So rather than hijack this thread I’d though I’d pit this separately. What actually bugs me about the Sovereign Citizen movement is not the utter batshittery of it all, at least not just that.
It’s this… if you believe the state has no moral standing to impose its wishes on private citizens that is not in and of itself a batshit political belief. People have been making the point that the power of the state only comes from a monopoly of violence, not from any inherent right to rule, and is hence illegitimate, for centuries. You may not agree or consider it a practical means of running a country but it’s coherent relatively well thought out political system, with a body of serious political work that go back to at least the 1800s (Godwin, Stirner, Bakunin, etc). Not that any of that is going to help you when the state decides to use it’s monopoly on violence to take that 1000 bucks for displaying a fake license plate, of course.
Given that why not just own it? You’re an anarchist, accept that fact. Instead, oh no, you need to add multiple layers of the most insane (literally insane, like it sounds like the product of a schizoid break) nonsensical bullshit imaginable, with secret constitutions that need special code words to be activated. None of which fundamentally changes your “political program”, in as much as ‘not taking it from the man’ can be considered a political program. It’s just now it sounds completely deranged and like nothing that has been part of any real or proposed political system ever in history.
As to why they go the “batshit” route rather than the “I’m an anarchist” route, the answer IMO is simple.
These are simple people, the common clay of the West. You know, morons.
They have bought, quite literally with cash money, a book or video of bad advice that appeals to their baser selfish nature. Any thought by them or by you that this is a political act and political science or political philosophy has anything to do with it is laughable.
The shitty advice sells because it appeals to the same emotions as any other CT theory. Namely the fantasy feeling that the customer mark is smarter than almost everyone and more informed than almost everyone, rather than the truth that the mark is both stupider and more ignorant than almost everyone. And the fantasy belief that they (the mark) can monetize their knowledge into sweet sweet lucre and freedom(!) by avoiding taxes, government fees, etc. in reality that lasts just awhile until caught. While meanwhile the CT vendors monetize the marks into real sweet sweet lucre and the real freedom that buys.
And in fact lots of this crap is sold by the same CT-mongers as peddle CTs about everything from Bigfoot to Big Pharma. The stupid secret knowledge about gold fringe or whatever isn’t a bug. It’s the key feature that sells the product.
There have been in fact a few SovCits that were really about anarchy by that name. The original Sagebrush Rebellion folks mostly. Nowadays the vast majority of SovCit believers just bought the T-shirt (and video) and are philosophically just along for the ride.
I think the issue is that they don’t actually reject authority, just the current state. They still feel the need to appeal to some authority to establish that the current state is illegitimate. The immorality is not sufficient.
They also tend to not actually think there’s anything wrong with everyone else still living under this illegitimate state. They are just looking for a way to overcome their lot in life, not make the world better. It’s about being in on the conspiracy, not thwarting it.
You know those clickbait links where they say something like, “This one weird weight-loss trick your doctor doesn’t want you to know about!” It’s just the legal version of that, and instead it’s the government that “doesn’t want you to know about it”.
One thing that I find annoying/amusing is that if you spend just 10 seconds thinking about it, you’d realize that even if Sovereign Citizens were correct, it wouldn’t matter. Who cares if drivers’ licenses are unconstitutional, or if you can’t be prosecuted in a courtroom that has the wrong flag? (Both of which are wrong of course.) Even if you’re right, if the authorities don’t know better, it isn’t going to help you. Whether they are right or not, they have the power and you don’t, and you can feel as righteous as you want as they toss you in jail and/or confiscate your wealth. The fact is that in the real world, you either do what those in power tell you or face the consequences.
I think that for the most part, it’s just the same mindset behind ancient astronaut theory, flat Earth beliefs, and all those other nutty ideas that people hold on to. They like to think that they have some special knowledge that other people don’t, and it makes them feel better about their lives. It doesn’t matter how poor they are, it doesn’t matter that they’ve made bad decisions or are unsatisfied with their lot in life. At least they aren’t one of these sheep that live their lives with blinders on.
They don’t go full anarchist because that takes effort. It’s difficult to do so. It’s a lot easier to change your beliefs than change your life. These aren’t people looking to actually put in effort, for the most part. They still want to enjoy the luxuries of the modern world, they just want to do so with the extra spice that comes along with having something that others don’t have; a special kind of knowledge beyond the average person. (In their eyes.)
Think about how a Sovereign Citizen operates. They aren’t going to build a bunker in rural Montana and live off the land and off the grid. They just don’t want to pay taxes or renew their car registration or follow the same rules other people do. They are specifically taking the easiest path that they see, because everyone else is a chump following illegitimate rules that hold them back. They do things that are easy, that’s what they want. Laziness is generally baked right into the “movement”.
Actually it’s usually JUST this. What you will will find, in the great majority of cases, is that people sucked into the Sovcit movement are people who have had a lot of minor legal or governmental troubles in their life, or problem with other pseudogovernmental entities:
Local or federal tax problems
Child custody or support payment failures
Driver’s license issues
Issues with municipal government
Minor petty crimes snowballing into worse things because of a failure to meet legal obligations
Issues with banks
Losing a civil suit or suits
Problems accessing government benefits
They are people who just cannot quite get their shit together, but who aren’t quite sufficiently fucked up to actually be doing fifteen years for a major felony or severely fucked up on narcotics to the point of caring about nothing else.
The Sovcit industry preys on these people, because they are a perfect combination of ignorant and desperate. The Sovcit siren song is “All these problems that seem totally impossible? Here is a magic key that solves them all.” It’s not about having a problem with the concept of the state. It’s that the State has a problem with them.
Anarchists know it would take either a revolution or an overwhelming tidal wave of civil disobedience to abolish the state. The SovCits seem to believe that somehow the state can be deflated like a balloon by invoking the magic words, like Nosferatu vanishing in a puff of smoke with the first ray of dawn. However cruel, despotic or unnecessary government is, the Anarchists at least don’t believe that government authority is a legalistic fiction.
Being an honest anarchist means you’re accepting a huge amount of responsibility for yourself. You have to manage everything, and/or you have to be a hermit. What they want is get-out-of-jail-free card and free gold from the systems they say they detest, but still want to be able to take full advantage of.
So instead of an uncrowned lonely kingdom of anarchy, they want to be an entitled leech while sneering at all ignorant plebs.
The sovereign citizens’ unexamined premise is that everyone in the current government is totally faithful to the secret rules and entirely trustworthy regarding them. It’s not government that they misunderstand - it’s human nature; the idea that the people whom the SovCits claim have hijacked the machinery of society will immediately about-face if the right words are used is mindboggingly naive. We’d be better off calling them “Government-Worshippers” - it’s more accurate than Sovereign Citizen.
A significant number of SovCits seem to think that they can pay all their bills by signing a note telling the party owed to take it out of the government’s secret fund. Never mind the contention that all government is a scam, they seem convinced that all money other than gold and silver is a scam. To someone whose grasp of economics is as weak as their grasp of political theory, this can look very attractive.
I despise this group because they are killers, literal killers. They have murdered people in the name of their own supposed mastery of the magic words. Also, they are not trying to get out of anything. They’re looking for a confrontation. These idiots we see on Youtube getting arrested are no different than an adolescent who abuses and kills animals. They will escalate if they are not stopped. In fact, they have escalated to murder already.
I don’t think that’s always the case, but I think in many cases that is true.
I’ve known people who at least subscribe to some SovCit teachings (and word of advice, don’t debate them unless you are a masochist) and they weren’t hoping to get a chance to take on the government like some kind of crusader. They just thought they didn’t have to follow certain rules.
But obviously some people are like that, I’ve seen the videos too.
In every case, that’s what they are looking for. The result certainly isn’t what the lower-wattage sc think it will be, but they definitely want a confrontation to show how much smarter than others they are.
Maybe I should clarify. The interaction they have with you is also a confrontation. The extremists, of course, are the ones that hit the news or are mocked online. As you said, debating them is masochistic for the non-sc. That’s because they are looking for a confrontation and the non-sc is giving them a platform for it.
Maybe I should say it’s a matter of degree, but it’s still a confrontation.
I guess you could then say that about anyone who holds a non-mainstream position. People who believe that cell phones cause cancer or that 9/11 is an inside job will generally be glad to explain why they’re right and you’re wrong. A person taking a contrary position (contrary to general thought) is going to be contrarian by nature.
But yeah, most people aren’t hoping to clash with the authorities over their position unless they’re an extremist. (And this goes for any conspiracy theorist, not just SovCits, but it just happens that the particular CT that a SovCit believes in is more likely than most to bring them into such a conflict if they act on it.)
I think this might be key. In their dealings with the government, somebody came to them and said a whole bunch of goobledy gook that resulted in their losing their house. This was confusing and humiliating. But now thanks to what they read on the interwebs, they now have the upper hand. They have all the special knowledge that the authorities don’t, so now the authorities are the ones who have to do what they say, except, of course as BigT pointed out, the authorities still have all of the power, so it still doesn’t go well for them.
As others have said, the difference between an anarchist and a SovCit is that the SovCit still wants the overall system of government and law to remain as intact as possible for everyone else, but not for them. They don’t want anarchy or lawlessness/crime run amok.
They want everyone else to pay taxes so they can still have highways, infrastructure, running water, safe neighborhoods, but for them to be exempt.
So I think this is the key point. For all the talk of the illegitimacy of government in the SovCit movement what they actually don’t believe in is the government using its monopoly of violence to take their money. They have no problem with the government using its monopoly of violence to say arrest illegal immigrants*, or abortion providers.
Whereas self identified anarchists I know will admit that if they are getting rid of the stuff they don’t like about the government (police, army, CIA) they are also getting rid of the bits they do like (post office, social security, EPA) even if they are a bit wishy washy on how this new anarchist system of non government will replace the functionality of the bits they do like.
as an aside how do the SovCit brigade justify being anti immigration (they are AFAIK) I mean if the government is a scam why should it matter if your scam government is the US government or the Mexican government? Surely only your true identity as a sovereign citizen is all that matters? I guess that is an advantage of utter insane nonsensical political positions, they don’t have to make sense or be consistent