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The Fight For Anonymity: How to help Douglass Mackey and Preserve Free Speech
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2023 Mar 13, 5:41pm 87 views 0 comments
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The Fight For Anonymity: How to help Douglass Mackey and Preserve Free Speech
A critical juncture for free speech in the United States.
Paulos
11 hr ago
31
16
Good morning. Today I depart from my usual fiction and cultural analysis to bring something important to your attention.
Douglass Mackey is the man behind the influential Twitter account “Ricky Vaughn.” In 2021 he was charged by the DOJ with election interference for posting satirical memes on Twitter. His trial begins today, March 13, 2023. He faces up to ten years in prison. If you have not been following the case, you can read more about it here.
Under the pseudonym Ricky Vaughn, Mr. Mackey, at his peak during the 2016, had more influence than NBC, CNN, and the Colbert Report. He reached and energized millions. He had a talent for making politicians look foolish and for eviscerating journalists. President Trump was elected in part because of the groundswell he helped mobilize.
In 2018 he was doxxed and afterwards went to go live a quiet life in Florida away from the spotlight.
In 2021, mere days after Biden took office, Mr. Mackey was charged with election interference and arrested by the FBI.
He is accused of committing a crime for posting on Twitter. The DOJ alleges that he engaged in conspiracy to defraud people of their voting rights by posting satirical memes of the kind that are common around election-time. Specifically, he circulated images which suggested that one could vote by texting the word “Hillary” to a phone number, a mechanism so patently ridiculous that it couldn’t be taken at face value.
Myth Pilot
Subscribe
The Fight For Anonymity: How to help Douglass Mackey and Preserve Free Speech
A critical juncture for free speech in the United States.
Paulos
11 hr ago
31
16
Good morning. Today I depart from my usual fiction and cultural analysis to bring something important to your attention.
Douglass Mackey is the man behind the influential Twitter account “Ricky Vaughn.” In 2021 he was charged by the DOJ with election interference for posting satirical memes on Twitter. His trial begins today, March 13, 2023. He faces up to ten years in prison. If you have not been following the case, you can read more about it here.
Under the pseudonym Ricky Vaughn, Mr. Mackey, at his peak during the 2016, had more influence than NBC, CNN, and the Colbert Report. He reached and energized millions. He had a talent for making politicians look foolish and for eviscerating journalists. President Trump was elected in part because of the groundswell he helped mobilize.
In 2018 he was doxxed and afterwards went to go live a quiet life in Florida away from the spotlight.
In 2021, mere days after Biden took office, Mr. Mackey was charged with election interference and arrested by the FBI.
He is accused of committing a crime for posting on Twitter. The DOJ alleges that he engaged in conspiracy to defraud people of their voting rights by posting satirical memes of the kind that are common around election-time. Specifically, he circulated images which suggested that one could vote by texting the word “Hillary” to a phone number, a mechanism so patently ridiculous that it couldn’t be taken at face value.
An example of a of another satirical tweet telling Republicans to ‘skip the lines’ and ‘vote on Wednesday’ posted the morning of the 2016 election:
Twitter avatar for @mskristinawong
Kristina Wong ❄️
@mskristinawong
Hey 🇺🇸Trump Supporters🇺🇸! Skip poll lines at #Election2016 and TEXT in your vote! Text votes are legit. Or vote tomorrow on Super Wednesday!
2:38 PM ∙ Nov 8, 2016
962
Likes
565
Retweets
Mr. Mackey is being charged under 18 U.S.C. § 241, a 100-year old law written to prosecute the KKK for violence that has never been extended before to speech, especially speech in a public forum. This has chilling implications. The U.S. government is now in the business of deciding what's a lie or what's satire. As the eminent First Amendment scholar Eugene Volokh explains, there is no limit to how this law could be applied.
U.S.C. § 241 is also not limited to elections, it extends to anyone who 'conspires to deprive someone of their rights.' This means, under this new interpretation, that if you shared statistics about trans surgery regret, or COVID, or climate change, for example, in an effort to get a local school to disinvite a public speaker, and law enforcement decided that you lied or knowingly spread "false information," in order to deprive someone of their rights, you could be charged under the new interpretation of this law.
In short, the Biden DOJ is pulling out all the stops in an effort to crush a private citizen because he embarrassed them and helped President Trump get elected in 2016. This has implications for every American citizen. If this precedent is established, Federal law enforcement will be able to drag anyone to court based on an ill-defined and standard with unlimited scope. That’s basically game over for free speech.
How to Help
Donations
You can donate to Douglass Mackey’s legal defense using the link below. You can use popular donation platforms, send checks, donate crypto, or make a tax-deductible charitable donation. Raising funds is important because the DOJ has unlimited resources. A feature of legal battles in today’s America is that “the process is part of the punishment,” and even mounting a basic defense imposes ruinous costs on those involved. Please give generously.
https://mythpilot.substack.com/p/the-fight-for-anonymity-how-to-help