You’ll no doubt hear quite a bit about the trial of Douglass Mackey from all the usual types who want to use it to once again drive a wedge into our discourse. This is all so trite, this is all so toxic. Here we go again, I suppose. But must we always go there?
I no longer watch television but I understand that Tucker Carlson has claimed — implausibly enough—that Mackey is a “conservative journalist” and sure enough Pedro Gonzalez has seized on Mackey’s case and made him a cause célèbre.
Now in the spirit of full disclosure Clearview.AI — the facial recognition company I cofounded — hired Mackey to work for them. It wasn’t my decision. It was Hoan Ton-That’s. I would have opposed hiring Mackey until he got some real mental health help. Alas he didn’t. Last I had heard he had moved from Manhattan to West Palm Beach to get some sunshine and to break away from the vile persona he had created in cyberspace. He couldn’t do it because he wasn’t allowed to. Perhaps he shouldn’t hav been. I don’t really know.
I knew Mackey very barely — I don’t go in for being rude or hateful notwithstanding what you might have read — and I don’t believe in being anonymous. I think it’s the duty of men to stand up and be counted and, yes, if necessary, dispatched. The views I have I hold publicly — for better and often for worse. As I have gotten older I have chosen — and it is a choice — to lead a more compassionate life even if it costs me mine.
The truth of the matter is that Douglass Mackey aka Ricky Vaughan was a deeply unwell young man whose addiction to the Internet and fame led him to make some poor choices that ultimately led to his arrest by federal authorities.
Believe me there are always a number of people who will help you ruin yourself. Some of them are even your friends.
Some of them will do it because they serve a foreign government that seeks to make our collective life terrible. Others will do it because its fun for them. Some people ruin lives as a sort of hobby — a recreational cruelty I have observed but never understood. I have always given my opponents the opportunity of a dignified surrender though I confess this is more for their children and mine than it is for them.
Do I think this treatment of Mackey is fair? Of course not but not for the reasons that the MAGA-types might think.
While not a clinical psychologist I judge Douglass Mackey to be very unwell. Protected by his anonymity he lived a wild double life. The demur gentle weird man in front of me was not the Rickey Vaughn persona who delighted in Nazi memes or race hatred. When I asked him about that double life he had nothing for me. A true Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde right before me.
Many of us labor under mental health strains of one form or another—and that is precisely the fertile ground through which foreign actors operate. We’ve seen this with Q Anon and I believe we’ve seen this sort of thing with online influencer culture generally.
We’ve also seen it with Team Jorge where Israelis have essentially manipulated public discourse in multiple countries.
It strains credulity that such efforts would not have taken place in 2016 election.
This doesn’t excuse Mackey’s behavior but it does inform it. Recent events have shown us that foreign actors seek to use our mental ill and weaponize them against us. Was Mackey one such? I suspect he was. I do know that Mackey was speaking with foreign-affiliated individuals during the 2016 election but what could have been done about it I don’t know.
Mackey’s pedigree was the sort of thing that would make anyone blush and feeds pathologies that there is beating in the heart of every WASPish Vermonter a lurking hater stewing and seething. Naturally when his identity was revealed Mackey’s parents issued a statement that I suspect a lot of parents might issue in our age of radicalization.
We were devastated to learn this week of Doug's beliefs and online activities as reported in the Huffington Post," his parents, Scott and Kathy Mackey, said in a statement shared with the Burlington Free Press. "They are antithetical to the values we hold and with which he was raised.
"We are still trying to understand how he could have done something like this," his parents' statement continued, "and hope he will find some way to make amends for the harm he has caused."
Until recently Mackey had been represented by Tor Ekeland who now has his own travails with American law enforcement and who is representing NSO Group, the Israeli spyware firm in Morocco court. (Here I did mess up and recommended that Ekeland represent Clearview. Ekeland did, indeed, work for Clearview — albeit briefly and before he went to work for NSO Group.)
That Mackey appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce E. Reinhart of the Southern District of Florida is, I think, an important thing to note. Reinhart is the judge they bring in for matters of national security. It’s hard to quibble with this assessment from the website announcing Mackey’s indictment:
“According to the allegations in the complaint, the defendant exploited a social media platform to infringe one the of most basic and sacred rights guaranteed by the Constitution: the right to vote,” said Nicholas L. McQuaid, Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “This complaint underscores the department’s commitment to investigating and prosecuting those who would undermine citizens’ voting rights.”
“There is no place in public discourse for lies and misinformation to defraud citizens of their right to vote,” said Seth D. DuCharme, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. “With Mackey’s arrest, we serve notice that those who would subvert the democratic process in this manner cannot rely on the cloak of Internet anonymity to evade responsibility for their crimes. They will be investigated, caught and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
“Protecting every American citizen’s right to cast a legitimate vote is a key to the success of our republic,” said William F. Sweeney Jr., Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s New York Field Office. “What Mackey allegedly did to interfere with this process – by soliciting voters to cast their ballots via text – amounted to nothing short of vote theft. It is illegal behavior and contributes to the erosion of the public’s trust in our electoral processes. He may have been a powerful social media influencer at the time, but a quick Internet search of his name today will reveal an entirely different story.”
Like so many people it seems as if Mackey threw his life away for politics.
Were I Mackey I’d beg for mercy — and I’d turn states evidence against his foreign handlers. I doubt very much that he made the meme or that the support for him online is entirely organic. I suspect he could, if he wanted, undermine the whole edifice of foreign-controlled influencer culture on the American right.
Thank God I never was Mackey but if I squint in the mirror I can see myself in a weaker, darker time. I never want to see my reflection again.
Let’s do what we can. Let’s identify the people who are susceptible to mental health issues. Let’s keep the foreigners out of their phones and let’s give them the treatment and care and yes, love, that they need.