Dissident Spotlight: Alexander McDougall
Alexander McDougall was briefly imprisoned for his anti-British broadsides. The way he was discovered is a lesson for modern dissidents.
In the leadup to the American Revolution, one of the best ways for political dissidents to distribute their ideas was a broadside. Broadsides were short one-page attacks that could be printed quickly and in large quantities with the technology of the time.
The printers made it possible for Alexander McDougall to write his anonymous broadside The Betrayed Inhabitants of the City and Colony of New York. It argued against the legislature’s recent decision to increase funding for British troops and was followed up with a second broadside with the same complaints.
McDougall signed the first “A Son of Liberty” and the second “legion.” According to Mark Kurlansky’s book Paper, “a worker in a print shop revealed that his boss, Alexander McDougall, known for his radical views, was the printer [of the broadside] and McDougall was taken to court.” He refused to admit whether he authored the two broadsides and served prison time for “high contempt.”
McDougall became the inspiration for many more anti-British broadsides after his arrest and imprisonment, and he remains a useful case study for dissidents today.
Technology and Chains of People Matter
McDougall served five months in prison and later became a general in the Revolutionary Army. With modern technology, many modern dissidents face harsher sentences and bleaker futures.
While some people tout social media platforms as free speech havens, organized groups can weaponize them to make a story trend and make it appear true. Anne Applebaum’s book Autocracy Inc. describes how Zimbabwe’s government launched a smear campaign against a human rights advocate who rose to prominence through social media. After he had to flee the country, the government’s smear campaign became even more effective, discrediting the human rights activist with his own tool.
Social media sites also face the challenge of anonymous profiles. While anonymity is a boon for trolls, it’s also a useful tool for dissidents in countries where being attached to an unapproved thought can be a death sentence. Social media sites haven’t found a one-stop solution to this problem.
Technology and the chain of people who bring an idea to market in part determine the success or failure — and life or death — of modern dissidents. McDougall was ratted out by one of his employees, and for all the speech modern technology can generate, it hasn’t found a way to protect people with unpopular ideas in the places where those ideas are needed most.