Moving Day

When I started this newsletter in the fall of 2022, I was fairly transparent about my goals. Rather than continue to pitch sluggish and non-paying journals, I wanted a place to test ideas and write more responsively. And if a generous core readership happened to be interested in contributing something to the cause of my subsistence, all the better. Writing is a lot of work, which nobody asked for, and I’m truly happy that it’s found a few of you along the way.

I’m sending this email to update you on my plans for this space. Starting this week, I’ve decided to migrate this newsletter to a new home, at www.recent-songs.com. My reasons are several; but let me say straightaway that for you, the subscriber, nothing will change. You will continue to receive the newsletter to your inbox as before; you will enjoy access to the same content, depending on whether your subscription is free or paid. The newsletter is now powered by Ghost, which uses the same billing service as Substack, and everything ought to continue uninterrupted. If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to me directly.

Now to the reasons for this shift. It took me some time to find my footing with this format, in tone and topic alike. And while I realize that the newsletter is starting to look like an obituary column in light of endless bad news—RIP Damo Suzuki—I’m happy with the overall direction and want to focus on growing this project over the next year. There are a lot of things I’d like to write about in this medium, and if you’re still interested, the best thing that you can do to help me achieve this goal is to share and recommend this writing as it finds you. Maintaining my own domain means extra expense, so if you’re digging what I’m doing here, feel free to tell somebody.

Before pouring more work into the newsletter, however, I had to take stock of the pros and cons of continuing here. I like Substack: I find it to be user-friendly and legible. I’ve experienced community with interesting people on this site, and of course I’ll continue to read their work and be in touch. This page and what I’ve done so far will remain. But everybody here knows of the growing exodus, of both writers and readers, as Substack not only refuses to vet far-right content but courts and supports some truly repellent characters. Damon Krukowski would likely be the most sensible voice of concern among those who have stayed, and I’d recommend him on the topic.

Now, the most disturbing corners of Substack are only an online microcosm of a rapidly fascisizing society. X, formerly Twitter, is also overrun with would-be race scientists and obsequious Elon-ites. There isn’t any space online where the far-right isn’t amply represented. But on Substack, the fuckers make bank; that’s the business model. That said, the company has entered damage control mode, and has even removed several publications for “inciting violence” in the last month. This move follows the publication of a high-profile open letter from several hundred Substack authors, concerned with what Jonathan Katz has called the platform’s “Nazi problem.”

Regarding this letter, I want to add a point of qualification. Its signatories include writers whose politics I would also characterize as unconscionable; who themselves publish neo-Nazi apologia so long as it concerns NATO’s proxy militias; writers who openly cheer the genocide in Gaza; and so on. Surely neo-Nazis should be chased off of this platform, and from anywhere they gather. But there are lots of leering fascists on Substack who hold themselves apart from its contaminating culture, and the last straw for me arrives in an only apparently more respectable guise.

Substack has an equally compelling transphobia problem, and many of its best-read newsletters are from disgraced contrarians waging relentless war on queer and trans youth; bilious “truth-tellers” who have cultivated large, and lucrative, followings from their knee-jerk vendetta. Social killers who insist on staging endless referenda on the basic rights of trans people to healthcare and to public space. If we’re making historical analogies to Nazism, let’s not forget these creeps.

Once more, hatred proliferates on any platform; my friends here have no truck with it, I know. But when I saw what Substack’s own “Culture” tab was peddling to me yesterday, I reached a personal limit. Every corner of the internet is similarly beset; but I need to find a place to share my writing where it will never be cross-referenced with the projects of my lifelong enemies.

So we’re moving house. I’m sure you’ll understand; and if you keep writing here yourself, I’m equally sure that you’ll keep standing up to the losers and hacks as you encounter them. But after this week, you can find my content, and the archive, at www.recent-songs.com. Thank you again for your continued support.