• Dr. Wesker@lemmy.sdf.org
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    9 months ago

    Out of all the segmented degenerate hiveminds in the US, I think sovereign citizens often baffle me the most.

    • BenVimes@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      The most profoundly puzzling thing to me is their insistence that magic words will somehow make authorities back off.

      Like, they believe that there is this grand conspiracy involving the Federal Reserve and maritime law and birth names and whatever else. And yet they also believe that the forces behind this conspiracy must acquiesce if you just invoke the right language.

      Do they never consider that an entity powerful enough to do all that could also just ignore their demands? Like, even if the conspiracy is true, why would its perpetrators just give up because some random person told them to?

      • Dadd Volante@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        Check out The Freemen. This is pretty much where this stuff came from, whackos in Montana during the 90s who pulled off the longest standoff with the FBI in American history (may have changed since).

        They had their own currency (which some locals would actually accept), and they were very, very good at painting themselves as innocent victims.

        I believe that because of them and other groups like The Montana Militia are one of the prime influences for this movement.

      • hanekam@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        It’s the same impulse that made medieval people believe they could defend themselves from fairies and demons by saying the right things the right way. Some part of the insanity demands that a person who sees through the illusion can somehow win against the evil conspirators

      • lad@programming.dev
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        9 months ago

        My guess would be that by using the right words they pretend to be part of that power, because how else would one tell apart the laymen and true sovereign citizens.

        Don’t know if that even has anything in common with what they say their reasons are, that’s too crazy to read 😅

    • Pohl@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I know right. To be absolutely convinced that there are loopholes in everything and that only the rubes are playing by the rules is one thing. But to maintain that belief in the face of what must become a long string of failures… takes a certain mental toughness to be kind.

      I suppose if you look around and everyone else seems to be doing better than you, maybe you assume they must all be cheating and you start looking to get in on the game. A few YouTube holes down the road you think you can pay your child support with secret legal incantations.

    • CitizenKong@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      We have a similar bunch of wackos in Germany, the Reichsbürger. They claim that the modern German constitution is illegal because the German Empire was never officially disbanded as an entity and therefore they don’t have to follow the current laws. Many also dream of reinstating a monarchy and are - surprise! - fascists.

      • derpgon@programming.dev
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        9 months ago

        Similarly same is happening in Czechia. Sovcivs claim Czechoslovakia splitting wasn’t constitutional or something like that. Similar idea, same bunch of dumb fucks.

        • lars@lemmy.sdf.org
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          9 months ago

          Was the split better for Czechia than for Slovakia? (My uneducated general impression’s been that Czechia has more GDPs).

          • derpgon@programming.dev
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            9 months ago

            I’d say, economically, we were both equal. Minor differences really, neither country is “more profitable to live in”.

      • BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        Wasn’t it a group of Reichbürgers that got arrested last year for planning a coup in a partnership with right wing military officers?

      • thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org
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        9 months ago

        Is there a royal family in Germany? Like that monarchy lasted about a hundred years… And it’s been that same amount of time since then!

        • CitizenKong@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          One of their figureheads is a self-declared prince and actually comes from a minor noble house. The family of the last German emperor are the Hohenzollern though, which still exist but are not associated with the Reichsbürger movement.

      • trebuchet@lemmy.ml
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        9 months ago

        I find them baffling, what’s their deal?

        Is it like a religion for them or is there an actual religion?

        • TheSlad@sh.itjust.works
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          9 months ago

          No, one of their core arguments is that language in the bible heavily implies that the earth is flat. Nevermind that the bible is a collection of stories from uneducated iron-age fanatics…

          • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            There’s nothing in the Bible that implies the earth is flat… but most people who use the Bible to excuse their behavior don’t actually read it, so it’s not wild to hear they think the Bible is the basis for their beliefs.

          • lad@programming.dev
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            9 months ago

            Wow, TIL, but it made more sense before I learnt of this fact

            Edit: to be clear, it’s not that I believe Earth to be flat, it’s that this “argument” makes even less sense than an assumption that flat earth was just a trolling

        • Blue@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Flat earth= god is beyond a doubt real.

          Round earth= god may be real? We are not sure, probably not.

          It’s just a rehashed deep fried form of proselytizing as the people who fall for that shit, will surely fall for other shit, and you can even milk some money of out them like that guy who used them to build his own rocket.

          • lars@lemmy.sdf.org
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            9 months ago

            God’s kinda trash for:

            1. Being unclear about this
            2. Letting us infer whatever bullsh based on His nothing input
            3. Childhood cancer
        • SmoothLiquidation@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          It is religion. They approach it as the Earth is the center of the universe and try to come up with experiments that prove their existing worldview instead of figuring out how things actually work.

    • PLAVAT🧿S@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      I’m guessing somewhere up the chain is a person making money from it, probably a book or class that teaches the “secrets.” And of course when your sovcit crap fails to work you didn’t follow the program to the T.

        • BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works
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          9 months ago

          Sovereigntology? Their book “Dianetrix - how laws actually work” is the, supposedly, seminal work of their founder L Ron Bubba. In reality the book is 75% plagiarized from “How to act batshit crazy at traffic stops, so the cops will let you go, for dummies”

      • extant@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        It’s mental illness and wishful thinking all wrapped up together. They believe whole heartily that if they don’t agree to the rules of society they are under no obligation to follow societies rules unless a rule benefits them then they should also benefit. I’m sure there are some who are just using it to grift but I believe a majority of them honestly have some form of mental disability because I watched the trial for Darrel Brooks who decided to drive through a crowd at a parade killing six people and injuring several others and he was literally dumbfounded that he was found guilty because he believed the law didn’t apply to him as a sovcit.

      • frezik
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        9 months ago

        You know how some people think that a good lawyer can get anyone out of anything if they find the right loophole? SivCits take that to an extreme using completely made up rules. For example, your name printed in ALL CAPS refers to a legal corporation, while normal case refers to you as a human being. If your name is ever printed in all caps, such as on a summons to appear in court, that doesn’t actually mean you.

        • PLAVAT🧿S@sh.itjust.works
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          9 months ago

          Oh jeez, I forgot about that one! My brother tried explaining this crap to me once, about how you can buy your identity back from Italy or something and how it’s worth millions.

      • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        They claim they don’t have to follow laws because the flag has fringe on it and something, something, maritime laws. So US law doesn’t apply to them.

        If that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, it’s because Sovereign Citizen doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

      • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        I think it’s a wild and varied and disorganized mess dreamed up by people who have left the very idea of being reasonable far behind them long ago.

        However, a crucial part of it is certain specific capitalization of words. I think some of them had been using caps lock to post rants on discus for too long and think that it has some magical meaning under law…

        I say all that to say that they believe that there’s a “legal entity” that is invoked when you capitalize versus plain case someone’s name (amongst other things)…and that there is a difference between this “legal entity” and the person in a body…which there frankly plainly and obviously isn’t.

        Despite being told in court by multiple judges that the capitalization of things does not matter, they persist.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen_movement#Immunity_from_laws_and_taxes

        I thought the capitalization stuff was kind of a side show, but have since realized that not only is it crucial to their belief system, it also serves as a way to identify them on the Internet. If someone strangely insists on capitalizing certain words or phrases every time they use them and is otherwise very unreasonable, there’s a good chance they’re a sovcit (or should I say SOVCIT? 🙂).

        • peterf@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          They beleve that the US is a corporation. This is based on wording in the constitution, but a business corporation is not really the same thing.

          So when you are born, your birth certificate gives you a corporate name.

          So they use a capitalised version of the name, its their “true” name and not their corporate name, so they are not liable for accounts sent to their “corporate” name.

      • DogWater@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        I think it appears from a fundamental misunderstanding of the social contract. They disagree that they are bound by government and it’s laws because they never agreed to it explicitly. They are wrong. Being born in America means your are a citizen and bound by it’s rules… they still live here and utilize the infrastructure, they never renounce their citizenship and they don’t leave, so it’s all crappy entitlement shit to try and get out of tickets and bills and taxes

    • drcobaltjedi@programming.dev
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      9 months ago

      Munecat i think did an amazing video on sovcits. And hey now, we only started this problem but weve apparently exported it everywhere else.

      • Optional@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Australia’s working on it and getting pretty far. Heck the original Q-board-owner-guy was Aussie. You’d figure that in the land of Rupert Murdoch though eh.

        • drcobaltjedi@programming.dev
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          9 months ago

          I mean, you and I both know it was only a matter of time before it hit Canada, and it wasnt going to be long. Sorry neighbor.

    • Neuromancer@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      I will admit, sometimes I start to think, maybe they are on to something…

      My best friend from childhood sometimes slips into SC territory. We don’t talk often but when we do, it can be a doozy. HE was never like this before COVID.

        • Neuromancer@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          COVID hit hard on mental health for many of us

          That I understand, when you had the Democrats going full fascist on everyone, it wears people down. The Democrats made it hard for normal life to function. It’s why they are suffering the consequences to this day.

          • Car@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            9 months ago

            Dude, one party advocated for following recommendations made by medical professionals. The other, not so much.

            It was hard for a normal life rhythm precisely because those same normal behaviors did nothing to curb the spread of a contagious virus.

            • Neuromancer@lemm.ee
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              9 months ago

              The Democrats didn’t follow the science. Had they followed the science, we would have been like Sweden. They followed the science.

              • Car@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                9 months ago

                Can you point to how you believe the Democrats went full fascist while not being in total control of the government?

                Then, can you point to how Sweden followed the science but the Democrats did not?

                I think there’s a nugget of overlap and truth here, but I haven’t experienced it

                  • Car@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                    9 months ago

                    I was in Virginia during most of the pandemic and I have not seen or experienced any of what you’ve said. The government responded a little later than other countries on imposing restrictions. I distinctly remember being in charge of a small group of individuals who worked in close proximity, all concerned with their health and being unable to do much about it because the government had not yet pushed down any actionable information. This was during the Trump administration by the way.

                    Cloth masks weren’t advertised to be absolute protections against COVID. Again, the information passed down meant to demonstrate that masks would be one tool in your toolbox meant to help mitigate the spread of the virus. We all know that peeing your pants doesn’t prevent urine from escaping. It does help reduce the amount that gets on the person sitting next to you. Even better if they’re wearing pants too, as some of those airborne droplets get trapped at the cloth layer before making contact with your skin.

                    Fauci did not have trust because he was actively admonished by around half of the US population. The expert was not treated as such by numerous non-experts. Not too much to say here. We cannot place absolute trust in others as a level of healthy skepticism keeps us from moving forward, even in science, but you do need to be able to exercise critical thought and the possibility that you may be wrong. I’ve seen none of the latter.

                    I think what really sucks is that those who chose to ignore the COVID guidance died in higher proportions than those who did not. I guess they died according to their principles.

          • fenynro@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            The Democrats didn’t make it hard for normal life to function, COVID did.

            Also lmao at ‘full fascist’ as if there were forced vaccination camps that the government was tossing idiotic republicans into. Ironically that probably would have been a lot more successful at disease prevention than the ‘ignore the problem, prevention is the real enemy, I want to die attempting to breath god’s free air through my ventilator and that’s my right’ strategy that many red states adopted

          • PorkRoll@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            So what’s your favorite method of ivermectin use? Do you just take a dewormer cocktail or do you butt-chug it?