Yep. They’re completely unexceptional, and they know it, but they watched a YouTube video or twelve that supposedly told them the Konami code to magic-spell their way through life like some Wizard of Legalese, and they’re surprised that all it got them was the equivalent of Accio Handcuffs.
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Most sovereign citizens base their actions on a bogus U.S. history lesson. Claiming that since 1933 when the U.S. dollar was no longer backed not by gold but by the “full faith and credit” of the federal government, the government has pledged its citizenry as collateral by selling their future earning capabilities to foreign investors, effectively enslaving all Americans. This sale, sovereign citizens claim, takes place at birth with the issuance of a birth certificate and the hospital advice to apply for a Social Security number for the baby.
Germany has its own brand of that bullshit. They are known under the colloquial umbrella term Reichsbüger, and claim that Germany has lost its sovereignty to the allied forces in 1945. Since then, they believe, Germany is run by the allies, led by the US, as a GmbH (i.e., a form of a limited company), basically denying everyone their citizenry and instead treating them as employees, effectively enslaving all Germans, renting them out to the allies. This would be blatantly obvious to anyone, since the Deutschland GmbH would not issue proper legal ID documents, but only a Personalausweis, with Personal translating to ‘employee’ in English.
They thus rejected any authority of the German state and claim to be citizens of the Reich (in its borders of 1937, no less).
Same here. Exactly the same. We had this as weird stuff in local news in the 1980s - and I think I also remember that this happens in the 1970s already, but as a leftist (!) prankster reaction to police controls during the so-called “Deutscher Herbst”.
However, things got really weird last December, when Germany saw the largest investigation into the Reichsbüger scene unfolding.
About 23k people are known to be involved in the Reichsbüger scene in Germany, but for decades, we didn’t take them seriously. This change during theast years, culminating in the raids last year. The quality of their organisation had changed, with a former commander of the German special forces and other people with military background being involved - and a (former) Member of Parliament, as well.
Those weird fringe groups often are funny. Until they aren’t. And then I ask myself why I ever laughed about it.
I guess that’s another parallel to how things went in the US…
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