The weird grift of "sovereign citizens": where UFOlogy meets antisemitism by way of Cliven Bundy and cat-breeding

8 Likes

I assume they won’t mind me paying that fine in £25 sterling notes from the Bank of the Borderer, or do they stop being sovereign citizens when money is concerned?

8 Likes

Here’s a letter sent to Australia’s then-PM Julia Gillard.


It was sent by someone who’d become a future Senator for the One Nation Party (party recently caught talking to US NRA lobbyists). He got kicked out of parliament, ironically, for being a citizen of two different nations.

There’s footage floating around of the same dipshit trying to argue with Dr Brian Cox on national television that climate change is partially a NASA conspiracy.

6 Likes

I couldn’t do that. I think most of my e-mails have at least one of those components.

2 Likes

And as usual, Google Maps comes through:

3 Likes

The notice specifically mentions bailiffs and debt collection agencies, so it looks as if the “[freeholder]” had fallen behind on his mortgage and was invoking his imaginary sovereign rights to avoid getting his property repossessed.

3 Likes

He wanted to get out of paying the carbon tax. What a surprise.

Oh, and he worked in the mining industry. Quelle surprise encore.

8 Likes

To me, the phrase “sovereign citizen” always parses as “budding tribal warlord”. It feels a lot like those nature documentaries of males fighting over who gets to mate. The same primal need to exert territorial dominance.

5 Likes

Or a sidecar with a nuclear warhead as in Snowcrash. (Hmm. Some of those wackadoodles probably do have flags.)

7 Likes

OK, I am a clueless numpty. I didn’t get either of those references. Snowcrash wasn’t that interesting to me when I read it, so I forgot most of it, and I know the person in the image is a comedian, but I have never seen said person perform.

Here’s a except from the comedy routine. I’d love to see a judge say “So you’re a sovereign citizen eh? Do you have a flag?”

In Snowcrash, there was a Bad-Ass “sovereign” who traveled with a stolen nuke. Local powers would keep anyone from interfering with him because it was set to go off if he died.

6 Likes

I wonder if anyone has ever tried to deport one of these guys. If they consider themselves not to be citizens of the United States, can they be labeled illegal immigrants? Buy a boat, load it with a whole bunch of sovereign citizens, and tow it out to international waters.

5 Likes

As an animal lover, I was expecting the term “cat breeding” to be literal. :frowning:

Damn 14th Amendment citizenship clause (the one they want to do away with so they can deport 2nd Generation Americans) gets in the way here.

1 Like

Or hostile foreign powers attempting to annex US territory. Normally that kind of thing counts as an act of war.

6 Likes

I was thinking of something along the lines of Edward Hale’s “The Man Without a Country,” but without the comfort of US Navy ships.

1 Like

Yeah, it’s almost like there’s corrupt rich people in charge of the government or something. Weird.

1 Like

Sovereign citizens believe that they can revoke their Fourteenth Amendment federal citizenship and recover a supposed original state citizenship , thereby becoming immune from federal laws and taxes.

Because African Americans did not have citizenship before the Fourteenth Amendment, some sovereign citizens believe that only white people can recover their original state citizenship and become sovereign citizens.

Other tax cases include Heitman v. Idaho State Tax Commission ,[36] Cobin v. Commissioner (John Cobin’s arguments—that he had the ability to opt out of liability for federal income tax because he was white, that he was a “sovereign citizen of Oregon”, that he was a “non-resident alien of the United States”, and that his sovereign status made his body real property—were rejected by the court and were ruled to be “frivolous tax-protester type arguments”),[37] Glavin v. United States (John Glavin’s argument—that he was not subject to an Internal Revenue Service summons because, as a sovereign citizen, he was not a citizen of the United States—was rejected by the court),[38]and United States v. Greenstreet (Gale Greenstreet’s arguments—that he was of “Freeman Character” and “of the White Preamble Citizenship and not one of the 14th Amendment legislated enfranchised De Facto colored races”, that he was a “white Preamble natural sovereign Common Law De Jure Citizen of the Republic/State of Texas”, and that he was a sovereign, not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States District Court—were ruled to be “entirely frivolous”).[39] In view of such cases, the Internal Revenue Service has added “free born” or “sovereign” citizenship to its list of frivolous claims that may result in a $5,000 penalty when used as the basis for an inaccurate tax return.[40]

4 Likes

image

4 Likes

I had all but forgotten about these Texians until a few days ago.

2 Likes