By: Daniel Nardini
In south Florida, a Brazilian-born squatter named Andre Barbosa is living illegally on a foreclosed property owned by Bank of America. The squatter, when asked what he will do if the bank try to forcibly evict him, said that he will put a notice in the window that he is a “sovereign citizen.” What does the term sovereign citizen mean? It means that a person does not believe they are under any obligation to follow the law, and do not need to answer for any consequences of their actions—even if those actions are violent. The sovereign citizen movement grew out of the extreme right wing posse comitatus movement in the 1980’s. Although it is still largely a right wing idea, an increasing number of people in the Occupy Wall Street movement are now turning to the concept of sovereign citizens.
This movement has a long history of violence. I can cite a few examples. In September of 2012, a convicted criminal named Phillip Monroe Ballard was indicted and is now being held in a federal prison for trying to recruit a fellow inmate to try and assassinate a judge. In December of that same year, a dentist named Glenn Richard Unger tried to defraud the U.S. government by violating tax laws. He stated that he would rather “die” than be taken alive by the U.S. government. Probably the best known person of this extreme movement is Terry Nichols—the co-conspirator with Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bomb plot in 1995. Besides violence, those who believe in the sovereign citizens movement have no problem using fraud, extortion, tax evasion, and even not paying their traffic tickets because they do not believe in “government control.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that there are 100,000 people nationwide who are in some kind of sovereign citizens group, and that another 200,000 people may simply be starting out to become sovereign citizens. The frightening part about all this is that these people have no problems carrying firearms and shooting and killing unarmed people as well as police because they answer to no authority. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has called this movement domestic terrorism, and in my book this definition is justified. This movement shows no indication of going away, and it feeds into the extreme right wing and now growing extreme left wing movements in this country. We have a lot to fear from this.
Sovereign Citizen Madness
By: Daniel Nardini
This movement has a long history of violence. I can cite a few examples. In September of 2012, a convicted criminal named Phillip Monroe Ballard was indicted and is now being held in a federal prison for trying to recruit a fellow inmate to try and assassinate a judge. In December of that same year, a dentist named Glenn Richard Unger tried to defraud the U.S. government by violating tax laws. He stated that he would rather “die” than be taken alive by the U.S. government. Probably the best known person of this extreme movement is Terry Nichols—the co-conspirator with Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bomb plot in 1995. Besides violence, those who believe in the sovereign citizens movement have no problem using fraud, extortion, tax evasion, and even not paying their traffic tickets because they do not believe in “government control.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that there are 100,000 people nationwide who are in some kind of sovereign citizens group, and that another 200,000 people may simply be starting out to become sovereign citizens. The frightening part about all this is that these people have no problems carrying firearms and shooting and killing unarmed people as well as police because they answer to no authority. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has called this movement domestic terrorism, and in my book this definition is justified. This movement shows no indication of going away, and it feeds into the extreme right wing and now growing extreme left wing movements in this country. We have a lot to fear from this.