Sovereign citizen is a term some people to describe themselves. They feel they should be allowed to live in and benefit from society without being subject to the rules or duties that go along with that. It is not a real status and has no legal basis. The groups like this person has joined are an echo chamber where they feed each other bad interpretations of laws and loopholes. When they inevitably end up in court they will agree the loophole applies. It never works.
They often have a very poor understanding of the law, they think lawyers are basically wizards and if they too say the right magic words (“the flag in this court has a gold fringe which means it’s an admiralty court and you don’t have jurisdiction”) then they won’t have to pay their traffic fine or taxes or whatever it is that they don’t want to pay for
There is some truth in their belief that “the Law” is a lot more flexible than the rest of us realize.
Look at the kid gloves the courts have used with Trump’s cronies and other right-wing kooks. Alex Jones is a great example; owes over a billion dollars in restitution and hasn’t paid one cent. The court’s response has been "lol, blood from a turnip ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ".
As an aside, sovcits are not an exclusively US phenomenon. Most Commonwealth nations have some version of “freemen on the land” which is basically the same thing, though the specific details they fixate on may be different. I’ve also heard there’s a German version as well.
Even in the US it’s not exclusively MAGA-ish militia types or super fundamentalists. There’s also the Moorish National strain, for example, which operates under the idea that the US Government is actually just a corporation operating under the sovereignty of an imaginary “Moorish Empire” in Africa, East India Company-style, whose existence is covered up by some kind of conspiracy
Can someone explain to a non-usa person what is sovereign citizen ?
Sovereign citizen is a term some people to describe themselves. They feel they should be allowed to live in and benefit from society without being subject to the rules or duties that go along with that. It is not a real status and has no legal basis. The groups like this person has joined are an echo chamber where they feed each other bad interpretations of laws and loopholes. When they inevitably end up in court they will agree the loophole applies. It never works.
They often have a very poor understanding of the law, they think lawyers are basically wizards and if they too say the right magic words (“the flag in this court has a gold fringe which means it’s an admiralty court and you don’t have jurisdiction”) then they won’t have to pay their traffic fine or taxes or whatever it is that they don’t want to pay for
There is some truth in their belief that “the Law” is a lot more flexible than the rest of us realize.
Look at the kid gloves the courts have used with Trump’s cronies and other right-wing kooks. Alex Jones is a great example; owes over a billion dollars in restitution and hasn’t paid one cent. The court’s response has been "lol, blood from a turnip ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ".
The law is pretty much a sham.
That’s not magic though, that’s money.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen_movement
Tl;dr is nutters/scammers who believe they can opt out of the laws/responsibilities of being a citizen.
As an aside, sovcits are not an exclusively US phenomenon. Most Commonwealth nations have some version of “freemen on the land” which is basically the same thing, though the specific details they fixate on may be different. I’ve also heard there’s a German version as well.
Even in the US it’s not exclusively MAGA-ish militia types or super fundamentalists. There’s also the Moorish National strain, for example, which operates under the idea that the US Government is actually just a corporation operating under the sovereignty of an imaginary “Moorish Empire” in Africa, East India Company-style, whose existence is covered up by some kind of conspiracy
Idiots that think they know the magic words to make legal consequences for their bullshit disappear.
Of course, even if they did have a point with their conspiacist nonsense (they don’t), they get humiliated in court every. single. time.