Filibustering in the USA: Quintessentially American but Not Exclusively American

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Cinema, Comparative politics, National politics, Politics, Regional History

Anyone following contemporary US politics would likely be familiar with the term ‘filibuster’ – the spectacle conjured up is of a politician, bunkering down, holding the Senate floor to ransom in an endless monologue. The object of such stonewalling is to perversely delay the passage of some piece or other of legislation they are opposed to. Many movie fans of the “Golden Age of Hollywood” cinema will recall the idealistic young ‘greenhorn’ senator (played by James Stewart) engaging in an agonising 24-hour, non-stop talking marathon to try to block corrupt legislation being passed…the junior senator droning on about the Constitution and the Bible before dramatically collapsing, exhausted, on a ‘bed’ of protest letters and telegrams (Mr Smith Goes to Washington, 1939).

(Illustration: Diana Morales/MPA)

The right to ‘speechify’: Extraneous and unrelated to the legislative matter at hand
The principle on which filibustering is predicated—that any senator should have the right to speak as long as necessary—has seen real-life politicians resort to reading material just as prosaic as the fictional Mr Smith’s tedious ‘talkathon’. Louisiana demagogue Huey Long punctuated recitations of Shakespeare and passages from the Constitution with readings of his favourite recipes – especially fried oysters and pot-likkers. Ted Cruz read Dr Seuss to his daughters while trying to stymie Obamacare. The negativity of filibustering is neatly summarised in Senate historian Donald Ritchie’s definition: a filibuster “is a minority of Senators who prevent the majority from casting a vote, knowing otherwise the majority would prevail” [‘Whatever Happened to the Old-Fashioned Jimmy Stewart-Style Filibuster?’, (Aaron Erlich), www.hnn.us/].

⇩ Huey Long (Source: www.npr.com)

Reining in its excesses
The impediment of senatorial filibustering—legislation delayed is legislation denied—led to attempts to curb its disruptiveness. Under the Wilson presidency, the Senate accepted a rule whereby a filibuster could be ended on the achievement of a two-thirds majority vote. In DC-speak this device is called invoking ‘cloture’. In 1975 the requirement was amended, necessitating only a three-fifths majority vote (ie, 60 votes out of the 100 senators) [‘Filibuster and Cloture’, United States Senate, www.senate.gov].

The device of the political filibuster, though quintessentially American, is equally a feature of legislatures of other Western democracies such as the UK, Australia, France and Canada※…and it’s a practice that goes way back to Ancient Rome and Cato the Younger’s all-day talk fests in the Roman Senate circa 60 BCE [‘The art of the filibuster: How do you talk for 24 hours straight?’, (Jon Kelly), BBC News Magazine, 12-Dec-2012, www.bbcnews.com].

⇧ The filibuster phenomena continues to provide political cartoonists in the US with endless inspiration
(Image: www.davegranlund.com)

꧂ ꧂ ꧂  ꧁ ꧁ ꧁

The other type of filibuster  

The etymology of ’filibuster’ dates from the late 16th century, it is first used in the sphere of Spain’s imperial possessions in the “New World”. The Spanish term filibustero⍟ described the activities of freelance buccaneers and pirates who plundered the riches of Spanish America (typified by Sir Francis Drake and his raid on Panama in 1573). ’Filibuster’ re-emerges in 19th century United States to refer to North American adventurers and ‘chancers’ who organised schemes and private militias in an attempt to take over foreign countries and territories in Latin America [May, Robert E. “Young American Males and Filibustering in the Age of Manifest Destiny: The United States Army as a Cultural Mirror”.  The Journal of American History, vol. 78, no. 3, 1991, pp.857-886. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2078794. Accessed 10 Oct. 2020].

Pirate gold doubloons from the Americas ⇩

(Photo: NY Post)

Burr, godfather of US filibustering
The first tentative steps of US filibustering in the early period of the republic probably starts with Vice-President Aaron Burr in the first decade of the century. After Burr’s political career imploded in 1804 as a result of his killing of former Treasurer secretary Alexander Hamilton in a duel, the disgraced VP is believed to have hatched a plan to invade and seize Spanish territories in the west of the North American continent. The scheme was never implemented, however Burr was subsequently tried for treason but acquitted [‘The Burr Conspiracy’, National Counterintelligence Center, www.fas.org/]◰. Other filibusters followed Burr’s lead…early American adventurers like James Long and Augustus Magee formed expeditions to try to wrest control of Texas from the Spanish colonialists.

⇩ Aaron Burr (Image credit: Bettmann/Getty Images/HowStuffWorks)

Manifest Destiny west and south
The activity really took off after US territorial gains at Mexico’s expense stemming from the 1846-48 war and the discovery of gold in California. In the 1850s filibuster expeditions became a regular occurrence as ambitious US citizens, schemers and “soldiers of fortune”, launched raid and raid mainly on northern Mexico but also Central American lands in an attempt to appropriate territory for themselves or in the name of the US. Venezuelan-born Narcisco López was one of the first, trying unsuccessfully with the assistance of American southerners to capture Cuba from the Spanish on three separate occasions. Most of these filibusters were inspired by (or found legitimacy for their actions) in the emerging credo of Manifest Destiny, the belief that Americans possessed  a kind of “quasi-divine Providence” to expand into new territories (be they held by native populations or Mexicans), annex them and thus spread American democracy to them [‘Manifest destiny’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

 

۵〥 〥 〥 〥 〥 〥۵ 〥 〥 〥 〥 〥 〥۵〥 〥 〥 〥 〥 〥۵ 〥 〥 〥 〥 〥 〥۵

※ by no means is it confined to Western democracies

⍟ filibustero – from the Dutch vrijbuiter, meaning ‘freebooter’, ‘pirate’ or ‘robber’

◰ Burr was also largely responsible for the introduction into the Senate of the above form of filibuster, the procrastination ploy

 

An Aegean War of Words: Presaging Strife for the Old Enemies of the Eastern Mediterranean?

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, National politics, Political geography, Politics

Hostilities between the Greeks and the Turks go back to antiquity, at least to the Late Bronze Age if we accept Homer’s classic literary work The Iliad as evidence of an approximate historical actuality – although Homer referred to the mortal combatants in Asia Minor as Achaeans and Trojans. In the modern era the focus of tension between Greece and Turkey has centred on the Aegean Sea and the eastern Mediterranean…the violent division and disputed status of the island of Cyprus in 1974 has been the most dramatic consequence of the ongoing enmity between the two countries.

(Source: OU News)

Tensions rose again in July of this year – Turkish president Recep Erdoğan dispatched the research vessel Oruc Reis along with a formidable military escort into Greek territorial waters to do seismic surveys of the region in search of gas deposits. Greek protests against Ankara’s territorial incursions being in breach of international law was met with “bellicose rhetoric” and threats by Erdoğan, and the tiny Greek island of Kastellorizo became a hotspot for the dispute. Other incidents followed, in August a Greek frigate collided with one of the Turkish military escorts in the vicinity of Crete, and another Turkish vessel started drilling off the coast of Northern (Turkish-controlled) Cyprus [Turkey-Greece Relations: Why are the two countries locked in a dispute over drilling rights?’, (David Walsh), Euronews, 26-Aug-2020, www.euronews.com].

What accounts for all the recent turmoil and agitation in the region is the discovery a decade ago of natural gas in the eastern Mediterranean. Both Turkey and Greece are eager to exploit this lucrative source of energy and revenue. The problem for Turkey is the myriad EEZs (exclusive economic zones) relating to the numerous Greek islands in the Aegean which blocks Turkey’s scope of activity. The problem for Greece (and other onlookers within the EU) is that Turkey does not accept the legality of Greek sovereignty over the islands and their proximity to the Turkish mainland, its perennial bugbear.

Historic grievances
Old sores have been opened for Turkey and its right wing president Erdoğan, who cite the unjust treaties (as they view it) of Sèvres and Lausanne following WWI as retarding Turkeys’s capacity to explore and access natural resources of the eastern Mediterranean. Ankara maintains that the treaties left Turkey “landlocked despite (having) 8,000km of coastline”, that the maritime rights handed the Greek islands in the Aegean by the 1923 treaty box in Turkey from accessing large areas of sea, which it maintains it has a de jure right to❋. Erdoğan, imbued with the “spirit of the Ottoman sultanate”, has threatened to “tear up the immoral maps and documents” in disregard of the International Court of Justice.  [‘How a rush for Mediterranean gas threatens to push Greece and Turkey into war’, (Patrick Wintour), The Guardian, 11-Sep-2020, www.theguardian.com; ‘Tiny island Kastellorizo at centre of growing confrontation between Greece and Turkey’, (Benjamin Brook), News, 14-Sep-2020, www.new.com.au].

Turkey’s “Blue Homeland adventurism” and ‘maximalist’ v ‘minimalist’ island continental shelves
Railing loudly against the ‘invasion’ of Greece of its ‘sacred’ islands has been a long-standing article of faith for Turkish politicians…Turkish expansionist propaganda has characterised the Greek island-dotted Aegean as its “Blue Homeland” (a doctrine known the Turks as Mavi vatan) in defiance of the Lausanne Treaty [‘Blue Homeland: The Heated Politics Behind Turkey’s New Maritime Strategy’, (Ryan Gingeras), War On The Rocks, 02-Jun-2020, www.warontherocks.com]. Turkey’s counter-argument to Greece’s is that “Greek islands far from the mainland and closer to Turkey cannot have a continental shelf” (continental shelves equate with national mainlands). It also notes that Greek islands such as Meis and Kastellorizo lie a mere two kilometres from the Turkish mainland but many hundreds of kilometres from the Greek coastline— making a nonsense, they argue, of Greece’s “maximalist continental shelf claims”◰ [‘Turkey-Greek tensions escalate over Turkish Mediterranean drilling plans’, BBC News, 25-Aug-2020, www.bbc.com; ‘Turkey ignores Greece’s dispute, moves on with Mediterranean seismic surveys’, (Onur Ant), World Oil, 22-Jul-2020, www.worldoil.com; Walsh]. The question of whether the maritime areas (the continental shelves) of islands should be equal to that of mainlands (Greece’s position) or not is a thorny international one, only resolvable by complex ICJ arbitration – something Ankara would be reluctant to undertake (Wintour).

A ”Pax Mediterranea“ excluding Turkey
Athens responded to Ankara’s aggressive steps predictably by calling it tantamount to “illegal gunboat diplomacy”. Greece has actively pursued cooperation initiatives with other eastern Mediterranean rim countries including Egypt to jointly exploit gas reserves which by-passes Turkey (eg, the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum). Athens’ efforts to exclude and isolate Turkey have secured the willing participation of France. The EU, at the urgings of France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, imposed a sanction on Turkey for its aggressive behaviour in the Aegean. Ankara’s response to the attempted snooker has been to broker an agreement with the Libyan Government of National Accord to establish its own EEZ in the Mediterranean between the two countries. The EU have condemned the arrangement as infringing the maritime rights of Greece and Cyprus, and not complying with the Law of the Sea ◰. Turkey’s initiative is “a clear signal to other coastal states in the region that the gas game will not be played without Ankara’s consent” [‘Why did Turkey sign a maritime deal with Libya?’, TRT, 10-Dec-2019, www.trtworld.com].

Kastellorizo 🔻

For the time being tensions over the Kastellorizo hotspot in the Dodecanese islands have eased, President Erdoğan has pulled back its seismic survey vessels to the Turkish mainland. But with Erdoğan defiantly vowing to assert Turkey’s rights in the sea and Greece unwilling to make concessions to its traditional foe, the chance remains that an isolated incident may escalate into something more serious in the foreseeable future◘ [Turkish President Erdogan blinks first in eastern Mediterranean standoff’, (Menekse Tekyak), Arab News, 13-Sep-2020, www.arabnews.com].

🔺 Erdoğan visiting Hagia Sophia in July

(Photo: Turkish Presidential press office via Agence France–Presse — Getty Images)

Postscript: Ankara’s intransigent view of the ‘foreign’ Greek islands within the “Blue Homeland” remains the central stumbling block to security in the region. There are other recent developments in Turkey that have added to the tense trans-Aegean climate. President Erdoğan, always keen to show his Islamist credentials, in July restored Hagia Sophia—until 1453 a symbol of Christian Orthodoxy—to its former status as a functioning mosque, drawing criticism from many quarters including Greece, the Vatican, other international ecclesiastical councils and UNESCO. A second, current source of tension with its neighbour to the west derives from Erdoğan recently deciding to allow large numbers of refugees and migrants to flood into Europe via the Evros River border and Greece (BBC News).

⥽ ⥼⥼⥽⥽⥼ ⥽ ⥼ ⥽ ⥼ ⥽ ⥼ ⥽ ⥼ ⥽ ⥼ ⥽ ⥼⥼⥽⥽⥼ ⥽ ⥼ ⥽ ⥼ ⥽ ⥼ ⥽ ⥼ ⥽ ⥼ ⥽ ⥽ ⥼⥼⥽⥽⥼ ⥽ ⥼⥼⥽⥽⥼ ⥽ ⥼ ⥽ ⥼⥽ ⥽

❋   Erdoğan and the Turks argue that the 1923 Lausanne Treaty allowed Greece and Cyprus to steal Turkey’s continental shelf (Brook). The letter of the law supports Greece, however Turkey’s frustrations are understandable given that such a large swath of its coastline is punctuated with a multitude of Greek EEZs

◰ which Turkey continues to refuse to ratify

◘  most observers feel that despite Erdoğan’s bellicosity, Turkey is unlikely to declare war any time soon, given it is militarily overextended in Syria and Libya and the current state of the Turkish economy [‘Turkish-Greek relations tense amid fears of military showdown’, Arab News, 13-Jun-2020, www.arabnews.com]

Posse Power: The Alternate America of Constitutional Sheriffs and Posse Comitatus

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Comparative politics, Inter-ethnic relations, Politics, Racial politics, Regional History

Before the Sovereign Citizen Movement came along (see preceding blog), there was an earlier fringe organisation in the US, Posse Comitatus, which mined the same ideological/conspiracy terrain and employed similar disruptive tactics against federal authority. Emerging in the late 1960s, Posse Comitātūs (Latin for “force of the county”), sprouting anti-Semitic hate speech and uncompromising anti-government dogma and railing against federal taxes, appealed to a range of conservative and reactionary fringe groups — including the Tax Protest Movement, 2nd Amendment Absolutists, Christian Identity adherents and other ”white WASPs”, and ’preppers’ or survivalists. The driving impetus for Posse Comitatus anti-came largely from one William Potter Gale who took over the movement from its founder Henry Lamont Beach⁕. Gale, a self-styled minister, preached retributive violence against US public officials who violate the law and the Constitution (Gale’s “sound bite”: they should be hung by the neck at noon at the nearest intersection of town) [‘Too Weird for The Wire’, (Kevin Carey), Washington Post, May/June/July 2008].

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⟰ WP Gale, Posse Comitatus ideologue and leader

The trans-Atlantic sheriff
Posse Comitatus drew on an earlier institution in American history, the office of the sheriff. This office deriving from 9th century Anglo-Saxon England—the word ‘sheriff, meaning literally the “shire guardian”—was exported to England’s American colonies where the sheriff of a county came to be directly elected as a constitutional officer holding great autonomy and independence in his position [‘Sheriffs and the posse comitatus’, (David Kopel), The Washington Post, 15-May-2014, www.washingtonpost.com].

⟱ Office of the sheriff had its genesis during the rule of Alfred the Great in Wessex
(Source: www.historytoday.com)

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After America became a republic, the institution of sheriff retained its status as the grass-roots hub of local law enforcement, although over time regional variations emerged. In the more densely populated North-East of the country the creation of urban police forces eroded the office’s power, but not so in the South and the West, where the preponderance of larger rural counties meant the sheriff remained a key force in tying together isolated communities. Here the overriding perception commonly is that ”the sheriff in his county is more powerful than the president”§ [‘The Renegade Sheriffs‘, (Ashley Powers), The New Yorker, 23-Apr-2018, www.newyorker.com].

An alternate history of US law: Common law trumps statutory law
Posse Comitatus doctrine affirms the office of sheriff as the truly ‘legitimate’ arm of law enforcement in the land. In the minds of its adherents, it authorises the office-holder to determine local laws based on judicial decisions of county courts. Thus it holds that common law always takes precedence over statute or written law [‘Posse Comitatus’ (organization), Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

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“Constitutional sheriffdom”  
Influenced by Posse Comitatus and other extremist anti-federal government groups a body of sheriffs in the US have gone further to enunciate their local authority over the law. These hardliners in 2011 formed themselves into an association of ‘constitutional’ sheriffs (Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association or CSPOA)✪. CSPOA’s position echoes that of Posse Comitatus  –  the sheriff represents the highest authority in the county (Powers). In the early 2010s CSPOA mobilised sheriffs to take a very strong stand against President Obama’s attempts to establish gun control legislation [‘Line in the Sand’, (Mark Potok & Ryan Lenz), Southern Poverty Law Center, (Summer Issue, 13-Jun-2016), www.splcenter.org]. 

Posse Comitatus stoking the Midwest farm crisis
A farm recession in the American Midwest in the early 1980s, resulting in economic ruin, bank foreclosures, etc., “created the conditions necessary for the (Posse Comitatus) doctrine to attract significant support” among desperate and disenchanted farmers⊞. Gale’s acolytes “crisscrossed the region explaining to farmers and ranchers (that they) were under no obligation to repay overdue loans or peacefully accept the foreclosure of their property” [‘Posse Comitatus’, Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, www.plainshumanities.unl.edu]. Some unscrupulous peddlers of Posse Comitatus ideology even sold the hard-hit farmers bogus prepackaged legal defences to circumvent their financial obligations (Carey).


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(Source: Iowa PBS)

Followers of the Posse Comitatus manifesto often refused to pay taxes, obtain driver’ licences or pay vehicle insurance counterfeiting (steming from a denial of US fiat money) and other acts of federal disobedience. Posse Comitatus groups set up “common-law courts and juries”✦ to try public officials who had earned their enmity. Some members of Posse Comitatus groups, like today’s Sovereign Citizens, also engaged in more lethal actions. In 1983 one Posse member killed federal marshals and a local sheriff.

Continuing ideological after-effects
By the late 1980s with William Gale’s death, Posse Comitatus activism ebbed away. The movement’s decline has been attributed to a lack of effective leadership. Nonetheless the attraction of its ideology to disaffected fringe elements lies in the durability of its receptive message to many  [‘The Anti-Government Movement Guidebook’, (1999, National Center for State Courts), www.famguardia.org]. Gale’s inflammatory ideas “gave people on the paranoid edge of society a collective identity” (Carey). The Posse Comitatus ideology held the appeal it did, according to Daniel Levitas, because Gale forged an American-sounding ideology which married together appeals to anti-Semitism, anti-communism, White Supremacy and the sovereignty of the people [‘The Terrorist Next Door’ (Daniel Levitas), New York Times, 17-Nov-2002, www.nytimes.com].

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Endnote: The archetype of the posse in the old west 
In countless Hollywood western movies the standard trope shows sheriffs raising posses to apprehend fugitives or to marshal back-ups to defend a community or town under threat. This was not merely Hollywood mythology but did occur. On the western frontier during the 19th century the sheriff had the authority to command a posse. Posse service was a right and a duty of responsible citizens of the day (Kopel). The reality behind the Hollywood depiction of posses is that they “routinely overstepped their quasi-legal function and were themselves responsible for mob violence” [‘Hate Normalized: Posse Comitatus’, Siouxland Observer, 30-Apr-2018, www.siouxlandobserver.blogspot.com].

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⟰ Former Arizona sheriff, Richard Mack, a co-founder of CSPOA (Source: www.azcenter.com)

Postscript: ”An increasingly central role in partisan battles”
The Marshall Project has identified at least 60 sheriffs across the US that are currently using the wide discretionary powers they have to oppose state government-imposed restrictions due to COVID-19. This has meant not enforcing pandemic safety measures such as stay-at-home orders, the wearing of masks, business closures, etc. [‘The Rise of the Anti-Lockdown Sheriffs’, (Maurice Chammas), The Marshall Project, 15-Aug-2020, www.themarshallproject.org].

↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼
⁕  a far-right activist who had been a member of the “Silver Shirts” (American neo-Nazis) in the 1930s

§ the familiar image again courtesy of Hollywood is of the racist, tyrannical southern sheriff who rides roughshod over everyone, personified in the film In the Heat of the Night

✪ the idea of constitutional sheriffs was Gale’s, first proposed in the 1970s

⊞ by the late Seventies there was 80 or more distinct Posse Comitatus groups in the plains states, with Wisconsin in particular a ‘hotbed’ (‘Anti-Government Movement’)

✦ the common law courts, together with Sovereign Citizens, have been described as ”the direct ideological descendants of Posse Comitatus” (‘Anti-Government Movement’)

“We’re All Individuals!”: “Living Persons” in the Bubble of their Own “Sovereign Nation“ Speak Out

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Inter-ethnic relations, National politics, Politics, Popular Culture, Public health,, Society & Culture

Who’d have thought that it’d take a pandemic to bring to light just how many cynics and crazies are out there? Before COVID-19 we only had the climate change deniers and the occasion conspiracy peddler to cope with. Since the virus first descended, coronavirus deniers have been coming out of the woodwork, a contagion not confined to the USA.

Human rights or human life?  
Recently, a new phenomena has popped up on social media and TV screens – from the “Republic of Covididiocy”. Provocateurs have taken to filming themselves confronting police and retail shop personnel during  lockdown – provocatively refusing to wear masks, not giving their personal details and declaring loudly that their human rights were being transgressed. The extreme position adopted by these protesters connects them to conspiratorial views held by fringe extremists in the US✱.

Conspiracy heaven ⍌

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A universal scofflaw mindset
These individuals are part of a loosely-organised movement of people who call themselves “Sovereign Citizens” (or “Sov-Cits” or just ‘Sovereigns’, for short), whose purpose is to assert some set of existing natural rights which, they purport, places them outside of the jurisdiction of the government and the law. In a climate of pandemic-induced restrictions many of these people may just be (over)reacting to the state’s clampdown on their freedom of movement and activity, a knee-jerk libertarian impulse. However the concept of Sovereign Citizenry long pre-dates the current pandemic as a conspiracy-driven stratagem, with its origins, unsurprisingly, found in America.

The world according to Sovereign Citizens
“The Sovereign Citizens Movement promotes the tantalising fantasy that anyone can declare himself or herself above and beyond the jurisdiction of the government by invoking arcane legal terminology”.
~ Southern Poverty Law Center

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(Source: www.radicalisationresearch.org)

In the 1990s the SCM picked up the earlier Posse Comitatus movement’s baton of unrelenting enmity towards the federal government, portraying themselves as the “true defenders of the Constitution”. Sov-Cit beliefs rest on the same premise as that established by Posse Comitatus. They believe that the US government is illegitimate…it is, they say, a corporation that  has duped ‘natural’ citizens (read “Sovereign Citizens”) into an unlawful contract. Sovereign theorists cite the 14th Amendment in 1868 and FD Roosevelt’s 1933 abandonment of the gold standard as a back-up to the paper currency as historical ‘proof’ of federal deception.

Gurus and methods
The SCM is a loosely organised group of litigants, commentators, tax protesters/deniers and financial scheme promoters…leadership comes from “redemption gurus” who advise Sovereigns to use ‘legal’ phrases to remove themselves from the jurisdiction of government (BBC).

Prison recruitment, outreach and education  Gurus and other Sovereign ‘mentors’ incarcerated for fraud or for not paying taxes have found prison an ideal environment to indoctrinate and recruit new adherents. Imprisoned drug dealers and embezzlers were particularly willing recruits to the cause, jumping at the chance to put Sov-Cit theories into place in the hope of getting out of jail, or to retaliate against the public officials and law enforcement officers who put them there! The pseudo-legal strategy employed by Sov-Cits (again following Posse Comitatus) is based on the ludicrous “Theory of Redemption”—a secret (and mythical) fund of money created for everyone at birth by the US government—which Sov-Cits can supposedly redeem or claim to pay debts [‘Sovereign Citizens Movement Resurging’, Southern Poverty Law Center, Spring Issue 2009, 26-Feb-2009, www.splcenter.org].

“American National”, the preferred nomenclature for Sovereigns  ⍌

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Before the advent of the internet training of Sov-Cits took place at seminars held at remote extremist compounds. Now recruits learn via online videos and forums (like You Tube and MySpace) which disseminate SCM doctrine and tactics. Some Sovereign groups sell booklets like “The Prison Packet” which purports to guide inmates towards the realisation of their freedoms. Religious outreach, through the agencies of numerous Christian fundamentalist fringe organisations in the US, is another avenue for recruiting Sov-Cits into the fringe fold (Southern Poverty Law Center).

Paper terrorism
Sovereigns employ what are saturation methods, submitting countless bogus court filings containing hundreds of pages which are virtually indecipherable. The purpose? “To punish, to harass and mislead public officials”. The paper terrorism may take the form of elaborate scams, the generation of fake letters of credit or tax forms, frivolous law suits or other faux legal documents [‘Understanding the sovereign citizen movement: a guide for corrections professionals’, The Free Library, www.thefreelibrary.com/].

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Law-enforcement officers in the Sovereigns’ cross-hairs
Some Sov-Cits are out and out “con artists”, transparently pure 100% charlatan, but as Michael Barkun warns, others are politically-motivated anti-government extremists⧆…and dangerous! In 2010 a Sov-Cit duo, father and son, killed local police officers in West Memphis, Arkansas. A New Hampshire shootout in 1997 resulted in the death of five people including the Sovereign provocateur acting as a “lone wolf”❂.  Cop killing by Sovereigns is not confined to America – in 2016 a Reichsbürger, the German version of the Sov-Cit, shot dead a policeman in that country. The FBI has declared some Sovereign Citizens to be domestic terrorists. Often inmates utilise the Sov-Cit strategies from within the prison system to carry out protracted vendettas against judges, IRS officials, prosecutors and local sheriffs (Southern Poverty Law Center).

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(Source: www.bbc.com/)

The lengths a Sov-Cit will go to
Your dedicated Sovereign is not adverse to creating fake car licence plates or printing his or her own currency and then trying to pass it off as real money. One SCM provocateur in Florida, in acrimonious conflict with his local Bank of America branch, sent it a bogus foreclosure notice and even barricaded the branch during opening hours (SPLC).

Francis: “It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression”
Reg: “Its symbolic of his struggle against reality”
~ Monty Python’s Life of Brian

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Sovereigns don’t believe they need to hold a licence in order to drive (or to fish for that matter). When stopped by police patrols they have been known to deny that they are driving and affirm rather that they are in fact merely travelling⚅ (Dr Kaz Ross, interview, ABC Radio). And travelling, Sovereigns insist, is “a God-given right”. Some Sovereigns go even further than just mouthing the mantra that they are outside of federal jurisdiction, proclaiming to be citizens of other entities, eg, the Montana Freemen, the “Republic of Texas” (The Free Library)✫.

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Anti-government protest in Oregon ⍓
(Source: http://m.dk.com)

Endnote: Sovereign Citizens are one of a panoply of Alt-Right, conspiracy-obsessed fringe hate groups in the US which might loosely be subsumed under the umbrella term “patriot movement”. There is a lot of blurring of the lines between SCM, QAon, the Three Percenters, the Boogaloo Bois, the Proud Boys, the Anti-Vaxxer groups and various others of a similarly contrarian ilk. In particular, the Sov-Cits’ emphasis on the duality of US citizenship echoes the philosophy of another group – the Freemen-on-the-Land movement. The latter proclaim that “with special knowledge and careful language, we can circumvent these laws and regulations and live freely as an alternative vision of ourselves under our own ‘natural‘ laws” (a virtual identikit image of the SCM’s credo and tactics) [’What is the ‘sov cit movement?’, BBC News, 05-Aug-2020, www.bbc.com; ’The seriously weird belief of Freeman on the Land”, (Shelley Stocken),  News, 09-Jul-2016, www.news.com.au].

xxxx

PostScript: Black separatism
On the surface you might think Sov-Cits would be an exclusively Caucasian phenomena, given its links to White Supremacist outfits like Christian Identity. But there is an African-American separatist subset that adheres to the Sovereign Citizens credo. Given their disproportionate representation in US prisons, Black inmates not surprisingly have been attracted to the SCM ideology. A clique of African-American drug-dealers on trial for murder in the 2000s in Baltimore employed its obstructionist ploys to delay proceedings for years [‘Too Weird for The Wire’, (Kevin Carey), Washington Post, May/June/July 2008].

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✱ the great danger here “is when fringe beliefs and proponents begin to slip into the mainstream”, eg, President Trump’s spruiking of alleged coronavirus cures which are not scientifically proven and possibly harmful, ‘The threads that don’t connect: Covid gives Australian conspiracy theorists a home’, (Michael McGowan), The Guardian, 02-Aug-2020, www.theguardian.com.au]
⊞ a right to hold possession of property owned by another until they discharge the debt (www.lexico.com/)
⧆ Barkun describes them as “a stubbornly resilient sub-culture, a community of the alienated”
❂ many Sovereign groups are thought to be aligned with militia groups
⚅ ‘driving’, they assert, is what a truck driver or a taxi driver does for a living
✫ it’d be stating the obvious to say that Sovereigns have a cockeyed notion of the rule of law, one based on the false premise that an individual can choose which law they consent to, and which they don’t (SPLC)