Is Substack becoming a safe haven for blatant neo-Nazi propaganda?

They glorify Hitler, call for genocide, and grow their following on Substack. The platform lets them. Can Substack restrict hate speech without limiting controversial speech?

This article contains explicit examples of antisemitic and neo-Nazi rhetoric taken directly from a quickly growing Substack newsletter. I’ve included these not to amplify hatred, but to expose what is being published — and normalized — on a platform that claims to champion independent thought.

Some of what follows is disturbing. That is precisely the point.

“No. Mercy.”

That’s how a recent post on the Substack newsletter NatSocToday ends, with an open call to smash the Jews, with a promise of genocide next time around. No code words. No euphemisms. Just hate, raw and unfiltered.

“Never Forget, a phrase often used by the filthy jews. For us it has a different meaning… we will not forget or forgive the filthy jews for any and all of his atrocities. We will smash the jew, no mercy of camps this time jew. No. Mercy.”

This isn’t some anonymous Telegram channel. This is a Substack account with over 500 subscribers that was established in February this year. It glorifies Adolf Hitler, denies the Holocaust, and promotes exterminationist antisemitism under a thin veil of free speech legalese.

The Free Speech Dilemma

After I published my Graeme Bird article (discussed shortly), one reader responded with what can only be described as a scorched-earth take-down of Christian antisemitism. In his view, people like Bird should be publicly mocked, not reported. Let them rant, he suggested, and use their own delusions as rope.

It’s a tempting approach and one that has merit. Mockery can be powerful. Exposure matters.

But what happens when these ideas don’t stay isolated? When they grow quietly, algorithmically, unchecked?

Substack prides itself on free expression. But freedom without limits can become a home for hate and, eventually, a vector for violence.

When a platform allows openly genocidal propaganda to flourish, can we still say that it is neutral?

How I found NatSocToday

I didn’t go looking for neo-Nazi Substacks. I was following up on a different case.

Yesterday, I published an article exposing Graeme Bird. This fringe Substack writer hijacked my Note about abducted and missing Syrian women to spread a classic antisemitic trope: that Israelis/Jews traffic in organs, and he dismissed a readers’ challenge as “just Jew talk.”

I wrote about him, reported him, and was set to move on. After all, he’s just one man with about 50 subscribers. How far can his sewer of hate go?

But then, among those mostly Jew bashing 50 subscribers, I found NatSocToday.

What NatSocToday Publishes

The articles and Notes on NatSocToday are not subtle. They are designed to provoke, dehumanize, and radicalize.

Here are just a few examples, pulled from public Notes and article teasers:

The Fighting Irish: The great country of Ireland is pushing back against their corrupt government and filthy jewish NGO’s. [deliberate lower casing in original, a common neo-Nazi tactic to show contempt]

The selling of bread: These filthy [Orthodox] jews are literally crazy.

What they say about themselves and their mission

NatSocToday presents itself as a newsletter for National Socialists and White Nationalists. It claims to promote:

“the peaceful return of traditional White nations to the native White populations who built them.”

It insists that all content is protected under the First Amendment and that overt calls for violence (“fedposting”) are forbidden.

It justifies racial and religious criticism as legitimate political speech.

The site includes this warning to outsiders:

“People without the necessary knowledge… including members of ethnic/racial/religious groups who may be mentioned… will be banned.”

In short, they try to mask open racial supremacism behind legal disclaimers using the language of constitutional rights to legitimize hate.

Their ban on “calls for violence” is meaningless in light of what they actually publish.

When “Peaceful” Isn’t Peaceful

Remember their own words:

“Never Forget, a phrase often used by the filthy jews. For us it has a different meaning… we will not forget or forgive the filthy jews for any and all of his atrocities. We will smash the jew, no mercy of camps this time jew. No. Mercy.”

This is not political commentary. It’s incitement. It is a threat. It is a call to genocide.

This Isn’t Fringe - It’s Organized

With over 500 subscribers, this is not a lone lunatic. It’s a community. And community is exactly what Substack promotes as one of its core strengths. That’s what makes it dangerous.

We don’t know whether these 500 subscribers were already part of a coordinated ideological project or were drawn in after the account became active.

But what we do see is unmistakable: an effort to reframe Nazism as a viable political identity, to sanitize genocide as “ethno-defense,” and to recruit others through repetition and false legitimacy.

Substack, with its low moderation and “let the market decide” ethos, has become fertile ground for accounts like this.

A Line in the Sand

I am not calling for censorship of difficult conversations or for banning criticism of Israel and other issues of contention.

I am calling for platforms to recognize when they are being used, to recognize when the principle of free speech is being hijacked rather than respected.

Does Substack have to decide between being a home for independent thinkers or a haven for haters?

Can it be both?

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