Sovereign citizen movement

Brian Gaar, did you get that email from Xbox or not?

That's Sovereign Citizen Brian Gaar to you, law dog.

So first of all, first of all, address me by my proper title.

[laughs]

I'm someone who serves those people, hopefully in the service of wonderful, genius, beautiful hearts like Ava, Alex, and Christian.

And yet the work itself I think completely complicates that mission statement, uh, especially in this film, Sovereign, where you play the father, um, and father to a son as the two of you are part of this Sovereign Citizens movement, which leads the two of them to clash with courts, local police, and other arms of the state that Jerry, uh, renders illegitimate and unconstitutional.

And so can we take a look at what that looks like for you?

Let's take a look.

Like, you know, I mean, Jerry is a sovereign citizen.

Uh, it's, it's a s- you know, not dissimilar from like QAnon or other misinformed groups who are trying to find their way around their hardships.

In the case of, of sovereign citizens, they're like, "You know what? Your state constitution or your federal constitution are, those are open to interpretation."

Mm-hmm.

From the perspective of...

I watch a fucking lot of court cases, particularly Sovereign Citizen.

They are hilarious.

They are amusing for so many ways.

Right?

Anyway.

Am I the only one that can't stand watching the cop videos of sovereign citizens because I can't stand cops that can't deal with them? I'm like, why are you a cop if you don't even know how to deal with this idiot?

A lot of them, I get it.

if there's two things i hate squatters and then the people that claim what are those rights

Oh, the First Amendment auditors? No, what is it? Oh, Sovereign Citizens.

Sovereign

Citizens, yeah.

I hate those.

The Sovereign Citizens, I don't get as mad because every video with them, they're always getting pwned.

Fucking just whooped up by a

cop.

But then they can take that, and like I said, all of a sudden you, you arrive in front of your judge at court, and you're claiming that you're not your all capitalized name and on your ID, and they just throw your ass in jail.

They're like, "What? What?" And so, uh, you can look up, guys, um, like sovereign citizens, freemen on the land court cases.

In the last like 10 years, multiple, uh, cases, especially in the state of Texas, they've been brought before judges and federal courts where they've dismissed this stuff.

You know, the idea that the yellow fringe around the American flag in a courtroom means it's a Jolly Roger.

Podcasts, radio, news, music and more.

Who are sovereign citizens anyway? What's the basis of their beliefs and why do so many people seem willing to believe the falsities and misinformation, often quite hair-raising and incredible rubbish that gets pandied for fact online and elsewhere? It's not just a movement to be dismissed as a bunch of harmless crazies who will soon find out that legal boundaries exist and are enforced because there's an ever-present risk of violence.

People have been dying because of these beliefs.

Sovereigns and citizens go rogue, usually ending their own deaths, but often with police and bystanders as casualties.

Now, while most adherents are not violent, indeed many truly believe this alternative narrative in good faith, the underlying ideology holding that governments are illegitimate and secretly seeking to enslave citizens can carry real risks of leading individuals into confrontation and serious violence.

Dr Harry Hobbs and Dr Stephen Young are co-authors of a new book called Outlawed, Responding to the Global Rise.

of sovereign citizens and legal conspiracies.

Harry is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law and Justice at UNSW, University of New South Wales, and the Director of the Pseudo-Law Project at the Gilbert and Tobin Centre of Public Law.