Violent and Dangerous: America's Sovereign Citizens Movement [Barf Alert]

The strange subculture of the sovereign citizens movement, whose adherents hold truly bizarre, complex anti-government beliefs, has been growing at a fast pace since the late 2000s. Sovereigns believe that they — not judges, juries, law enforcement or elected officials — get to decide which laws to obey and which to ignore, and they don't think they should have to pay taxes.

Sovereigns are clogging up the courts with indecipherable filings and when cornered, many of them lash out in rage, frustration and, in the most extreme cases, acts of deadly violence, usually directed against government officials. In May 2010, for example, a father-son team of sovereigns murdered two police officers with an assault rifle when they were pulled over on the interstate while traveling through West Memphis, Ark.

The movement is rooted in racism and anti-Semitism, though most sovereigns, many of whom are African American, are unaware of their beliefs' origins. In the early 1980s, the sovereign citizens movement mostly attracted white supremacists and anti-Semites, mainly because sovereign theories originated in groups that saw Jews as working behind the scenes to manipulate financial institutions and control the government.

The contemporary sovereign belief system is based on a decades-old conspiracy theory. At some point in history, sovereigns believe, the American government set up by the founding fathers — with a legal system the sovereigns refer to as "common law" — was secretly replaced by a new government system based on admiralty law, the law of the sea and international commerce. Under common law, or so they believe, the sovereigns would be free men. Under admiralty law, they are slaves, and secret government forces have a vested interest in keeping them that way.

“I read the article an didn’t see any mention of the Tea Party or conservatives. Did I miss something?”

I figure they are trying to paint with a broad brush all people who believe in state’s rights as being anti-American and dangerous and violent and so instead of framing it as the tea party or conservatives, they mentioned it as a Sovereign Citizens Movement.

It is not a real group or is it? Ah the conspiracy theories.

Here is what I googled: The ‘sovereign citizen’ movement is a loosely organized collection of groups and individuals who have adopted a right-wing anarchist ideology.

Origins: Çirca 1970; fully developed by early 1980s
Ideology: Anti-government, some white supremacist elements
Outreach: Vigilante courts, seminars, shortwave radio, the Internet, “schools of common law”
Notable Episodes: 1996 Montana Freeman standoff; 1997 Republic of Texas standoff Tactics “Paper terrorism,” including frivolous lawsuits, frivolous liens, fictitious financial instruments, fictitious automobile-related documents, and misuse of genuine documents such as IRS forms; various frauds and scams.

In early 1994, a band of extremists associated with the group Juris Christian Assembly viciously assaulted Karen Mathews, the Stanislaus County, California, recorder, outside her home. In May 1998, sovereign citizen and Christian Identity adherent George Wolf shot two volunteer firefighters in Ashtabula County, Ohio, because their vehicle blocked him. Occasionally, sovereign citizen groups even engaged in high-profile standoffs with author-ities. In the spring of 1996, the Montana Freemen held off federal authorities attempting to arrest them (on a variety of charges) for 81 days near Jordan, Montana. The following spring, members of Richard McLaren’s faction of the so-called “Republic of Texas” initiated another armed confrontation in far-West Texas when they kidnapped a local couple in response to the arrest of one of their members. One member was killed during the standoff.

And so on from The ADL site.

http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/scm.asp?xpicked=4

Well I guess there are people in groups who are for sovereignty and that may not be the same thing as the tea party. But I took the 60 minutes piece as 60 minutes trying to make all people who might agree with those people even on a remote level to be like them. In other words, they won’t mention much else regarding other groups, but will do on this one just like they will do stuff on militias. Look the media wants to paint everyone against the government of Obama as radical. Granted I am always skeptical of the media.

Mozilla, the Sovereign Citizen movement is indeed real, and they are indeed whack jobs. They have nothing to do with conservatism. Despite the comments here, the article is pretty much factually correct. They had their roots in the white supremacist Christian Identity movement of a few decades ago. It's not a code word for conservative or Tea Party.

Frankly, the ignorance on display in this thread, obviously by people who didn't read the article, is breathtaking. Sovereign Citiziens are among the crazies that the conservative movement purged itself of in the late 70s and early 80s. Better to lose an election than to have the support of people like this.

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