Onward. Forward. Steady.

Things have really changed. Now I need your help.

With this post, I am re-launching Democracy Americana at a new platform called Steady. I am now a full-time independent writer – and I depend on the support of my readers.

In this piece, I am offering a proper explanation for why I left my academic career, why I left the United States, why I left Substack – and what is next for this newsletter and my overall work.

If you want just the main practical information, here it is:

• If you are already subscribed to Democracy Americana, you have been transferred over to the new platform in what should have been a seamless process on your end. But please note that these emails are now coming from a different address, and you can make sure you always receive them by marking this address as ‘not spam.’

• If you want to subscribe for the free version of the newsletter, just enter your email. Please note that Steady will send out an email asking you to confirm your subscription, so that no one else can sign you up without your consent. Pease look for that email in your inbox and confirm!

• You will automatically be asked to create an account on Steady – but if it is just the free version of the newsletter you want, you can skip that.

• If you want to support my work with a paid membership, you will indeed create an account on steady first (super easy, with just your name and country of residence) and then choose between the different membership tiers I offer. They come with a host of additional benefits, all explained below.

• And if you have any problems or questions, please don’t hesitate to email me at newsletter@democracyamericana.com (Opens in a new window)

Most importantly: I really want to keep going. I hope you will join me and make it possible. For your support and your trust, I am grateful.

This is it. With this post, I’m re-launching Democracy Americana at a new platform, away from Substack. And I need your help as I am launching my new career as a full-time independent writer. I am asking you today to support my work by purchasing a paid subscription – or a membership, as it is called on Steady, the platform that now hosts my newsletter.

I am extremely excited this moment has finally come, after many months of preparation and some massive professional and personal changes. But I am also nervous, feeling more anxious than probably ever before in my adult life. As I am writing this, my hands are trembling a little bit. Whether or not I will be able to turn my writing and political commentary into a viable career and continue this work that I feel so passionate about is now up to you, the readers of Democracy Americana.

Or better yet, become a paid member:

I started writing Democracy Americana on November 22, 2022. In the almost three years since, it has always been entirely free. In fact, I didn’t even offer paid subscriptions – mostly because, let’s be frank, I was not allowed to: As a German citizen who lived in the United States on a work visa, I was legally precluded from accepting compensation unless it was my regular salary from my employer, meaning Georgetown University. I wasn’t exactly thrilled about this. But as long as I had a job, and a decent income, I decided it was worth it – if it meant I could engage publicly and offer my perspective on the escalating struggle over American democracy.

But May 31 was my last day at Georgetown – and the last day of my academic career. I am now a full-time writer with no other income but through my public work. I now depend on your support.

I have been fortunate to build Democracy Americana into a sizable publication. This post goes out to almost 20,000 subscribers – and hopefully a lot more people who are not subscribers yet will stumble upon it online. The key challenge is to get enough of you to convert from a free subscription to a paid membership. Such a membership comes with extra benefits that I will outline in more detail below. But the bottom line is this: I am not a salesperson, and I will not pretend that I am selling you a product that you won’t be able to live without. I am asking you for your support, your generosity, and your trust.

I believe the mission of Democracy Ameriana is more important than ever. The idea behind this newsletter is to offer historically informed deep dives into our current political and societal conflict. So much is happening, on so many levels – it often feels overwhelming, almost disorienting. We need to find ways to gain perspective, a sense of the big picture. Democracy Americana seeks to combine historical context and political analysis, with a focus on the United States, but situated within the transnational struggle over the fate of democracy. I really want to keep going. I hope you will join me and make it possible. 

I know there is more important stuff going on right now than the latest personal news. And there is something inherently self-indulgent about writing a piece like this. But as I am now asking you for financial support, I want to be maximally transparent about what’s been going on in my life that has brought me to this place, about what I am asking of you, and about what you can expect from Democracy Americana going forward. So, here is what I want to explain to you: Why I left my academic career; why I left the United States; why I left Substack; and what you will get from Steady, the new home of this newsletter.

(And if you have no time or are not in the mood for the “How we got here” part of the story, feel free to jump straight to the last two sections of this post to get a clear picture of what you can expect from Democracy Americana in the future!)

Leaving academia behind

After 18 years of teaching, and the last 11 years as a full-time professor, my university career ended when my contract at Georgetown University ran out on May 31. For four-and-a-half years I taught international history at Georgetown; before that, I was an assistant professor of contemporary history at Freiburg University in Germany. For complicated reasons that have nothing to do with me or my job performance, my contract at Georgetown was never up for extension or renewal. I can’t really point to the exact moment I decided I wasn’t going to apply for another academic position. But it has been a while since I saw my future in academia.

For most of my adult life, starting with my first semester at university in 2003, I was certain I wanted to become a historian. But I have grown disillusioned with academia. Not with what happens inside the classroom: I have always found teaching to be an immediately rewarding experience. And not with the actual doing research either – that was always my favorite part: the chance to learn, discover, build expertise, gain a better understanding of the world that surrounds us and how we got to be who we are in it.

But the academic job market is a mess. When I became a father, I set certain red lines for myself that I wasn’t going to cross to keep my academic career alive. I have never been tenured or on a tenure track. I couldn’t even tell you exactly how many short-term contracts and appointments I’ve cycled through: I crossed into the double digits many years ago. And that has meant a lot of anxiety, while the system, in return, asks for maximum flexibility and a lot of work with uncertain outcome. If you want to have a shot at becoming a tenured professor at a university, you have to apply for everything, anywhere, seek out whatever might be out there, and follow jobs and positions across the country – or, in my case, even across the Atlantic. At age 43, and as the father of two young children, I am simply no longer willing to do that. I wasn’t going to ask my wife to consider her career, her professional and private aspirations, as somehow secondary. I wasn’t going to uproot my boys several more times, chasing yet more short-term contracts here or fellowships there. We decided that be best option for us as a family was for me to go independent, become a full-time writer, and thereby gain the flexibility to live where my wife’s career would take us and where my kids would have the best possible life growing up.

I realize this may sound like I am mourning my academic career and regretting the choices I had to make. Please don’t take it that way. This is a big caesura for me professionally and biographically, no doubt. But I feel more content with where I am today than I felt for many years in the academy. I have long admired people who believed in what they had to offer, took the leap to independence, and built their own careers around what they really wanted to do. I wasn’t sure if I had that kind of leap in me. Now the circumstances have given me a little push, and I am grateful.

Leaving America

I am launching my career as a full-time writer focused on American history and politics right after we left the United States. We flew out of Washington in early June – having lived almost five years, and six of the past seven years, in our near DC. We were in a privileged situation there, with good jobs; the beautiful house we rented was the only place my kids remember calling home. But life in America was simply no longer tenable for us.

There were many reasons why we decided to move back to Germany, and some had nothing to do with politics at all. But the political situation undoubtedly played a role. Like everyone else with any kind of platform, I have been getting a lot more abuse in response to everything I’ve written or said publicly since January. More importantly, it became clear soon after Trump took power that the First Amendment would simply no longer apply to foreigners in Trumpist America. In late March, Turkish PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk at Tufts University was arrested by masked agents of the state for the “crime” of writing an op-ed in a student newspaper. That was totally fine, Marco Rubio declared (Opens in a new window), because “if you come into the US as a visitor and create a ruckus for us, we don’t want it.” Freedom of speech, the right to assemble, due process – the U.S. constitution explicitly grants these fundamental protections to all people, not just citizens. But no more. Constitutional rights now come with a disclaimer in America: Unless the regime decides otherwise. Not surprising, therefore, that immediately after the murder of Charlie Kirk, the State Department declared (Opens in a new window) it would come after foreigners who were supposedly “praising, rationalizing, or making light of” his death.

The comprehensive assault on free speech we are experiencing now is obviously not just, or even primarily targeting foreigners. But it does affect people differently, as authoritarianism is never distributed evenly. And as a foreign national, I increasingly felt my choice was to either continue to intervene publicly, at the increasing risk of making myself and my family a target; or to fall silent, accommodate, ignore the political reality. Don’t go to protests, don’t add your name to any initiative that defends democracy, don’t publish anything, be careful what you say in the classroom… Unacceptable. Untenable. In that situation, we were in an immensely privileged position: As German citizens, we had an additional choice – we could leave. It is, of course, a choice that is not open to those in the United States directly targeted by the regime, those most vulnerable to MAGA’s aggrieved aggression.

Leaving Substack

Let’s move forward. But not on Substack.

It is well documented that Substack serves as the platform for a whole host of unsavory characters. In late 2023, the work of independent journalist Jonathan Katz (Opens in a new window) uncovered that a bunch of literal, self-identifying Nazis and white supremacist extremists were using Substack to make money off disseminating their violent ideology. Yet Substack’s leadership (Opens in a new window) proved very reluctant to do anything about it, even describing the continued platforming of such ideas and people as a heroic act of defending “free speech.” That never made any sense, as Substack was always in the business of moderating content, of suppressing and prohibiting some forms of speech while actively elevating others. Eventually, they did take some of the extremist accounts down – but left others up (Opens in a new window)… at this point, the most charitable interpretation is that Substack has a rather lax attitude towards hosting hate speech, and a tendency to be actively lenient towards the rightwing extremist scene.

Frankly, I find the politics of the Substack leadership rather abhorrent. And the problem is not just, as Substack defenders will say, a handful of extremist newsletters on the margins. My biggest issue is the fact that Substack insists on actively supporting leading far-right activists and propagandists like Christopher Rufo, Curtis Yarvin, and Richard Hanania – not only platforming, but actively promoting (Opens in a new window) them as important thinkers. Unsurprisingly, Substack has also pushed “The Free Press,” founded by Bari Weiss, one of the most disingenuous reactionary grievance entrepreneurs in the country, to becoming one of the most successful publications on the platform. I think that’s bad. And it doesn’t feel right to contribute to the success of such a platform in any way.

Let me say that I believe people can be a little too quick and casual with their critique of individual writers who publish on Substack. There is no question that Substack works, in the sense that is has made life as an independent writer or journalist viable for a lot of people who otherwise almost certainly would not have had that option. There are wonderful people producing extremely valuable work on Substack. There are academics (Opens in a new window) who have found a broad public audience for their scholarly insight; leftwing intellectuals (Opens in a new window) who offer the most incisive commentary out there; independent journalists (Opens in a new window) who provide invaluable coverage of what is happening around us. These are serious people, with a serious commitment to the democratic struggle.

I’m assuming many of them feel just like I do about the Substack leadership. Why haven’t they left yet? I can’t speak for them, of course. But I will say that if you have built a substantial audience via Substack, and your livelihood depends on it, leaving that behind comes with a risk. Substack is by far the biggest platform out there – the networking effects that it generates are real. For instance: A lot of people are used to paying for newsletters on Substack, they have their payment information already stored, if they stumble upon a new publication, a paid subscription is just one click away. That is just not the case anywhere else.

Look, I don’t want to be defensive about any of this. I just want to be honest. I have, until now, continued to publish my newsletter on Substack. It was always entirely free, so I didn’t make any money for the company, at least not directly. But my presence on Substack inevitably helped legitimize the platform. As I am now asking for your financial support for the first time, I could not justify doing that on Substack. As Philip Bump (Opens in a new window) put it so succinctly in a piece he wrote in late August in which he explained why he was not joining Substack: This is about “building power.” Bump had just left the Washington Post, as all good people have; and it would have been easy for him to generate quite a decent income quickly by launching a newsletter on Substack. But Bump insisted: “There is value in helping institutions that are doing good, important work to build their power” – rather than helping Substack and the Silicon Valley elite behind it build its institutional power.

I will no longer publish on Substack. Democracy Americana will stay up, at least for a transition period, with this post announcing my departure greeting everyone who finds the newsletter there – almost like a forwarding address. But the time has come to move on.

Welcome to Steady!

Enter Steady. Who? Even if you’ve been paying attention to the alternatives that seem to be attracting most Substack defectors, most of you will not have heard of Steady (Opens in a new window). Some of you might think: Does it have to be yet another platform? Can’t we consolidate somewhere? I get it. But Steady, believe me, is pretty cool.

Steady was founded by a group of independent German journalists; it is based in Berlin, but operates with a small, highly international team. Most importantly, it is a privately owned, self-funded business, a real refuge from Silicon Valley venture capitalist domination. And the people who run it have their hearts and their politics in the right place. Two months ago, I didn’t even know Steady existed – they have been pretty successful in Europe but haven’t really penetrated the US market yet. But they rapidly won me over with a level of care, support, and competence that is unlike anything I could have expected anywhere else.

I’m sure you are happy to hear that my experience with Steady has been great – but what about your experience? Everyone who was a subscriber to Democracy Americana on Substack has been transferred over to Steady in what should be a fairly seamless process. If receiving the free version of the newsletter is all you are interested in, there is nothing else you need to do – except this: Since the emails are coming from a different address now, you can make sure you always receive them by marking this address as ‘not spam.’

If you want to support my work, however, I’d like to point your attention to two more things:

First of all, on Steady, paid subscriptions are called “memberships.” I like the idea behind that: The term is supposed to signal that there is more than merely a transactional relationship between the writer and the reader – that this is about supporting the work you deem valuable, that there is a communal aspect to what we are doing here.

Secondly, to become a member, you first have to create a free account on Steady (with just your name, email, and country of residence) – and then choose between the different membership tiers. Just like on Substack, you have the option to do a monthly plan – or get a significant discount for an annual plan (please note that for the annual membership, Steady lists not only what it costs you per year, but also what that means in terms of a per-month breakdown, so that you can directly compare the de facto per-month cost for an annual plan to a monthly plan).

My hope is that I can keep one long-form essay per week free – but that depends on how the ratio between free subscribers and paid members develops.

Those of you who will support me with a membership will have access to additional benefits. I want to offer exclusive posts almost every week – mostly shorter commentary, intended as a diary or record of our extraordinary moment. This is something I have been wanting to add for a long time: A “For the Record,” basically. Additionally, all members will get access to the audio versions of the posts (which free subscribers can only access directly in the email or on the website) in podcast form, via an RSS feed that enables you to get the audio version in the podcast player of your choice or via a premium Spotify feed. Finally, members will be able to discuss all the posts with me and other readers in the comment section. That is something I have never had the time to do so far: Properly engage with my readers’ comments, critique, and suggestions. Those benefits are all available in the “Democracy Supporters” tier. If you are feeling especially generous and consider a “Democracy Ambassador” tier membership, you will get all that – plus two free “Ambassador” passes that you can share with / gift to whoever you think might benefit from reading Democracy Americana.

What I am asking of you

Does that package mean a Democracy Americana membership is “worth” the cost? Honestly, I find it impossible to answer that question. Purely in transactional terms, who am I to make that assessment for you? The calculus will be different for people, depending on their own situations. Some may only occasionally open the emails; others may have been reading Democracy Americana for free for years, creating a totally different value proposition.

I genuinely know I am asking a lot of you. We are all dealing with an increasingly fragmented media landscape – I know exactly what it feels like to be trying to keep an overview over what newsletter subscriptions I have, where I can read my favorite writers, who is moving from this platform to that… I can only be honest with you: I am asking for your support – because your support is the only thing that will allow me to keep going. As in individual writer with no big company or platform behind me, no third-party funding, I can’t calculate membership prices that only work if I attract a mass audience. Because I won’t attract a mass audience. But I believe I have a committed readership. And I hope I can convince you to take the leap and convert to a paid membership.

What I am promising

I want to end on a promise. There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding this jump into independence. I expect it will be a while before it feels like I have firm ground beneath my feet again. I am sure there will be mistakes. There will be technical glitches. There will be trial and error. But at the core of it all, I do feel confident about my work. Because I am not trying to sell you on an unproven idea or the concepts of a plan. My main promise is that I will continue the work I have been doing with this newsletter for almost three years. I want to do more of it, more regularly. But if you feel unsure whether my work is worth your endorsement and your support, I invite you to stroll through the archive of long-form essays I have published on Democracy Americana so far: 90 pieces, ranging from 2,000 to, more often, around 5,000 words – proper deep dives into what I believe are the crucial issues that define the political and societal struggle. For better or worse, that is my track record.

This post got a lot longer than I initially anticipated – I thank you for your patience and for indulging me. It’s time to get back to work. I believe this is the most dangerous, most precarious moment since Trump came down the golden escalator in 2015, and we need to grapple with that honestly. At the same time, we must not perpetuate the Trumpists’ assertions of strength and dominance. The gap between their authoritarian aspirations and the reality of American society remains vast. That’s where politics continues, that’s where the counter happens.

With your help: Onward. Forward.