What are your favorite substacks? I can’t say I’ve much explored the field or even know how to beyond the basic use of the Substack search engines, although I have become a regular reader, as we’ll discuss below, of a constellation of important “vax-harm” stacks.
I’m sure there are some good conservative-leaning academic-ish stacks that have at least that much in kinship with PostModernConservative, but I’m just ignorant of them.
Two good ones that I do know of in that category are:
1.) The Postliberal Order. Patrick Deneen, Chad Pecknold, and Gladden Pippin usually provide fine essays here, and while there is another academic who writes for them who I honestly think has been overrated, and flat-out irresponsible when it comes to American constitutional issues, he at least has the good taste and sense in a recent post to celebrate the contemporary Polish political philosopher Ryszard Legutko. Give them a visit.
2.) Then Again. This is the stack by Lee Trepanier, a political philosophy scholar who’s a tireless advocate for literature and film studies in political science. Short book reviews, and particularly of classics-field books that should known by more Strauss-influenced scholars, are the main attraction. Trepanier also has an essay series on liberal education.
There must be others y’all know about! Please school me in the comments. (And do know that self-promoting information is entirely welcome!)
And don’t take this for granted. Please consider supporting PostModernConservative, and Substack more generally. Substack has bravely enabled free speech and open inquiry in a time of despotism-mainstreaming, and we need to thank them with our sharing and subscribing. There is some info out there you can find, and I suspect much more that was never reported, about how, earlier this year, they resisted high-level behind-the-scenes pressure to de-platform a number of their more controversial stacks, particularly those written by lockdown-opponents and vax-harm dissidents. As the Sly and Family Stone song put it, they decided to Stand, and thus to remain true to themselves.
PostModernConservative is a multi-topic stack, focusing on 1) conservative culture-criticism, especially regarding film, but with an occasional Carl’s Rock Songbook post in there also, 2) conservatism from a political science and Strauss-influenced perspective, 3) constitutional issues now and then, 4) general humanities and political philosophy, 5) the world-wide threat of new forms of despotism, 6) what I label the “Covid/Vax Disaster,” 7) occasional literary or theological reflections, and 8) random politics of the day. A few topics that seem to come up for us a lot, crossing the above categories, are totalitarianism, manliness, the concerns of younger conservatives, and the legacy of Peter Augustine Lawler.
Back in March, I provided a list of what I thought were the best Vax-Harm substacks. You can touch back upon that to better understand my categories in assembling that, and my motivation, but here I will update it, this time ranking them from most important on down. One of the writers has stepped aside for a bit, so she’s off the list, and some of the newer others are ones I’ve just become more aware of since March. I won’t comment as much this time around, so maybe go back and see how I recommended them in March.
1.) Steve Kirsch. The best bumper-sticker for the entire vax-harm cause would be: “The Vax-Harms Are Real: Read Steve Kirsch!” He’s essential.
2.) Sage Hana. Next to Kirsch’s stack, the “central station” of the vax-harm stacks. Razor-sharp, constantly floating useful new ways of thinking, does the useful task of highlighting differences of opinion between the various vax-harm writers, a very regular poster, and she stirs a lively comment section, or will wade into things over at Kirsch’s or other stacks. She’s developed her own shorthand vocabulary to address various Covid/Vax Disaster issues, such as “whales & guppies” and “dolts botching shit,” which I’ll leave it to you to figure out. Especially sharp on the dynamics of commentator self-positioning within, and on the reluctant edges of, the vax-harm community. The only downside is that she recently revealed she believes there has been a Deep State in de facto charge of the U.S. govt. since the days of Ike and JFK(whom she believes it murdered, of course). That makes her much more open to grand conspiracy explanations of the Covid/Vax disaster, all of which people like myself (and Kirsch) tend to question. (I’m more a believer in lesser-conspiracies at work in this Disaster, and at times at cross-purposes.) But despite such premises, she remains rather intellectually supple.
3.) Igor Chudov
4.) Robert Malone
5.) Margaret Anna Alice. “MAA” is important, because alongside writers like Mattias Desmet and C.J. Hopkins, her work is forcing us to realize that totalitarian methods and patterns are central to this whole Disaster. I think she and the related writers will eventually prod a rethinking in political science and history of the concept of totalitarianism—see the second half of my post on Morrissey’s album being suppressed for my own tentative steps in that direction, where I muse about “partial totalitarianism” as a concept that might capture what’s been happening to our liberal democracies. MAA’s link-rich posts are not everyone’s style—they stretch you, they take time to explore, but again, she’s one to watch.
6.) Chris Bray. More than most here, he expands beyond Covid/Vax Disaster topics from time to time. I’d say a good third of his posts are gold, very thought-provoking.
7.) Alex Berenson
8.) Eugyppius
9.) Midwestern Doctor. Solid consistently, and now and then he gives us posts which organize large sets of “anecdotal evidence” as no-one else can.
10.) Naked Emperor
11.) Unacceptable Jessica
12.) Colleen Huber
13.) Bad Cattitude
14.) Emerald Robinson. Sort of like yours truly, Emerald writes on Covid/Vax Disaster issues only around a 4th or 5th of the time—the rest of what she does is hard-hitting populist-conservative commentary on the politics of the day.
It’s impossible to keep up with or digest all of these—I do my best with 1-6, and drop in from time to time on the others. I actually don’t know 10-14 all that well, but notice they get linked to by many other stacks, and have usually found high-quality posts when I do visit.
But regardless of whether you’re interested in vax-harm stacks or not, do let us know about your favorite stacks in the comments.
What Are Your Favorite Substacks?
MCM
all of yours are very good. some of my favorites:
tessa lena: russian expat, big picture from 5k feet, one of the smartest of the bunch and funny as hell. mostly writes about great reset and plandemic tessa.substack.com
2nd smartest guy in the world: news aggregator, very sharp, conservative, nails it every time
https://2ndsmartestguyintheworld.substack.com/
mark crispin miller - the best email news feed on the web imo. he's probably the world's foremost expert on propaganda. originally on the left and now politically marooned https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/
katherine watt: she's done the deepest dive into the political agenda behind the plandemic than anyone else and has vast receipts. https://bailiwicknews.substack.com/
mathew aldred has also done incredible research on both the political and medical side
https://mathewaldred.substack.com/
dr. paul alexander - was one of trump's covid advisers but forced out by big pharma interests. very poetic and funny and prolific - he kind of uses substack like twitter https://palexander.substack.com/