In Singapore, a country known for adherence to rules, a viral video in May this year showed a year-old woman refusing to don a face mask, telling people "I'm a sovereign… This is something people are not going to know what it is". They have no say over me," said the woman, who was later sent to a mental health facility. In the US, suspects of violent crimes - including a man accused of beheading his landlord in a rent dispute last week - have claimed to be immune from prosecution as sovereign citizens.
One of the ideology's most famous adopters was Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols, who filed endless frivolous lawsuits against the government in the years before the attack on a federal office building which killed people.
The sovereign citizen movement is different from the militia movement, which puts more emphasis on paramilitary weapons training and organisation, experts say. Sovereign citizens - which also go by many other names including constitutionalists, common law citizens, freemen, and non-resident aliens - favour legal arguments. It also differs from the QAnon conspiracy theory which believes President Donald Trump is saving the world from evil, because sovereign citizens view all government figures, including Mr Trump, as illegitimate.
There are a multitude of theories that followers believe, experts say, cautioning that it is hard to determine the number of believers worldwide due to a lack of structure. The general ideology is based on the belief that the original government set up by the US founders, which most adherents refer to as "common law", was slowly and secretly replaced by an illegitimate government sometime in the s.
Followers around the world make similar claims about their own governments - or the British Royal Family as is the case with Australia, says Mr Pitcavage. They believe there is a legal way to opt out of the current legal system that comes through filing documents and ending what they view as "contracts" with the government, such as driving licences and other identity documents. Adherents are told by "redemption gurus" that they can use phrases, which they believe to have legal meaning, to "divorce themselves" from the illegitimate government, says Mr Pitcavage.
They often print out and carry documents which they claim prove their status. Followers resist all government laws and regulations, no matter how trivial, and in the US often file lengthy legal battles against the government, which critics refer to as "paper terrorism".
They sometimes film encounters with police using the phrases that they believe protect them, including "am I being detained? They have occasionally set up "common law courts" and issued bogus arrest warrants for US officials. Some have been arrested with fake car registration plates they have issued to themselves, or have even printed their own currency believing the dollar to be invalid. Mr Pitcavage says it's common to find European followers cite the US criminal code, which has no legal bearing there.
Sovereigns citizens believe the evidence for their theory is found on the birth certificate itself. As the child grows older, most of his legal documents will utilize capital letters, which means that his state-issued driver's license, his marriage license, his car registration, his criminal court records, his cable TV bill and his correspondence from the IRS all will pertain to his corporate shell identity, not his real, sovereign identity.
To separate from their corporate shell, sovereign citizens use a series of convoluted steps, often shared with them by more veteran sovereigns. To tap into the secret Treasury account, they believe exists they file a series of complex, legal-sounding documents. For decades, sovereigns have attempted to perfect the process by packaging and promoting different combinations of forms and paperwork. The only touted success stories are from sovereigns who were in fact committing fraud against the government or private companies by creating counterfeit or fraudulent and fictitious documents.
These sovereigns are prosecuted to the full extent of the law. It is impossible to know how many sovereigns there are in the U. Instead, there are a variety of nationwide gurus and local leaders with individualized views on sovereign citizen ideology and techniques. Their recommendations often include tax evasion, adverse possession squatting on a property that does not belong to them or ignoring laws regarding drivers licenses, vehicle registration or license plate possession.
They base these activities on their belief that free men and women, as they call themselves, are not bound by the laws in question. Sovereigns assert they are traveling, not driving, since they are not transporting commercial goods or paying passengers. Those who are attracted to this subculture typically attend a seminar or two or visit one of the thousands of websites and online videos on the subject and choose how to act on what they have learned.
But a conservative estimate of the number of all kinds of tax protesters today would be about , Using this number and information derived from trials of tax protesters and reports from government agencies, a reasonable estimate of hardcore sovereign believers in early would be ,, with another , just starting out by testing sovereign techniques for resisting everything from speeding tickets to drug charges, for an estimated total of , As sovereign theories go viral throughout the nation's prison systems and among people who are unemployed and desperate in a punishing economy, this number is likely to grow.
The weapon of choice for sovereign citizens is paper. A simple traffic violation or pet-licensing case can end up provoking dozens of court filings containing hundreds of pages of pseudo-legal nonsense. For example, Donna Lee Wray — the common-law wife of Jerry Kane, who was half of the team that killed the two police officers in West Memphis, Arkansas, in — was involved in a protracted legal battle in over having to pay a dog-licensing fee.
She filed 10 sovereign documents in court over a two-month period and then declared victory when the harried prosecutor decided to drop the case. The size of the documents is an issue since already-swamped courts are forced to respond to them, but so is the nonsensical language the documents are written in. Sovereigns believe that if they can find just the right combination of words, punctuation, paper, ink color and timing, they can have anything they want — freedom from taxes, unlimited wealth and life without licenses, fees or laws.
These liens can be for millions , billions or even quadrillions of dollars. They have also perpetrated a number of illegal housing related money-making schemes. They have signed up for Section 8 as landlords for properties they do not own. They have talked homeowners in the midst of foreclosure into quitclaiming their property deeds to them and charged the homeowners fees to stop foreclosures they have no ability to stop.
Over the course of four years, the U. Starting in the mids, a period when the sovereign movement was also on the rise, states began to pass laws specifically aimed at these paper-terrorism tactics. In April , the state of Colorado cracked down heavily on sovereign activity by charging a group of sovereigns, known as the Colorado Eight, with racketeering.
Bruce Doucette, the most prominent member of Colorado Eight, is best known for holding a faux trial in Burns, Oregon, that put public officials on trial. These officials had opposed the Bundy brothers occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. Doucette was sentenced to 38 years in prison for his crimes.
A co-defendant. Stephen Nalty, was sentenced to 36 years in prison, and another, Steven Byfield, was sent away for 22 years. Most new recruits to the sovereign citizens movement are people who have found themselves in a desperate situation, often due to the economy or foreclosures, in search of a quick fix. Others are intrigued by the notions of easy money and living a lawless life, free from unpleasant consequences.
The sovereign group Republic for the United States of America RuSA successfully recruited members over the past decade by marketing themselves as sovereign Christians who were forming a government that would one day run America. Led by James Timothy Turner, from a small town in Alabama, the group spread its message nationwide forming chapters throughout the U.
Headquartered in New York and led by John Darash, the group focuses on creating common law grand juries. When the Bundys, sovereign citizens who coordinated standoffs at their ranch in Nevada in and at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in , shared their ideologies with huge groups of antigovernment patriots, they reached other potential recruits.
In , Ryan Bundy ran for governor of Nevada on a sovereign citizen platform that included the right to travel. He lost the election, garnering only 1. Embry helped him complete several legal filings using sovereign citizen terminology. Embry is a member of a group of faux marshals called the Continental Marshals for the Republic, whose members were often recruited by the sovereign group known as the Superior Court of the Continental united States CuSA , which coordinated common law courts in various states.
They make their own uniforms, fake badges and identification cards. Sovereign citizens are concerned with the legal framework of society. They believe all people are born free with rights — but that these natural rights are being constrained by corporations and they see governments as artificial corporations.
They believe citizens are in an oppressive contract with the government. The SovCit movement arose in America decades ago, with roots in the American patriot movement, some religious communities, and tax protest groups.
SovCits see themselves as sovereign and not bound by the laws of the country in which they physically live. Accepting a law or regulations means they have waived their rights as a sovereign and have accepted a contract with the government, according to SovCit belief.
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