Why I have a Substack, and Why I Don’t

First, let’s introduce ourselves. My name is Fr Joseph Suaidan. I’ve been reporting on the various True Orthodox Churches throughout the world (I’ve slowed down a bit for reasons I can explain) and the pan-heresy of ecumenism since 2004 (our 20th anniversary for going live on Blogspot in August). That website can be found here. More recently, we’ve been growing our YouTube channel with roughly weekly to twice-weekly shows and call-ins.

So why am I on Substack? Well, having worked in a rather niche alternative space for years, I’ve seen the power of censorship firsthand. Our site has been DDOS’ed multiple times over the years. We’ve had non-stop attacks from people working for religious establishments (and ultimately political ones as well). We (myself and people who have worked with NFTU over the years) were already familiar with censorship, but simply considered it the price of doing business.

Until 2016. And then COVID in 2019. And then the whole thing blowing up in 2020. We all know about how crazed and despotic the Western establishment and its sycophants in legacy media and socials are. Suddenly the pan-heresy of ecumenism and modernism were underpinning a larger, more totalitarian, and if possible, even more evil design: the creation by a group of deluded rich people of a unified, technocratic future where they can pretend to live forever (and most of us are dead). Can’t see the connection between the Orthodox ecumenists and technocratic globalism? Allow. Me. To. Help. You.

Thanks to Substack, I’ve been exposed to a large swath of “outsider” media figures (*incumbent* media is perhaps a better term) who have a better understanding of the “real world” and how world leaders are helping make life worse for everyone. This platform is smooth, easy to use for people who aren’t big on building their own website and tweaking it, and easily building a subscriber base on social media with it, as opposed to my twenty year old niche website (which has its own monetization platform channels). I have old and new favorites I follow, with a very long list. But I do comment here and this made me realize I can reach people that I’d like to discuss niche issues with on my niche channel where there is potentially a lot more to say).

Without a Substack, I’m not really sure how to reach them. So this solves that problem. As for me, I do need to get back to writing articles besides simply doing shows. So that’s why this article is also on NFTU.