Nazis Are Trending Again

Maybe Zara's marketing team can add it to their vision board?

Hi friends!

How’s everyone doing? I fear this year is not winding down as urgently as I need it to and I look forward to seeing how the passage of time strengthens its ongoing partnership with chaos as we head into 2024. Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our derangement, and we all need to chill.

Something very not chill that happened this week is me finding out that Nazism is apparently a hot topic to write about (and make money from!?) here on Substack. There was an Atlantic piece on the whole nasty situation a couple of weeks ago but I’ve been living between a wormhole and a bat cave and the news didn’t reach me because no one made a TikTok about it. Has anyone told Patti Smith? She is, for the uninitiated, a dark horse in the race to be this platform’s most prolific poster. 

Prominent creators have left the platform and there were two open letters signed and published by 100+ writers, one from a group calling themselves Substackers Against Nazis and the other entitled Substack shouldn’t decide what we read. The first letter is essentially a (justified) expression of outrage that asks this platform’s overlords to clarify their stance. The second letter is an argument to let the community moderate itself and misses the point entirely, which is that, unlike on other social platforms where our attention is commoditized and sold to advertisers, Substack runs on a subscription-based model and takes a 10 percent cut. They are quite literally profiting off of hate speech.

not me thinking I had found a platform to like

I find it extremely curious that Substack has yet to respond to this “situation” in any meaningful way. Instead, they filled the space of their official newsletter this week by touting their progressive, utopian stance on the platform as a refuge for writers in our unhinged era of emerging AI. The smoke screening of one existential threat with another is a brilliant diversion tactic, they almost got me good with that one!

Platforming Nazis and white supremacists is without a doubt an existential threat when the conspiracy theories this faction peddles have led to several mass shootings. The concern over a proliferation of hatred is far from moral panic (don’t make me bring up the Holocaust) and Substack seemingly does not give a fuck that Richard Spencer, a headliner at the infamous Charlottesville “Unite the Right” march that ended in tragedy, is minting stacks on their platform. It’s giving “very fine people on both sides.”

In other corporate misbehaviors, Zara, the fast fashion retailer with abhorrent labor and sustainability practices that is widely known to rip off the work of independent artists, was the target of viral ire and calls for a boycott when their new jacket campaign hit social media this week. The campaign struck — and you cannot make this up — a resemblance to devastating images from the ongoing war and humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Zara’s marketing team gets this week’s distinction in Unhingement

Conspiracy theories abounded (read the comments if you must), but I do believe the company’s statement that said the campaign was shot in September, that just makes sense in terms of production. I can also believe that no one involved in the approval process had the cultural literacy to read the room, the room being the tinder box of horrific imagery and grief that is social media right now. 

What I can’t believe is the new levels we have managed to reach in trend-based outrage. I find it quite something that this set of tone-deaf jacket pics is what finally got everyone going enough to consider boycotting one of the worst offenders in an industry that is literally destroying our planet.

I understand the need to shop constantly as I came out of the womb turning a look for the occasion, but our current level of consumption is out of control. We need to be paying attention to the real impact of these brands, the indelible mark they’re leaving on the environment and the children forced to sew these clothes, not their dumb marketing. This is also a note to myself since all women have like three brands max where the jeans fit well most of the time and Zara, regrettably, is one of mine.

We have lost the plot and the hatred and misguided fervency happening on social media amidst so much loss and turmoil makes a case for trashing the whole apparatus. This has not been a good year for platforms. We can’t get into the artist formerly known as Twitter because I have a strict editorial policy to not give Elon Musk any more attention but please fill in the blanks with whatever weird shit he did that you heard about.

There are important conversations we need to have around freedom of speech right now. Lumping white supremacists in with academics, activists, and other divergent thinkers is messy at best and cultural suicide at worst. But, also, why are we still on these apps if they’re literally full of Nazis and run by people who don’t seem to care about that?

What I’m personally going to do about all this feels like a December question with a January answer. I am too tired to make Nazi-based decisions right now and I am crossing fingers and toes that this platform makes the changes it should. 

No dispatch next week because I literally can’t anymore but I will be back before 2023 is through to burn this fucking year down in the effigy it deserves (TBD). Hope we can all stop working soon and get the much needed rest and merriment we deserve. Have a lovely weekend!

Less Lessons More Blessin’s™️

Liz