What ho, I claim this house as sovereign property!
September 27, 2021 5:41 AM   Subscribe

The new and perplexing vexations of sovereign citizens [NYTIMES] Sometimes I read an article about a social phenomenon that is completely perplexing. This is one of those times. And if you liked the coverage of incidents reviewed in book A Libertarian into a Bear and here, this story is DEFINITELY for you.

Some highlights from the article:
“ Ms. Little was a victim of a ploy known as paper terrorism, a favorite tactic of an extremist group that is one of the fastest growing… the Moorish sovereign citizen movement… it encourages followers to violate existent laws in the name of empowerment. Experts say it lures marginalized people to its ranks with the false promise that they are above the law.”

“Increasingly, across the country sovereign citizens have clashed with the authorities, tied up resources and frazzled lives in their insistence that laws, such as the requirement to pay taxes, obey speed limits and even obtain, say, a license for a pet dog, do not apply to them. People who claim to be Moorish sovereign citizens believe they are bound mainly by maritime law, not the law of the places where they live, said Mellie Ligon, a lawyer and author of a study of their impact on the judicial system in the Emory International Law Review.” (Emphasis mine)

Apparent relations to claims in Admiralty Court, somehow?

In another of these cases:
“Judge Terrence McGann did not agree: ‘Under your set of rules, every house is fair game, you own the entire United States, you own the oceans, you own anything you want,” he said, according to reports. ‘And that’s not how a free, orderly society works.’”
posted by ec2y (101 comments total) 25 users marked this as a favorite
 
Have they tried claiming religious exemptions?
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:08 AM on September 27, 2021 [13 favorites]


And then there's these idiots.
posted by dobbs at 6:10 AM on September 27, 2021 [2 favorites]


One does wonder where they got the idea of arbitrarily claiming other people's land as their own from. Surely there's no precedent for it in the history of Western civilization...
posted by clawsoon at 6:14 AM on September 27, 2021 [41 favorites]


New? Maybe on a geological time scale. Here’s a Previously from 2010.
posted by zamboni at 6:16 AM on September 27, 2021 [5 favorites]


“And that’s not how a free, orderly society works.”

Well, this is the United States we're talking about.
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:39 AM on September 27, 2021 [8 favorites]


Non-paywalled link.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:43 AM on September 27, 2021 [8 favorites]


That poor woman, the whole experience sounds at the best exhausting and at worst utterly terrifying.

How he changed from dapper entrepreneur to a Moorish national confronted by a New Jersey SWAT team is opaque.

I'm just going to take a wild guess here: social media.

The white supremacists so attracted to the sovereign citizen ideology in the 70s had to do the legwork of going to gun shows and consuming the content straight from the source. Now every social media site has an algorithm that does that work automatically for anyone who expresses the least bit of interest by watching a single video, liking a tweet or just reading an article online.

I don't believe the underlying reasons for distrusting the government has changed significantly.
posted by slimepuppy at 6:55 AM on September 27, 2021 [18 favorites]


I've been casually following the court appearances of Pauline Bauer, a sovereign citizen charged over her actions on January 6th.
She's currently in jail for refusing to comply with any pretrial conditions, even though the charges against her are nonviolent misdemeanors which probably wouldn't result in jail time. I'm almost surprised the judge hasn't added contempt charges, but he really seems to be bending over backwards so she doesn't lose her business yet she won't give an inch.

I tried to read her 114-page motion challenging the court’s jurisdiction (PDF), and it's just jaw-dropping.

Based on transcripts of her outbursts, she doesn't seem the type who'd right a hundred-plus pages of legalese, quoting the Magna Carta and Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I assume this comes from an online template somewhere, and would love to read a detailed fisking of it.
posted by cheshyre at 6:59 AM on September 27, 2021 [14 favorites]


Now every social media site has an algorithm that does that work automatically for anyone who expresses the least bit of interest by watching a single video, liking a tweet or just reading an article online.

This is definitely a problem. Any time I look at some article (either linked from a site like this, trying to understand what nonsense my mom is talking about, or simple rubbernecking on the Information Superhighway), I start getting more and more suggested to me. I know enough not to click. It's easy to imagine people going down...not a rabbit hole, but a snake hole. A snake that is eating itself.
posted by MrGuilt at 7:16 AM on September 27, 2021 [7 favorites]


I was just glad the cops didn't show up and just shoot both of them. Thank god they did their jobs this time but it's not exactly a given that the cops will not just kick the door in and shoot anything that moves.
posted by bleep at 7:19 AM on September 27, 2021


Any time I look at some article (either linked from a site like this, trying to understand what nonsense my mom is talking about, or simple rubbernecking on the Information Superhighway), I start getting more and more suggested to me.

You can work around this by isolating this stuff from your usual browsing. Firefox container tabs are really helpful for this but there are other strategies (e.g. using a different browser for the silly stuff).

</derail>
posted by suetanvil at 7:38 AM on September 27, 2021 [6 favorites]


Sovereign Citizens: More Than Paper Terrorists (Just Security):

"Sovereign citizens are most straightforwardly an anti-government group. They self-identify as sovereign citizens and are recognized by their beliefs. Each sovereign citizen group has its own specific dogma, but they share in common non-varying core beliefs: the United States government is not valid, none of its laws are valid, and as such no court or law enforcement officer has power over the sovereign citizen....Convoluted, twisted, and thoroughly invalid logic has brought them to their self-serving beliefs. Their numbers are growing as their anti-government beliefs are being rapidly adopted by QAnon and other conspiracy groups. They should be recognized for the threat they pose, now and in the foreseeable future."
posted by MonkeyToes at 7:39 AM on September 27, 2021 [7 favorites]


I read a really great opinion from a Canadian judge a few years ago that took the time to dig into the history & branches of the sovereign citizen movement. I'll see if I can find it and link it here.
posted by stinkfoot at 7:41 AM on September 27, 2021 [6 favorites]


I read a really great opinion from a Canadian judge a few years ago that took the time to dig into the history & branches of the sovereign citizen movement. I'll see if I can find it and link it here.

Found it!
posted by stinkfoot at 7:43 AM on September 27, 2021 [45 favorites]


Oh man, the Moorish sovcit folks have had a really weird effect on the city of Portland. Last year they were responsible for setting up an autonomous zone near "the Red House", which was on the surface was a pretty straight-forward protest.

The short of it: "The Red House" was repossessed a while back by a bank due to default and then sold to a realtor. The folks living at the house when it was repossessed were Moorish sovcits. They decided to squat on the property in revolt, using obscure sovcit legalese as the justification. The realtor then tries to sell the house that he bought from the bank. The sovcits claim they are being forced out of their home, and call upon all activists in the city to set up an occupation zone a couple blocks in length to fight off police brutality done at the behest of the banks, to fight off gentrification and fiscal predation against minorities. Which are good things to fight against! But the whole sovcit justification really made it seem like the activists were being taken for a ride by a bunch of con men. Fox news and the like took this story and ran like hell with it, which made everything even more toxic and made everyone dig in even harder. There was a very clear "Fight Journalists" policy in the occupation zone as a result, where cameras were banned in the zone out of fear someone was secretly working for the police or breitbart. That policy made them no friends. A friend of mine working for Vice had his camera smashed by activists just for trying to film establishing shots.

The folks running the occupation zone had a good social media campaign which raised enough money to buy the house back, but there was a bunch of chicanery in the process. A lot of fake accounts being set up, a lot of "the developer said the price was this but they keep lying so we need more money!", a bucket of death threats sent to the realtor and his family, and a lot of claims that were just unverifiable because they actively fought anyone doing any type of investigation into said claims. It was a bummer, but at least it ended peacefully.
posted by Philipschall at 7:44 AM on September 27, 2021 [21 favorites]


If enough people agree with these guys, their insane beliefs become reality. This also works for Republicans.
posted by bigbigdog at 7:57 AM on September 27, 2021 [16 favorites]


We shouldn't be calling then Sovereign Citizens. That's what they say they are, but the rest of the world also using that term to describe them just legitimizes that. In the same way that we call people who claim to be "pro-life" by the more accurate title "anti-abortion", can we not just call these people domestic terrorists?
posted by DarlingBri at 7:58 AM on September 27, 2021 [25 favorites]


Six years ago the courts in Alberta tried to set down a rule book for dealing with this community, and their "Organized Pseudolegal Commercial Arguments". It seems to have been modestly effective. I'm not as enthusiastic as the writer of this paper (which provides a good summary of where we are at in Canada) as using these judicial tools are still outside the reach of the average person before the courts. But at least it's a step in the right direction that the courts are aware that people are trying to "hack" them in bad faith and are adapting to respond.
posted by LegallyBread at 8:05 AM on September 27, 2021 [19 favorites]


on Pauline Bauer's filings: I assume this comes from an online template somewhere

I don't think so. At least, various phrases from it I tried sesarching for are unique and don't show up on Google anywhere. That's a measure of just how robust this socvit role playing is. They don't just have source documents, they have a whole source philosophy which is recognizable and self-consistent. And they have an army of anti-social and dangerous people who are entirely enmired in that mindset. This is not really a new phenomenon, and they're less harmful than, say, the way the South decided to ignore federal authority after the end of Reconstruction. But it's still bad.

The Moorish Sovereign Citizens are particularly awful because they're appropriating the language (and sometimes the reality) of oppression of Black people in America. And then twisting that as an excuse for their own personal enrichment. It's cynical and unfair and outright dangerous when the sovcit folks start backing up their fantasies with real guns.
posted by Nelson at 8:08 AM on September 27, 2021 [10 favorites]


Sovcit is the "JUDGES HATE THIS ONE WEIRD TRICK!" form of anarchism.
posted by at by at 8:19 AM on September 27, 2021 [32 favorites]


The modern world needs to come to a collective realization fast about Popper's paradox of tolerance.

One party in the US has shed the illusion that there is ever anything other than just one rule in politics and power: you can do anything you want when they let you get away with it.

Sovereign citizens are just the same, and explicitly bake it into their philosophy. "I can do what I want, you have no authority over me" is the very core of SovCit theory, and it is the very core of SovCit praxis.

And so long as they continue to get away with it, they will escalate further and further. I'm not talking about the occasional schlub that procedure-jams a local good ol' boy and pays the price, I'm saying that the entire thing will stop when they all stop getting away with it.
posted by tclark at 8:24 AM on September 27, 2021 [14 favorites]


Why do these "Moors" have the flag of New England on their documents?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:30 AM on September 27, 2021


I read a really great opinion from a Canadian judge a few years ago that took the time to dig into the history & branches of the sovereign citizen movement. I'll see if I can find it and link it here.

Found it!


Thanks for this insight. There is a fellow I see pacing the sidewalk in front of a nearby courthouse with a sandwich board (front and back) laying out in tiny type his extensive disagreements with a judge. I understand it to be in the nature of his own sovereign citizenship and his status as a flesh-and-blood person, so this link was illuminating.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:31 AM on September 27, 2021 [2 favorites]


Aren't the Moorish Science Temple people linked with Peter Lamborn Wilson/“Hakim Bey”, who coined the term “Temporary Autonomous Zone” in the sixeventies?
posted by acb at 8:39 AM on September 27, 2021 [3 favorites]


on Pauline Bauer's filings: I assume this comes from an online template somewhere

I agree. In appellate filings, I see this come up now and again. I figure this is some prison libraries somehow.
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:41 AM on September 27, 2021 [1 favorite]


DarlingBri:
We shouldn't be calling then Sovereign Citizens. That's what they say they are, but the rest of the world also using that term to describe them just legitimizes that.

What are some good non-pathological terms for people who believe the rules don't apply to them?
Extreme entitlement? Imagined immunity? Anti-government absolutists?
Bartleby's?
(I find it difficult to describe them without using words like "delusional")
posted by cheshyre at 8:45 AM on September 27, 2021 [3 favorites]


acb,

Yes. But I don’t know if the Moorish Science Temple is behind the stuff described here.
posted by njohnson23 at 8:46 AM on September 27, 2021


These people -- or rather, a sister branch that threw around the name of a different and possibly nonexistent tribe -- appropriated the vacant house next to my parents'. They also appropriated some of our lawn equipment. I was scared for my folks at the time, but they were evicted without incident, and the lawn stuff was returned too. Was anyone harmed? I wonder.

Here in 2021, where things are different, I have nothing but contempt for white sovcits, but my feeling about Moorish sovcits is more complex, if not nicer. I mean, these are predators and grifters, but societally speaking, you're gonna get this. Block people out of civil life, crush their hopes on a generational level, and some of them will turn to madness.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:51 AM on September 27, 2021 [8 favorites]


Based on transcripts of her outbursts, she doesn't seem the type who'd right a hundred-plus pages of legalese, quoting the Magna Carta and Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I assume this comes from an online template somewhere, and would love to read a detailed fisking of it.

Here's a podcast episode getting into it. Recently, there was an interesting exchange:
“Romans 13 — Let every person be subject to the governing authorities,” the judge reportedly said in response.

“I am not a person,” Bauer insisted
posted by BungaDunga at 8:56 AM on September 27, 2021 [5 favorites]


DarlingBri:
We shouldn't be calling then Sovereign Citizens. That's what they say they are, but the rest of the world also using that term to describe them just legitimizes that.

What are some good non-pathological terms for people who believe the rules don't apply to them?
Extreme entitlement? Imagined immunity? Anti-government absolutists?
Bartleby's?
(I find it difficult to describe them without using words like "delusional")


the judge in the link I posted calls them "Organized Pseudolegal Commercial Argument [OPCA] Litigants"

kind of a mouthful tho
posted by stinkfoot at 8:57 AM on September 27, 2021 [10 favorites]


So I read this book called The Sovereign Individual in the late 90s. It seemed plausible, nation-state power would recede as economic activity moved into cyberspace. Made the notion of becoming a digital nomad a possibility for me. But I don't get these people challenging the police -- how can they be so naïve? Whenever I see one of these YouTubes, I'm thinking -- is this your first encounter with law enforcement? Are you nuts!? You want to feel his night-stick on your face? Do what The Man says!

It would be different if there was a bunch of videos of these sovereigns challenging, and the cops responding "You're right. Sorry for bothering you." Show me just one.
posted by Rash at 8:58 AM on September 27, 2021 [2 favorites]


on Pauline Bauer's filings: I assume this comes from an online template somewhere

I don't think so. At least, various phrases from it I tried sesarching for are unique and don't show up on Google anywhere. That's a measure of just how robust this socvit role playing is. They don't just have source documents, they have a whole source philosophy which is recognizable and self-consistent. And they have an army of anti-social and dangerous people who are entirely enmired in that mindset. This is not really a new phenomenon, and they're less harmful than, say, the way the South decided to ignore federal authority after the end of Reconstruction. But it's still bad.


FWIW, part of the lifeblood of these movements are a group of con-men that sell this legal advice as a service.
posted by stinkfoot at 8:59 AM on September 27, 2021 [19 favorites]


Re: "new," yeah this goes all the way back to the Posse Comitatus folks (WP).
posted by Jack Karaoke at 9:06 AM on September 27, 2021 [7 favorites]


> Aren't the Moorish Science Temple people linked with Peter Lamborn Wilson/“Hakim Bey”, who coined the term “Temporary Autonomous Zone” in the sixeventies?

Moorish Science Temple is a Black Islamic organization from which the Nation of Islam spun off. You're thinking of the Moorish Orthodox Church which was mostly white guys trying to find religious ecstasy through exoticism and countercultural philosophies.

I wouldn't put a lot of weight on the use of "Moorish" to find a connection with either of the above. It sounds to me like an element of the word salads the sovcits use to justify their demand that the world revolve around themselves; seemingly significant but ultimately of no useful meaning.
posted by at by at 9:08 AM on September 27, 2021 [14 favorites]


What are some good non-pathological terms for people who believe the rules don't apply to them?

Conservatives, with reference to Frank Wilhoit's definition of same: "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
posted by JohnFromGR at 9:08 AM on September 27, 2021 [27 favorites]


Aren't the Moorish Science Temple people linked with Peter Lamborn Wilson/“Hakim Bey”, who coined the term “Temporary Autonomous Zone” in the sixeventies?

Yes, I think so. But a different group and it's more fair to say Bey is linked with them. At least according to Wikipedia, Hakim Bey was part of the Moorish Orthodox Church of America, a splinter group off the Moorish Science Temple which seems to mostly be a white guy thing. (Your occasional reminder that Peter Lamborn Wilson is alleged to be a pedophile.)

This article is about a different Moorish group which seems more rooted in Black nationalism. And the sovereign citizen fantasy. I'll note the article takes pains to point out that this New Jersey group is "inspired in part by Black identity ideology of a similarly named religious group, the Moorish Science Temple of America, which disavows the sovereign citizen movement."

Not certain why I care about this much hair splitting but the details of the history are interesting. Particularly the marriage of Black nationalism with the SovCit ideology which is so firmly rooted in white supremacy.
posted by Nelson at 9:08 AM on September 27, 2021 [9 favorites]


But I don't get these people challenging the police -- how can they be so naïve? Whenever I see one of these YouTubes, I'm thinking -- is this your first encounter with law enforcement? Are you nuts!?

They're all white guys. To a one. Having never faced any actual persecution in their lives, they've gone out and invented some to fight against in court. And they get really butthurt when the courts won't play Calvinball with their totally-bogus grievances. Once in a great while these conflicts escalate far enough that the police get involved, but even then it doesn't usually end all that badly for the SovCits, because as I may have mentioned, they're white guys. (See Clive Bundy and his crew for the canonical example)
posted by Mayor West at 9:09 AM on September 27, 2021 [13 favorites]


This stuff has been going on for a long time. I have a not-too-distant relation whose name pops up in legal proceedings dating back to the 1980s for refusing to pay taxes or recognize any government authority. Apparently for a period he refused to conduct any transactions in any currency other than gold. He was also one of the first people Timothy McVeigh contacted for legal advice (my relation's lack of any legal credentials notwithstanding).

I've never met this branch of the family fortunately, but we share the same unusual last name, so it's always interesting to see what comes up when I google it, and I sometimes wonder how easily (whether through nature or nurture) I could've ended up like one of those people.

(Sorry if that got a bit GYOB.)
posted by Ickster at 9:10 AM on September 27, 2021 [8 favorites]


Honestly, I am still a little surprised that the standoff between the Moorish sovcits from Rhode Island and the Mass State Police on Rt.128 ended without bloodshed.
posted by briank at 9:16 AM on September 27, 2021 [5 favorites]


What are some good non-pathological terms for people who believe the rules don't apply to them?

Libertarians seems closest. These guys aren't even into protecting an in group; they're into claiming what they can for themselves as individual and to hell with both society and other individuals.

They're all white guys.

There's the original movement which was white supremacists; what the article is describing is a newer movement that adopts much of the original logic but has been specifically addressing Black Americans. The man in the article that the SWAT team was called on was Black (as was the woman whose house he was trying to appropriate).
posted by trig at 9:18 AM on September 27, 2021 [19 favorites]


I've watched several YouTubes of smug and then suddenly surprised and offended Black people having their drivers-side windows smashed in just prior to being manhandled out of the car. Not just white guys.
posted by Rash at 9:37 AM on September 27, 2021 [6 favorites]


If these people claim they are outside of the State's authority, does that also mean they are, by their beliefs, outside of the State's protections?

Basically, I want to know if someone were to beat them up or take their stuff they technically, as per their outlaw belief system, would not be able to take legal recourse.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 9:39 AM on September 27, 2021 [11 favorites]


So I read this book called The Sovereign Individual in the late 90s.

One of the authors of that was William Rees-Mogg, father of Jacob Rees-Mogg. Essentially hyper-libertarian, and IMO neo-feudalist. The digital age offers even more wealth and freedom for the people who already have all the wealth and freedom, liberated from responsibility to society.
posted by Grangousier at 9:40 AM on September 27, 2021 [13 favorites]


While I hate the carceral complex, I enjoy watching sovcits get tasered in court when their bullshit magic spells don't work. What can I say, I am a land of contrasts.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 9:48 AM on September 27, 2021 [18 favorites]


JJ MacNab is a researcher in this area and is a good follow if you're as fascinated by this stuff as I am
posted by stinkfoot at 9:55 AM on September 27, 2021 [10 favorites]


They're all white guys. To a one. Having never faced any actual persecution in their lives, they've gone out and invented some to fight against in court. And they get really butthurt when the courts won't play Calvinball with their totally-bogus grievances.

Really they are white but they aren't wealthy enough for the court-Calvinball rules to apply.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:28 AM on September 27, 2021 [2 favorites]


For a movement with strong ties to white extremism, curious how a story about threats from black men is what's getting coverage.
posted by cheshyre at 10:28 AM on September 27, 2021 [8 favorites]


what the article is describing is a newer movement that adopts much of the original logic but has been specifically addressing Black Americans. The man in the article that the SWAT team was called on was Black (as was the woman whose house he was trying to appropriate).

As were the guys who were arrested in Massachusetts after a standoff. They've since sued the state for $70 million in damages: "The lawsuit claims the members are not citizens of the United States and the Massachusetts court where they were arraigned does not have jurisdiction. The lawsuit seeks the case to be “litigated in international court, consular court, or federal court with consul’s (sic) present.”"
posted by BungaDunga at 10:31 AM on September 27, 2021 [6 favorites]


does that also mean they are, by their beliefs, outside of the State's protections?

Yes. Which is why so many SovCits are also gun nuts. And why these groups are so dangerous.
posted by Nelson at 10:33 AM on September 27, 2021 [4 favorites]


Yeah, this has been going on for some time. I remember the Admiralty Law and SovCit crap used to be really common in earlier hack/phreak days to the point that it was difficult to not read a textfile newsletter that didn't contain some amount of it.

And this was long before I understood what libertarianism was or the mind-boggling cognitive dissonance of anarchist-capitalists or even had the language to describe these things because I was just a kid.

Thankfully I was deeply skeptical and it didn't stick. I remember the first time someone presented the sovcit and "Admiralty Law" ideas about gold fringed flags being a convenient gotcha for anyone defending themselves in court and they got really intensely angry about my super basic rebuttal of "Yeah, but what about State power? I don't think this is going to work out the way you think it's going to work out."

And this was all well before Waco, Ruby Ridge and the Oklahoma City bombing.

It didn't help their cases that these guys were so ultraparanoid that I came home to a loaded handgun in my face more than once because they thought I was the Feds, like they're going to bother with a key and walk in solo.

In hindsight it also didn't help that almost all of these guys were technocratic assholes. That they were racist, sexist and misogynistic and so on. I didn't understand this very well back then, either, even though I knew I was anti-racist and anti-sexist and so on, I just didn't have the language or rhetorical tools to deal with it or know enough to run, not walk, away from these people just because we had something in common with an interest in computers.

Every so often I am very thankful of being intensely skeptical of this bullshit and that I was inherently a pacifist hippie peacenik type of person, because if I wasn't, well, there's a really dark and fucked up alternate timeline out there for me where I probably got into a ton of class A no fun at all Trouble just by being around them. I'm pretty sure a lot of those old black hat hackers I used to vaguely know from user groups and BBS meetups ended up doing serious Federal jail time for a variety of crimes likely for dumb petty criminal shit like wire fraud.

In hindsight the parallels to modern cryptofascism and the now familiar pipelines and connections between black hat hack/phreak culture, libertarianism are glaringly obvious. This shit has been going on for a long time.

It's one of the main reasons why I've been begging anyone to listen that there's been some really dark and fucked up shit going on and to take it seriously, except instead of some random textfile zine it's being platformed by megacorps like Facebook. You used to have to go a long ways out of your way to find this kind of content and platforming and now it's as easy as signing into Twitter, turning on Fox News and checking in with friends and family on Facebook.
posted by loquacious at 10:47 AM on September 27, 2021 [22 favorites]


stinkfoot: FWIW, part of the lifeblood of these movements are a group of con-men that sell this legal advice as a service.

The best part of these hucksters that put on Sovereign Citizen seminars railing about fiat currency and how to make “payment warrants” to “pay” taxes? They demand their payment in cash. You know, that worthless stuff that they are railing about.
posted by dr_dank at 10:48 AM on September 27, 2021 [8 favorites]


The Moorish Science Temple people mostly keep to themselves, and they're getting pretty sick of these jackasses.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 10:51 AM on September 27, 2021 [1 favorite]


I remember the Admiralty Law and SovCit crap used to be really common in earlier hack/phreak days to the point that it was difficult to not read a textfile newsletter that didn't contain some amount of it.

The whole thing sounds a lot like something that Ivan Stang would have included in High Weirdness by Mail, and maybe did--I don't have my copy of HWbM handy.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:06 AM on September 27, 2021 [10 favorites]


I can imagine a society where you disempower an entire class of people for centuries resulting in small groups of these people who often can't afford the, you know, super affordable and open-to-everyone thing we call law school attempting to wrest control back by employing the same kind of language. who may also go on to harm the very same class of folks who are still being actively disempowered by a white supremacist society possibly because it's easier to harm someone like yourself than it is to harm, say, a plantation-owner-looking realtor attempting to sell a mansion

the making fun of and laughing at these kooky Moors reads like a lot of punching down and it's a lil icky
posted by paimapi at 11:10 AM on September 27, 2021 [5 favorites]


I also remember reading this article earlier and wondering how far out of the way did the writer go to find an incident of Black folks doing this to one another. bc I'm pretty sure that antisocial couple who pointed guns at protestors are basically doing the same thing except they're white and doing it through the 'proper channels'

it's like the whole conservative racist motif of 'Black-on-Black' crime except it's about a totally different topic so yay, let's not use our critical thinking hats and wonder about what's really really being said here
posted by paimapi at 11:24 AM on September 27, 2021 [1 favorite]


>That was a brilliantly detailed opinion, thank you stinkfoot .

I'm going to slightly devil's advocate this and say that these people are maybe aware of things like Jeff Bezos (the flesh-and-blood human) being able to claim child support money from the state, or Uber drivers not being Uber drivers, but independent contractors, and certain companies being headquartered in Switzerland, despite having few employees there. There is a load of bogus duality and jurisdiction hopping going on, and all the gurus have to do is say "do you want a piece of this?". There's a cargo cult element in that the particular fuckery is not actually legally effective, unlike Amazon's tax schemes, but it's not totally bananas to believe that some weird legal chicanery can absolve you of responsibilities and make you cash.
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 11:25 AM on September 27, 2021 [20 favorites]


it's not totally bananas to believe that some weird legal chicanery can absolve you of responsibilities

You also need gobs and gobs of money. Without that secret ingredient, all the legal chicanery in the world won't help you.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:27 AM on September 27, 2021 [5 favorites]


The whole thing sounds a lot like something that Ivan Stang would have included in High Weirdness by Mail, and maybe did--I don't have my copy of HWbM handy.

I'm not sure if this would have even shown up on his radar. It wasn't like you could find this stuff in the Loompanics catalog available as printed materials or booklets to mail away for or anything like that, it was just text files written by anyone with a keyboard and a text editor and traded via file sharing BBSes and pre-internet and pre-web stuff like Fidonet store-and-forward networks between hack/phreak BBSes.

Like, you seriously had to go out of your way for this stuff. You had to have a modem and a computer back when almost no one had such a thing for personal use. Then you had to actually dial into some BBSes. Then you had to find the dial up unlisted phone numbers from someone through word of mouth in a chat room or a text file list of H/P/A/V BBSes for what was usually single phone line BBS. Then you had to actually find those particular kinds of text files, download them and read them.

And then you had to take the extra steps to take any of it seriously.

And in hindsiight a lot of this textfile zine stuff was made up bullshit of varying quantities of dangerously wrong, not unlike reprints and edits of the Anarchist Cookbook that were in circulation either as text files or printed copies.

I know some of the early printed hack/phreak zines like 2600 and Blacklisted411! approached the sovcit subject more than once or were adjacent to it, but even they tended to refrain from actually printing the really wild and controversial stuff that was available in some of those text files.
posted by loquacious at 11:33 AM on September 27, 2021 [7 favorites]


If someone walked into your house & took it I don't think you'd be worrying about if people were punching down at them on the internet. You can't just walk into someone's house & take it.
posted by bleep at 11:34 AM on September 27, 2021 [15 favorites]


Sovereign citizens are one of the things that give me compassion for law enforcement.

Because inevitably these two factions of society are seemingly built and destined to clash. And law enforcement probably can't just walk away from them like I most likely could.
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 11:34 AM on September 27, 2021 [4 favorites]


If someone walked into your house & took it I don't think you'd be worrying about if people were punching down at them on the internet. You can't just walk into someone's house & take it.

I'm also pretty sure this punching down isn't preventing it either so that's a terrible excuse for not being accountable for the shit you put online

also that's literally the same kind of logic that was used to create the carceral state lol. "you wouldn't care so much about racial justice if you were the one getting robbed" kind of shit
posted by paimapi at 11:37 AM on September 27, 2021 [2 favorites]


I remember the Admiralty Law and SovCit crap used to be really common in earlier hack/phreak days to the point that it was difficult to not read a textfile newsletter that didn't contain some amount of it.

Yeah, there are a lot of paths that can lead into this stuff. Some hackers have gone down it, some otherwise-boring Libertarian types have too, I've even seen it in the fringes of the "personal investing" community.

There, you find it out in the weeds among the people who claim to have found "secrets" of the market or "cheat codes" for how to get rich. And I think that "cheat code" mindset is part of the draw. The SovCit stuff claims to be a way of magically bending the system to your will, or at least making yourself immune to it.

And it of course validates that you are very, very special.

There is a whole sub-culture of the SovCit movement dedicated to thinking up phony legal theories about tax law. The "861 argument" is a bit of a classic.

One of the more pernicious things about it, is that it can almost appear to work. You can get away with cheating on your taxes for a while (until you don't), because the IRS moves rather slowly. I think that gives some people a real sense that they have "figured something out". Then, I think, it's easy to jump from "well, I've figured out a way not to pay taxes" to "I've figured out a way to be above the law!"

It wouldn't surprise me if some of those people getting their car windows smashed out, started out with white-collar SovCit chicanery, or a bit of light tax evasion. It's unfortunate for them that their fucking around turned into finding out so sharply.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:46 AM on September 27, 2021 [6 favorites]


Assholes are assholes, though. These folks, or at least this subset of these folks, know they're taking, or trying to take, other people's property with no other basis than a more-or-less sincere belief that they can do whatever they want. Like that Ron Swanson note. Is there a basis for sympathy for at least some of them? Sure. But that does that mean we shouldn't take note of the real harm they're doing, or that we should pretend that their beliefs make sense? No. If you've never dealt with these folks except maybe being handed a pamphlet, you might not think they're worth being concerned about. If you have, though...
posted by praemunire at 11:48 AM on September 27, 2021 [6 favorites]


Assholes are assholes, though.

true enough, and I'm sure there are plenty of anti-social types that populate that movement. I still think it's highly unlikely that this will happen to you and me, and that conservative fearmongering logic of 'what if it happens to you' really sucks and should generally be avoided when we critically think about what we're reading

part of what's troubling about this article is that it avoids talking about the sovcit/militia/etc movements that this is squarely situated in. instead, you get a human interest piece with a 'good citizen' and 'bad antagonists' where it just so happens that the 'bad antagonists' are specifically just the predominantly Black niche of this kind of bullshit, and there's little mention of the wider context in spite of there being plenty of newsworthy examples (like that weird couple I pointed out earlier)

the punching down part that's problematic comes in when it's just a whole big thread of people shitting on this very specifically predominantly Black niche. you can shit on sovcit all day long, it's just icky in this very specific context
posted by paimapi at 11:56 AM on September 27, 2021 [4 favorites]


I just don't think we can extend "punching down" to people who have decided they're outside this up/down hierarchy altogether because being outside it will allow them to hurt other people more easily.
posted by bleep at 12:02 PM on September 27, 2021 [13 favorites]


I just don't think we can extend "punching down" to people who have decided they're outside this up/down hierarchy altogether because being outside it will allow them to hurt other people more easily.

I'm going to stop engaging with you after this lol bc it's getting annoying for both of us, and for everyone else in this thread but 'punching down' as an ethic means you, with your privilege, should not shit on people with less privilege than you regardless of their ideological tilt

it applies everywhere you go and it's often a weird, tricky analysis but for example me, who is an immigrant to the US, a person of color, but who is also a homeowner with a steady job, I'd make the calculation that shitting on non-homeowners who resort to these kinds of wild tactics is punching down. add in the extra piece that there's a pretty long anti-Black history with regards to homeownership and, generally speaking, the whole enterprise when specifically only targeting Moors seems an icky prospect to me

like, why not shit on the broader sovcit movement? expand your horizons. be more inclusive of who you shit on. I think both you and I will enjoy that practice quite a bit more
posted by paimapi at 12:09 PM on September 27, 2021 [9 favorites]


> It wasn't like you could find this stuff in the Loompanics catalog available as printed materials or booklets to mail away for or anything like that...

Sure it was.

If Loompanics didn't publish a book specifically addressing how to be a sovcit, it published dozens upon dozens of books on how to screw the system (including a book literally titled "How To Screw the System" and its sequel, "How To Screw the Post Office"), how to homestead, how to evade ID systems, how to participate in underground economies, and other topics that are intimately relevant to sovcit agendas. Loompanics' "101 Things To Do 'til the Revolution : ideas and resources for self-liberation, monkey wrenching, and preparedness" in particular has sections on participating in tax protests, creating fake businesses (to hide personal assets and etc), and provides a link to the Citizen's Rule Book, which is an instructive text on how to cite the Constitution to defend whatever illegal behavior you're engaging in at the moment. You can find many of Loompanics' books at openlibrary.org and archive.org.

None of this shit was hard to find at the time, predicated on having access to Factsheet Five or Usenet. But if you did, nascent forms of sovcit literature was going to cross your view whether you sought it out or not.
posted by at by at 12:13 PM on September 27, 2021 [12 favorites]


Oh, you could get the shitty self published mimeographs everywhere back in the 80s. Enough libraries had them that you could get them, through inter-library loan if necessary.

There are some downtrodden SovCit types, but they aren't the norm. Most of them are home owning white folks living in expensive neighborhoods who just don't want to pay taxes. Which is why it's so common to see them eventually get prosecuted for tax evasion and slapped with half million dollar judgements when they hire dipshit lawyers who bring SovCit chicanery into court, eventually getting themselves disbarred and occasionally imprisoned.
posted by wierdo at 12:40 PM on September 27, 2021 [6 favorites]


MetaFilter: you had to take the extra steps to take any of it seriously.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:43 PM on September 27, 2021 [2 favorites]


the sovcit thing also can overlap with native affairs...
posted by Clowder of bats at 12:44 PM on September 27, 2021


true enough, and I'm sure there are plenty of anti-social types that populate that movement. I still think it's highly unlikely that this will happen to you and me

If you have professional involvement with the court system for any length of time, as I've had, you're likely to run into one or another flavor of these folks. Just so you understand that I'm not engaged in weird paranoid fantasy. I agree that the events described here are fairly rare. I'm not sure that I regard people of any marginalized group who abuse others in a quest to get themselves that much closer to white patriarchal power as needing to be treated with all the same rhetorical care one would generally use otherwise, but it's a question of nuance.
posted by praemunire at 12:47 PM on September 27, 2021 [4 favorites]


It's worth noting that people from marginalized groups are sometimes the victims of sovereign citizen scammers. Like Shanetta Little, the subject of the article we're discussing.
“The Moors claim to be about Black liberation and opportunity, and uplifting Black people,” Ms. Little said in an interview seated on a staircase inside her house. “But he is literally oppressing me and taking what’s mine as a Black woman.”
It's particulary problematic when there's a form of affinity fraud going on. That doesn't seem to be the case here; Little is not confused about the bullshit-enrobed theft Jaleel Hu-El tried to perpetrate on her.
“He feels entitled that something I basically worked my whole life for, something I was deprived of my whole life, especially as a kid not having a safe space to call home,” Ms. Little said. “I deserve it, not because of ‘ancestral lands’ or some scam trying to be pulled. I deserve it because I earned it.”
It's notable that Ms. Little felt safe to call the police for help and that it ended in a good result for her. As we know that's far from always the case.
posted by Nelson at 12:57 PM on September 27, 2021 [10 favorites]


I'm reminded of that time a loanshark payday lender tried to claim immunity under laws that exempt tribal lenders from regulation. It didn't work, but you can see why "one weird trick" sovcit ideas might seem plausible. A lot of sovereign citizen stuff seems to be trying to lay claim to the weird immunity that corporations seem to have (after all, they can't be jailed and they can pick and choose which laws they operate under at least in some circumstances- eg corporations incorporate in Delaware, but pay taxes in Ireland, etc).
posted by BungaDunga at 1:05 PM on September 27, 2021 [5 favorites]


It's the Abracadabra theory of power: oblivious to the structures of power that enable the well-connected to bend the rules, instead it tries to rationalise it by assuming that the right incantation can let you get away with anything, no matter who you are. (And even if you don't believe it, you can find some rube who will, and will pay you good money to teach them the incantation.)
posted by acb at 1:11 PM on September 27, 2021 [13 favorites]


Cargo cult legalism- just say a bunch of important sounding law words until someone gets fed up with you. Then your rights have been violated.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 1:15 PM on September 27, 2021 [11 favorites]


I'm not even remotely surprised that they chose to try this scam on a Black woman. Predators look for optimal victims, and Black women are taken the least seriously by America's justice system.

Racism from Black people against Black people is incredibly depressing. I know why it exists but it still seems worse somehow than racism against Black people by white people.
posted by sotonohito at 1:18 PM on September 27, 2021 [5 favorites]


I've watched a bunch of the videos where some SovCit moron is "Travelling" down the highway and gets pulled over for not having plates and puts on the big show of not understanding why a cop is talking to him since he's not engaged in commerce or not being suspected of any crimes...

And my question is why/how? Both why they think this is going to work... and how they have managed to drive for any period of time without plates. I mean they have the ability to watch these videos too... so why do they think they are going to be any different. Basically waste around a half hour of time for some cop added to wasting more time of a bunch of other officers who will show up until a window gets broken and the SovCit starts screaming when lightly touched like he's being beaten to death.

And then I'm curious about the how they have ever been successful driving with no plates... Or are we always seeing the first time they think they've discovered the loophole and try it.
posted by cirhosis at 1:19 PM on September 27, 2021 [3 favorites]


Seems like turnabout would be fair play with these sovcits. If someone was more risk-seeking than me and wanted to fuck with one of them, he'd just walk into a Sovcit's home and say "I claim this property in the name of Freedonia, get the fuck out because I have a bigger gun than you, also this totally valid and definitely not fake title signed by Meriwether Lewis."
posted by adamrice at 1:48 PM on September 27, 2021 [3 favorites]


^ I can see how the "bigger gun than you" gambit might lead to unfortunate conclusions, however.
posted by elkevelvet at 1:56 PM on September 27, 2021 [3 favorites]


I'm not sure what side of this argument it puts me on to say that I don't get much satisfaction watching anybody in the couple linked YouTube lists getting tased, grappled, or otherwise experience violence.

Like, they're assholes, at least the ones you get to see before whatever violence erupts. Mostly. But then snuck in there are others. Maybe they were OPCALs but I'm not sure there's enough context to know for sure - do I just take the smug YouTuber's word for it?

So.. wherever that puts me in punching, I'd like to acknowledge that I find pretty much any state exercise of power over someone not actually being violent (just an asshole) hard to stomach.
posted by abulafa at 2:03 PM on September 27, 2021 [6 favorites]


And then I'm curious about the how they have ever been successful driving with no plates

i see this around my town on a weekly basis - the simple fact is, it takes awhile before a cop sees it and in the meantime, people get away with it - they must be - i wouldn't see it so much if they weren't
posted by pyramid termite at 2:05 PM on September 27, 2021 [3 favorites]


like the whole conservative racist motif of 'Black-on-Black' crime
Point taken, and that wasn’t my goal.

When I posted this, I deliberately left off the race issue because I was interested in this as a weird offshoot of the overall sovereign citizen movement. That is, weird because of the white supremicist origins of those ideas, and one could easily make connections to a history of colonialist Terra Nullis thinking.

I’ll reveal my bias, which is that I think the sovereign citizen types are assholes, which readers can probably guess. The connection to Black identity here is maybe new, but seemed like just another permutation of a more widespread asshole type of thinking, laying claim to other people’s property. (Although with house prices being what they are…)
posted by ec2y at 2:34 PM on September 27, 2021 [3 favorites]


The lengths that people will go to to show disdain for others is quite something.
posted by turbid dahlia at 2:55 PM on September 27, 2021 [1 favorite]


Cars go around without license plates for various reasons. I suspect it's more often because the plate was stolen or the temp tag fell off than because the driver is dabbling in sovereign citizenship. At least that's my guess about what's going on in my neck of the woods, where I see cars without plates fairly often but right wingers are mostly leaving the local government alone.
posted by at by at 4:02 PM on September 27, 2021 [1 favorite]


A few months ago while my dog was undergoing cancer treatment at a far suburban vet clinic, I came across Ms. Little's posts on TikTok. I had many hours to kill sitting in my car while my dog was treated so I went back to the beginning of her story and watched her tell it, 2 minutes at a time. So it's exciting to see that the NYT has picked up her story, because she has been trying to get media attention on it for months.

She explicitly points out that these guys were INCREDIBLY misogynistic and thinks that it's no coincidence that they picked a house purchased by a single Black woman. There are other factors too - she bought it as a foreclosure and there was some bank stuff with the construction loan to work out so it probably looked vacant for a while - but she's fairly clearly convinced that her being a single woman was part of it.

It's also a really scary story, and I have a hard time finding any well of sympathy for the people who did this. They were perfectly happy to leverage weird white guy podcasts/YouTube shows to defame Ms. Little and dox her and speculate about her finances to no end. If you're willing to spend that much time on TikTok I definitely recommend hearing the story directly from her. Her recap of what happens which ends up being like 50 parts or so starts here. There are of course more/later updates, but that's the initial story of what happened.
posted by misskaz at 4:13 PM on September 27, 2021 [20 favorites]


Last month a small group of Scots tried to take Edinburgh Castle, using a sovcit kind of argument. More Magna Carta, though, than the US versions.
posted by doctornemo at 4:30 PM on September 27, 2021 [1 favorite]


The Scottish SovCits failed to realize that the Magna Carta doesn't actually apply to Scotland, having been drafted nearly 500 years before the 1707 Acts of Union.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 4:53 PM on September 27, 2021 [9 favorites]


I was just glad the cops didn't show up and just shoot both of them. Thank god they did their jobs this time but it's not exactly a given that the cops will not just kick the door in and shoot anything that moves.
Yeah, things would sure be a lot better without cops. These scamsters, for example, would have been able to steal this lady’s house without interference.

I mean, really, what model of enforcement of laws other than some guys with the power to do stuff violently if necessary would prevent someone from just taking what they want—like someone’s house—possibly while hiding behind an inky cloud of abstruse legal doubletalk? I am a pretty liberal person, but I am amazed at the willingness to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I guess that’s how our society functions, though—we swerve violently from ditch to ditch.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 5:37 PM on September 27, 2021 [4 favorites]


Seems like turnabout would be fair play with these sovcits. If someone was more risk-seeking than me and wanted to fuck with one of them, he'd just walk into a Sovcit's home and say "I claim this property in the name of Freedonia, get the fuck out because I have a bigger gun than you, also this totally valid and definitely not fake title signed by Meriwether Lewis."

The main reason not to try this- other than their friends who also have guns- is that they'll engage in paper terrorism to make your life hell. They are very persistent.
posted by BungaDunga at 6:18 PM on September 27, 2021 [2 favorites]


I was just glad the cops didn't show up and just shoot both of them. Thank god they did their jobs this time but it's not exactly a given that the cops will not just kick the door in and shoot anything that moves.

This story took place in Newark, NJ, a city where the mayor and many others have worked, very, very hard to reform a wayward police department for over ten years. Perhaps it is a sign of progress that this woman felt confident enough to call the police.

Ras Baraka, the current mayor, gave a very interesting interview on the subject a few years ago, and a follow-up interview in 2020, after his re-election. Both interview videos, with links to text transcripts, are embedded in this PBS article: Can Police Reform Work?
posted by your postings may, in fact, be signed at 7:24 PM on September 27, 2021 [10 favorites]


I feel like this shit is only a half step away from general "Libertarianism". Once you believe that you deserve unfettered rights without responsibilities, any such justification is fair game. What maddens me is that while (almost) everyone recognizes that SovCit is bullshit, people in the US treat Libertarianism like a legitimate 3rd-way philosophy, instead of dangerous narcissism.
posted by Popular Ethics at 9:49 PM on September 27, 2021 [2 favorites]


Mod note: Let's drop the general discussion of police here, except as it pertains to this particular post / topic. Thanks!
posted by taz (staff) at 11:55 PM on September 27, 2021


What maddens me is that while (almost) everyone recognizes that SovCit is bullshit, people in the US treat Libertarianism like a legitimate 3rd-way philosophy, instead of dangerous narcissism.

It's probably its "Republicans who smoke pot" rep that has made people underestimate the danger of what US libertarianism (or at least the dominant strand of it) has become

The fact that the Sovereign Citizens, Qanon, and anti-vaxxer movements seem to coming together to form some dangerous trifecta is what gives me cause for concern.
posted by gtrwolf at 12:07 AM on September 28, 2021 [8 favorites]


Seems like turnabout would be fair play with these sovcits. If someone was more risk-seeking than me and wanted to fuck with one of them, he'd just walk into a Sovcit's home and say "I claim this property in the name of Freedonia, get the fuck out because I have a bigger gun than you, also this totally valid and definitely not fake title signed by Meriwether Lewis."

The main reason not to try this- other than their friends who also have guns- is that they'll engage in paper terrorism to make your life hell. They are very persistent.


Was about to say that I'd pay cash money to see two sovcits get into a dispute over who owns-er-I-mean-rightfully-claims a particular house or whatnot and end up getting into a paper-war with one another. (Methinks that said sovcit solidarity would fall apart if they happen to covet the same Thing). However, I realized that chances are good that said dispute/paper-war would end up being resolved with gunfire and casualties, so...
posted by gtrwolf at 12:16 AM on September 28, 2021 [1 favorite]


fwiw, @TheEpicDept: "Ammon Bundy comes out in support of BLM and defunding the police. Watch conservatives lose their minds in real time in the replies"
posted by kliuless at 12:48 AM on September 28, 2021 [3 favorites]


I think I like the term “OPCA Litigant” (maybe OPCAL?) as the broad term for these people. Moorish-Americans, of whatever approach, are a subset of that idea, without, as far as I can tell, new tactics beyond appealing to a 19th C treaty between the US and Morocco. I’ve watched a fair number of videos of OPCALs interacting with the police and courts, and they usually don’t end well for the litigant, but maybe those are the ones I’ve seen. They do waste a lot of court time, often delaying others waiting for fairly routine court appointments.

Add me to the list of those surprised and relieved that the stand off in Providence ended peacefully.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:28 AM on September 28, 2021


What does OPCA stand for in this context?
Searching on the acronym returns nothing relevant.
posted by cheshyre at 2:46 PM on September 28, 2021


OPCA = Organized Pseudolegal Commercial Argument [OPCA] Litigants

It’s a neologism from earlier in the thread.
posted by fimbulvetr at 3:06 PM on September 28, 2021 [1 favorite]


The Organized Pseudolegal Commercial Argument (OPCA) Litigant Case (2012) is a summary of Chief Justice John D. Rooke's excellent (and very, very long) decision, linked above.
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:11 PM on September 28, 2021 [2 favorites]


Deed theft is more widespread than you might think.
posted by sepviva at 5:21 PM on September 28, 2021 [1 favorite]


In my opinion, the media's disproportionate interest in Black sovereign citizens is simply a sly repackaging of conservative anti-Blackness and antifa/anarchist panic for a certain set of increasingly nationalistic and police-deferential post-Jan 6 liberals.
posted by dusty potato at 4:12 PM on September 29, 2021 [4 favorites]


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