Substack's CEO Sure Is Cozy With The Far Right
Chris Best is the co-founder and CEO of writing platform Substack. When tech journalist Nilay Patel interviewed him for the Verge in 2023, he refused to say whether a post that says "all brown people are animals and they shouldn’t be allowed in America" would be banned from his platform. He similarly refused to answer as to whether he would be okay with Substack being overrun by racism and transphobia.
So if Substack Notes becomes overrun by racism and transphobia, that’s fine with you?
We’re going to have to work very hard to make Substack Notes be a great place to have the readers and the writers be in charge, where you can have the kinds of conversations that you find valuable. That’s the exciting challenge that we have ahead of us.
However, Mr. Best is a reader himself and the Substack blogs he reads are public. As of 1/20/25, his Reads page includes:
- Scott Alexander[1], who has admitted to believing in "human biodiversity" race science theories in leaked emails
- Balaji Srinivasan, technocratic investor who wants purge San Francisco of liberal "Blues"
- Anti-transgender journalist Jesse Singal, who is included in GLAAD's Accountability Project that documents anti-LGBTQ rhetoric
- Bari Weiss's right wing The Free Press outlet, which constantly posts pro-Trump and anti-transcontent. More on this below
- Razib Khan, who was previously dropped by the NYT for his past racist writings
- Richard Hanania, whose past[2] alt-right writing career was exposed by The Huffington Post. Chris Best also follows Hanania's Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology
- TRIGGERnometry, a right-wing podcast that has repeatedly broadcasted anti-trans opinions
- Bryan Caplan, libertarian writer who has described Nayib Bukele's mass incarcerations as "morally acceptable" on his Substack
- Azoria, an anti-DEI investment fund run by James T Fishback that pledges not to invest in any company with hiring targets for diversity
- Anti-transgender activist Christopher Rufo, who has promoted the LGBT grooming conspiracy
- Writer Crémieux Receuil who I have recently unmasked as race scientist Jordan Lasker. A more comprehensive exposé of him is in the works
- Emil Kirkegaard, eugenicist race scientist and collaborator to Jordan Lasker
- Marc Andreessen, famous venture capitalist who praised Italian fascist FT Marinetti in his "Techno-Optimist Manifesto". Andreessen's blog is also officially [recome]
- Gwern, an AI writer who hosts many discredited papers on intelligence by infamous race scientist Richard Lynn
- GrowSF, an anti-progressive political group in San Francisco with ties to many wealthy tech benefactors, including effective accelerationist[3] Garry Tan
That's a whole lot of racists and transphobes![4] Apparently, when the "reader in charge" is Substack's CEO, this is the type of content being read.
Substack & Aporia
The above reading list was rebuilt following a purge in 2024. A previous version of his list I saw back in September 2023 also included Aporia, an outlet that promotes eugenics through articles like "How to solve demographic collapse" and "Embryo selection: Towards a better society". At the time, Aporia's stated goal was to "widen the Overton window", but Aporia was known as Ideas Sleep Furiously before their 2023 rebrand. In October 2022, it was featured on Substack's homepage; at the time, their own homepage endorsed Emil Kirkegaard and was promoting an upcoming interview with eugenicist couple Simone & Malcolm Collins.
Being a Featured Publication was bragged about in ISF's "Editor's Letter" that December, in which founding editor Matthew Archer also stated that the West is in "cultural decline" and elaborated on ISF/Aporia's motto:
Hence our motto: Ideas for a future worth wanting.
That future is a common sense one only true radicals would disagree with, say green anarchists or Jihadists. We want technology that enables us to protect our planet, cure disease, and colonise the galaxy. And we want proud, non-self-flagellating cultures that seriously appreciate how rare, beautiful, and, indeed, imperfect Western civilisation in particular is.
It's unclear to me how Substack's management found out about this pro-eugenics outlet way back in 2022 or why they thought it was a good idea to feature it. 🤔
Substack & The Free Press
Substack officially partnered with The Free Press at the end of 2024 to launch its new enterprise tier. The announcement of this partnership praised The Free Press's reporting:
We view The Free Press as an ideal partner for this initiative because of its longstanding presence on Substack, which extends back to its founding in early 2021, and because of its commitment to pursuing high-integrity journalism. The Free Press is old school in the best way, with meticulous editorial standards that it upholds through in-depth reporting, fact-checking, editing, original photography, and more
Besides presenting an obviously far right bias, The Free Press was most recently known for getting an exclusive preview of Donald Trump's recent executive order against "gender ideology" directly from the administration.
Brian Chau
Mr. Best recently decided to do an interview with Brain Chau. Immediately after his interview with Chris Best, Chau posted interviews with Richard Hanania and Razib Khan.
Chau also leads the Alliance for the Future, an explicitly effective accelerationist (e/acc) enterprise whose manifesto cites Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel. Its board members include:
- Guillaume "Beff Jezos" Verdon, founder of the effective acceleration movement
- AI developer Perry Metzger, who has stated "I'm with e/acc" because of "freedom, immortality, and the stars"
- Jon Askonas, who also serves as a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation. FAI was one of the sponsors of Project 2025.
In conclusion, Substack and its CEO have:
- Refused to ban racists and transphobes from his platform
- Personally reads several racists and transphobes on his platform
- Promoted a racist Substack to the front page well before it was popular
- Officially partnered with a right wing news outlet that has direct contact with the Donald Trump administration
Not a great look, but perhaps not an unexpected on given the political climate. At this point I'm not sure if Substack is run by a cryptofascist or just a regular fascist.
"Siskind" is Scott Alexander's legal last name. This was revealed in a New York Times article about ties between Silicon Valley and the neoreactionary movement, including Alexander's continuing platforming of reactionaries such as Nick Land and Charles Murray. In response to the investigation, Balaji Snrinivasan mused that "it may be interesting to sic the Dark Enlightenment audience on a single vulnerable hostile reporter to dox them". ↩︎
Despite his claims otherwise, Hanania has not indicated he's changed any of his views. For example, he recently interviewed Richard Kauffmann, a self-identified "liberal national conservative" who recently wrote a book decrying the threat of "cultural socialism". This phrase is almost identical to the far right, antisemitic "cultural Marxsm" conspiracy theory. ↩︎
Effective accelerationism (e/acc) is a libertarian-adjacent ideology that draws from the neoreaction movement of the 2010's (also known as the "Dark Enlightenment") and the writings of Nick Land. It argues for more technological progress (AI in particular), regardless of any potential consequences for humanity or the climate. For more information, please listen to this episode of the Tech Won't Save Us podcast featuring Émile P. Torres. ↩︎
This isn't cherry-picking; many other accounts with similar politics were omitted in the interest of brevity. Mr. Best does not follow a similar amount of progressive or liberal writers. ↩︎