<nettime> The Rest Is Substack: Mehdi Hasan, Zeteo and the Parallel Establishment

[Gary Hall via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Recently watched a February 2025 interview on the BBC’s /Media Show/
<https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00dv9hq> with Mehdi Hasan, the
journalist behind Zeteo <https://zeteo.com/>. He’s using Substack and
paid subscriptions to build a left-leaning media company (complete with
branded hoodies <https://shop.zeteo.com/>) as an alternative to legacy
outlets such as the BBC. Naomi Klein, Owen Jones and Cynthia Nixon are
already involved in delivering content.

I'm not uncritical of Substack
<http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/masked-media/>, or
unaware of how it works. Still, at first glance, I could see the appeal.
OK, Zeteo is largely opinion-driven - because, as we know, these
platforms require a constant stream of (ideally clippable) content to
keep engagement high. And it’s much easier to do that on a regular basis
if you're offering 'hot takes'. (Yes, Gary Lineker's The Rest Is ...
podcast empire, we're  looking at you.) And, indeed, a lot of the
material on Zeteo does come across as filmed podcasts and Zoom calls.
Podcasts and Zoom calls with high production values maybe, but podcasts
and Zoom calls nonetheless.

However, I can understand why liberal-left journalists might be drawn to
Substack, and to Zeteo - especially given what's going on at the likes
of the BBC <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0m07g49004o>,
/Washington Post
<https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/washington-post-editor-ruth-marcus-resigns-accusing-ceo-killing-column-rcna195634>
/and /Guardian/
<https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/guardian-the-observer-sale-tortoise-media-carole-cadwalladr-b1201584.html>
right now. (/The Observer’s/ John Naughton can’t go a week without
recommending something from a Substack newsletter in his Networker tech
column - usually by a man. What's that about?) So I got intrigued.

But before even more of us rush out to join Substack, let me say that
lasted all of about five minutes.

Then I came across this piece
<https://america2.news/the-substack-dilemma-how-creators-are-inadvertently-fueling-americas-failure/>
from a few days ago on /America 2.0/, which delves deeper into the
politics of Substack. It highlights how the platform isn’t just a
neutral tool for independent journalism - it’s also a key pillar of what
Marc Andressen, Balaji Srinivasan and other advocates of the 'Network
State' call the 'parallel establishment'.

At the inaugural /Network State/ conference in Amsterdam
<https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJg2RipiXz8r9TjC58vujj1gs0rl99GgN>
in October 2023, Srinivasan laid out a vision in which Silicon Valley
elites replace existing legacy institutions with their own alternatives:

So for example, at the top there's San Francisco and we're replacing San
Francisco with things outside it like Cul-de-Sac in Arizona and Prospera
in South America and Cabin, which is in Texas, but also around the world...

We're gonna take out Harvard, and we have parallel education that's
Replit, that Synthesis ... but it's also AI tutoring, the Thiel
Fellowship, Emergent Ventures....

We replace media with parallel media. It’s Twitter and X, it’s Substack.
... This concept of the parallel establishment, if you take up all of
these new institutional replacements on the right-hand side together,
that’s a parallel establishment.

The goal? Pretty much what we're seeing unfold in the US right now.
Disrupt and dismantle societies and their institutions - governments and
government departments, universities, the courts, the press, even cities
- and replace them with decentralized, corporate-backed alternatives
that function as competing fiefdoms. Substack, in this framework, isn’t
just an outlet for independent journalism; it’s part of a broader push
to erode traditional public institutions in favor of privatized,
libertarian tech enclaves.

So, just in case anyone is tempted, while Substack and Zeteo may seem
like promising alternatives to legacy media, you know ... best to keep
in mind their place in the bigger picture.

Gary


--
Gary Hall
Professor of Media
Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University:
https://postdigitalcultures.org/about/

Director of Open Humanities Press:http://www.openhumanitiespress.org
Websitehttp://www.garyhall.info


Latest:

Book: Masked Media: What It Means to Be Human in the Age of Artificial Creative Intelligence:http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/masked-media/

Blog posts: 'Making it Unfair, or Who Owns Creativity? AI, Copyright and the Battle for Wealth and Control',http://garyhall.squarespace.com/journal/2025/2/25/making-it-unfair-or-who-owns-creativity-ai-copyright-and-the.html





















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