venmo
Zachary Ellison is an Independent Journalist and Whistleblower in the Los Angeles area. Zach was most recently employed by the University of Southern California, Office of the Provost from October 2015 to August 2022 as an Executive Secretary and Administrative Assistant supporting the Vice Provost for Academic Operations and the Vice Provost and Senior Advisor to the Provost among others. Zach holds a Master’s in Public Administration and a Graduate Certificate in Sustainable Policy and Planning from the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. While a student at USC, he worked for the USC Good Neighbors Campaign including on their newsletter distributed university-wide. Zach completed his B.A. in History at Reed College, in Portland, Oregon and was a writer, editor, and photographer for the Pasadena High School Chronicle. He was Barack Obama’s one-millionth online campaign contributor in 2008. Zach is a former AmeriCorps intern for Hawaii State Parks and worked for the City of Manhattan Beach Parks and Recreation. He is a trained civil process server, and enjoys weekends in the great outdoors.
“The company said this did not represent a reversal of its previous stance, but rather the result of reconsidering how it interprets its existing policies.”
I mean, that’s a swerve in the right direction if I’ve ever seen one. But it’s a swerve nonetheless. As if there was supposed to be more than one interpretation of the policy. Still good though.
The problem with your Obama-like campaign for censorship - is that it's inherently subjective and fascistic.
You ASSUME that Richard Spencer has a bunch of readers, and makes money on substack... Journalists investigate and PROVE allegations of this sort... And SO WHAT - if he does? Whatever happened to the TRUE left principles, standing up against the tyranny of censorship? What ever happened to, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - a quote attributed to Voltaire, rightly or not.
I don't think that a real student of the Third Reich would use the term "Nazi" to describe Spencer. But the Zionist cause which collaborated with the Third Reich has happily taken to throwing that term around, at anyone who speaks out against the total annihilation and ethnic cleansing of all the indigenous inhabitants of occupied Palestine. Certainly we can all remember a time, just a few years ago, when the daughter and granddaughter of ACTUAL NAZIS, Chrystia Freeland (Chomiak) - and her equally WEF-approved superior, the Nazi-applauding Justin Turdeau - were calling anyone who dared to oppose their totalitarian schemes, with a well-organized, peaceful, nonviolent civil disobedience campaign, "Nazis", as well; without any acknowledgement of the irony. Canada's courts have now acknowledged that those brave and wonderful souls engaging in real democracy, did not, in fact, constitute any kind of "Emergency". But totalitarians of a fauxgressive flavor, couldn't speak up fast enough - demanding that their speech rights be silenced, their bank accounts be frozen, and their trucks seized and sold at auction. If Justin Turdeau or Chrystia the Banderite had a Substack - should it be censored? Why or why not? Are they not just fascists on the right 'team' - and therefore to be suffered the same rights as the rest of us?
Substack is wonderful oasis, in a vast desert of censorship and fraudulent narrative management schemes, properly exposed by the authors who produced the Twitter Files, and also by the discovery phases in cases like Missouri v. Biden, and Berenson v. Twitter. There was a time when those who self-identified as leftists would have been appalled and fighting mad about such gross abrogations of the 1st Amendment... Now it feels that their only outrage is that the Censorship is not complete ENOUGH...
When the ACLU defended the rights of Nazis, to march through Skokie, Illinois - they did it to uphold a universal right, which cannot be summarily "cancelled". The right of those Nazis to March there - is also the right of Anti-Fascists to march in the South, or in the Pacific Northwest.
The idea that Substack is a haven for Nazis - is patently absurd - and has never been PROVEN.
In any event - the answer for reprehensible speech is not some sort of elite and patrician censorship, of the sort currently being advocated, by Dick Cheney's CIA-intern cousin-of-color - the (Intelligence) Community Organizer - who essentially legalized the US Government LYING to the American people, with the "Smith-Mundt Modernization Act"... The answer is MORE SPEECH, better speech, better arguments, better debate and exchange of ideas - not less.
Substack is absolutely perfect the way that it is. The only people who object to the lack Imperial (ist) Narrative Management, on this platform - are the OPERATION MOCKINGBIRD stooges, like that NY Times Reporter whom you name - whose weak ideas, and perception management strategies fall-apart, when subjected to rational and uncontrolled scrutiny.
We see the same censorious efforts currently being directed at other bastions of beautiful 'wrongthink', like The Grayzone, The Electronic Intifadah, Mint Press News, Consortium News, Global Research, etc. etc...
I'm actually quite surprised to hear that Richard Spencer has a blog on Substack. I'm sure that like all the fine and decent people whose work I follow, that I'll never be troubled by its mere existence. Ironically, by pretending that Substack is the new "Stormfront" - you're actually generating something called "the Streisand Effect"... Were Spencer kicked off the platform - what actual benefit would that have? He and his handful of troglodyte followers wouldn't cease to exist... They'd just be forced onto another platform, and at that point, the occulted (and certainly awful) ideas would be impossible for those who oppose them, to find and refute. He and his handful of supporters would be that much harder to find, and to MOCK. Their ideas, unregistered and unrefuted would actually have greater impact on those susceptible to them - because we wouldn't be able to destroy them, in "notes", like this one.
As an apparently diehard fan of Obama's, as you appear to be... Are you unaware of the relationship between Netflix's least talented Executive, and serial abusers like Sumner Redstone? Who do you think was throwing money at him, at Beverly Hills Fundraisers and Malibu parties at David Geffen's? Barbara Streisand wasn't the only generous benefactor.
"If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter." George Washington
"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear."
[Special Message to the Congress on the Internal Security of the United States, August 8, 1950]
Harry S. Truman
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."
Benjamin Franklin
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
"If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."
[Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357 (1927)]
Louis Brandeis
"If you accept – and I do – that freedom of speech is important, then you are going to have to defend the indefensible. That means you are going to be defending the right of people to read, or to write, or to say, what you don’t say or like or want said. The Law is a huge blunt weapon that does not and will not make distinctions between what you find acceptable and what you don’t. This is how the Law is made. People making art find out where the limits of free expression are by going beyond them and getting into trouble. [...] The Law is a blunt instrument. It’s not a scalpel. It’s a club. If there is something you consider indefensible, and there is something you consider defensible, and the same laws can take them both out, you are going to find yourself defending the indefensible." Neil Gaiman
"There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry … There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. Our political life is also predicated on openness. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it and that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. And we know that as long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress." J. Robert Oppenheimer
"Contrary to what many well-intentioned people believe, the fact that we have multiple social media platforms today has little effect on spreading genuinely diverse narratives and perspectives. Social media is not only increasingly in the hands of a few billionaires strongly connected to the ruling class (e.g., Meta acquiring some of the most popular and active platforms), but also the fact that social media platforms operate based on carefully designed and manipulated algorithms to promote the viewpoints of the ruling class in what Cathy O’Neil has called ‘weapons of math destruction’, and what Safiya Umoja Noble insightfully calls ‘algorithms of oppression’, which apply not only to racial matters, but extend to every other matter that is potentially at odds with the desires of the ruling class." Louis Yako
So as you can see... There are some great minds that have covered this ground, before you. They did it better.