Sovereign citizen movement partially coincident with militia movement
The sovereign citizen movement (also SovCit movement or SovCits) is a loose grouping of litigants, activists, tax protesters, financial scheme promoters, and conspiracy theorists who claim to be answerable only to their particular interpretations of the common law and believe that they are therefore not subject to any government statutes or proceedings, unless they consent to them. The movement, which appeared in the early 1970s, is American in origin and exists primarily in the United States, though it has expanded to other countries: the freeman on the land movement, an offshoot of the sovereign citizen movement with similar doctrines, emerged during the 2000s in Canada before spreading to other Commonwealth countries. In the United States the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) describes sovereign citizens as "anti-government extremists who believe that even though they physically reside in this country, they are separate or 'sovereign' from the United States."The sovereign citizen phenomenon is one of the main contemporary sources of pseudolaw: adherents to its ideology believe that courts have no jurisdiction over people and that the use of certain procedures (such as writing specific phrases on bills they do not want to pay) and loopholes can make one immune from government laws and regulations. They also regard most forms of taxation as illegitimate and reject the use of such things as Social Security numbers, driver's licenses, and vehicle registration. Sovereign citizen arguments have no basis in law and have never been successful in court.The movement may appeal to people facing financial or legal difficulties, or wishing to resist perceived government oppression, and looking for a mechanism that will solve their problems. As a result, it has grown significantly during times of economic or social crisis. Most schemes promoted by sovereign citizens involve means to avoid taxes, ignore laws, eliminate debts, or extract money from the government.American participants in the movement claim that the United States federal government is illegitimate. They argue the concept of individual sovereignty in opposition to the idea of "federal citizens," who, they say, have unknowingly forfeited their rights by accepting some aspect of federal law. Their foreign analogues hold similar beliefs about the government of their own countries. The movement can be traced back to American far-right groups like the Posse Comitatus and the constitutionalist wing of the militia movement. While the sovereign citizen movement was originally associated with white supremacism and antisemitism, it now attracts people of various ethnicities, including a significant number of African Americans. The latter sometimes belong to self-declared Moorish sects.The majority of sovereign citizens are not violent and many will use pseudolegal tactics in attempts to ignore certain rules, to get out of debt, or to avoid having to pay license fees and traffic tickets. However, the methods advocated by the movement are illegal and warrant prosecution; sovereign citizens notably adhere to the fraudulent schemes promoted by the redemption "A4V" movement. Many sovereign citizens have been found guilty of offenses such as tax evasion, hostile possession, forgery, threat against public officials, bank fraud or check fraud, as well as various degrees of traffic violations. Two of the most important crackdowns by U.S. authorities on sovereign citizen organizations have been the 1996 case of the Montana Freemen and the 2018 sentencing of "Judge" Bruce Doucette and his associates.Also, because some have engaged in armed confrontations with law enforcement, the FBI classifies "sovereign citizen extremists" as domestic terrorists. Terry Nichols, one of the perpetrators of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, subscribed to a variation of sovereign citizen ideology. In surveys conducted in 2014 and 2015, representatives of U.S. law enforcement ranked the risk of terrorism from the sovereign citizen movement higher than the risk from any other group, including Islamic extremists, militias, racist skinheads, neo-Nazis, and radical environmentalists. The New South Wales Police Force in Australia has also identified sovereign citizens as a potential terrorist threat.
partially overlapping with partially intersecting with partially sharing with partially matching with partially aligning with