“A much larger and more dangerous movement”: Right-wing militias thrive post-Bundy — and the media won’t talk about it - Salon.com

A deep overview of the modern history of the militia movement and its kin with William Potter Gale’s creation of the Posse Comitatus.
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Three months after the standoff at the Cliven Bundy ranch, the Southern Poverty Law Center has issued a report—”War in the West: The Bundy Ranch Standoff and the American Radical Right“—stating what should have been obvious at the time, but which most media coverage utterly obscured: The standoff was not some quirky, standalone event that spontaneously just happened out of the blue. Rather, it was a highly coordinated event reflecting the threat of a larger militia movement, which in turn has drawn together multiple threads of far-right ideology over the course of the last 40 years.

On the purely tactical level, the report notes that Bundy’s armed supporters had “overwhelming tactical superiority” due to their pre-positioning on the high ground above the confrontation—under the direction of a Montana militia member and Iraq War veteran—which is a primary reason why the Bureau of Land Management wisely withdrew. On a somewhat broader level, the report warns of the events’ ripple effect. “Just in the months since the Bundy ‘victory,’ tense standoffs between the BLM and antigovernment activists have taken place across the West — in Idaho, New Mexico, Texas and Utah.”

That’s in addition to the violent Las Vegas rampage of Bundy supporters Jerad and Amanda Miller, which left three innocents dead along with the two shooters. And it places these events in a larger context. First in the Obama era—“Since 2009, there have been 17 shooting incidents between antigovernment extremists and law enforcement”—but also beyond. It stretches as far back as the Whiskey Rebellion in the 1790s, but gaining much more organizational coherence with the confluence of the racist, anti-Semitic Posse Comitatus, starting in the 1970s, and two more mainstream movements, “the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s and 1980s and the Wise Use movement of the late 1980s and early 1990s.”

“The Bundy ranch standoff wasn’t a spontaneous response to Cliven Bundy’s predicament but rather a well-organized, military-type action that reflects the potential for violence from a much larger and more dangerous movement,” said Mark Potok, senior fellow in the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, and lead author of the report, in a statement accompanying the report. “This incident may have faded from public view, but if our government doesn’t pay attention, we will be caught off guard as much as the Bureau of Land Management was that day.”

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The report not only provides a broad overview of how violence-prone right-wing anti-government conspiracism and broader land use grievances have interacted since the 1970s, it also provides direct evidence of how Bundy himself has espoused such fringe views throughout his decades-long period of refusing to pay the minimal grazing fees he owes.

But as far-reaching as it is, it is still remarkably focused, Clarkson points out. “The issue in the case of the Bundy grazing fees, is a long standing issue of federal lands in the West. But there are many such potential rallying points for the Patriot movement and its prospective allies, informed by a volatile range of beliefs, many of them religious.”

While the report does mention religion in passing, as Clarkson suggests, there’s a great deal more out there that lies beyond its scope. “In 2001, for example, there was an analogous situation when the Indianapolis Baptist Temple, which had refused to withhold taxes from their employee paychecks, faced the seizure of their assets. Militia groups also turned out to defend the church,” Clarkson said. In a post-Hobby Lobby world, who’s to say what would happen with similar situation today? In that case, however, “law enforcement simply waited until almost everyone had gone home and three months later seized the church without violence,” Clarkson noted. “Not every such standoff need end in violence. But ideological shifts in elements of the Christian Right in recent years, also point to a growing potential if not actual preparation for violence.”

“A much larger and more dangerous movement”: Right-wing militias thrive post-Bundy — and the media won’t talk about it - Salon.com

Representing the Sovereign Citizen | Voice For The Defense Online

A good overview of the Sovereign Movement from a defense attorney's point of view

Sovereign citizens differ on when this usurpation of rights occurred. Some believe it occurred with the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, which created Fourteenth Amendment citizens—essentially slaves under admiralty law. Others argue it occurred when the Federal Reserve Act was passed in 1913. The most prominent view, called Redemption Theory, postulates that it occurred in 1933 when the United States departed from the gold standard. Regardless of when it happened, sovereign citizens believe it marked the government’s declaration of people as animals, enabling the largest genocide in the world’s history. The derivation of each person’s individual sovereignty is the cause of the sovereign citizen movement.

Redemption theorists believe that the 1933 departure from the gold standard as the backing for United States currency marks the replacement of “common law” with admiralty law. At this time, they believe, the United States government was dissolved due to bankruptcy, resulting in the reformation of the United States as the United States government-corporation. To fund foreign trade agreements and pay off debts to foreign countries, the United States began to use its citizens as collateral. The United States, now a government-corporation operating under admiralty law, registers people as collateral by way of birth certificates and social security numbers issued at birth. Each citizen’s projected lifetime earnings were gathered in a “strawman” account in the United States Department of Treasury when any United States citizen is born. These accounts contain any amount from $300,000 to over more than $20 million. The individual’s rights are then split between the flesh-and-blood individual and the corporate individual created by the “strawman” account.

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However, most sovereign citizens do not encourage violence. Most believe that although violence may become necessary because of the despotic illegitimate United States government, it is still a last resort. Although violence is a last resort for most sovereign citizens, they do believe that the Second Amendment ensures the right of individuals to kill politicians such as the president, senators, congressman, government employees, and court officials. This is the Second Amendment’s primary purpose. Any other protection given by the Second Amendment is incidental. Beliefs like these and the numerous violent acts by sovereign citizens led the Federal Bureau of Investigation to classify sovereign citizens as domestic terrorists.

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This is the problem with recognizing a sovereign citizen. Even when asked outright, a sovereign citizen typically will not call him or herself a “sovereign citizen.” Instead they will answer that they are individuals seeking the truth, not a “statutory person.” What makes sovereign citizens even more difficult to identify is that the movement does not appeal to any one particular demographic. Unlike the Posse Comitatus, the exclusively white radical militia group from which the sovereign citizen movement evolved, the sovereign citizen movement appeals to all races, all ages, all political leanings and affiliations—to people from all walks of life. What connects all people lured into the movement is a common belief that the “system” has targeted them in some way.

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However, widely held and culturally sanctioned beliefs that might be considered delusional in other cultures, but are recognized in one’s own culture, often do not qualify for a diagnosis of delusional disorder. For example, many commonly held religious beliefs may sound delusional to some people. Although they may sound delusional, they are culturally non-native beliefs shared by many individuals and therefore not delusions. Because sovereign citizen beliefs are shared by up to, and maybe exceeding, 300,000 people, the psychologists and researchers who have studied the subject conclude that the sovereign citizen’s odd, seemingly delusional beliefs have been sanctioned and accepted by too many to be considered delusions.

Representing the Sovereign Citizen | Voice For The Defense Online

Fake NJ Indian Chief, 'Sovereign Citizen' Must Face Trial

Canadian ‘Freeman’ Leader Arrested After Skipping Hearings | Crooks and Liars

The arrest in late November of a prominent “Freeman” leader in Canada has underscored the recent rise of the “sovereign citizens” movement north of the border, as well as law-enforcement authorities’ concerns about that development.

Dean Clifford, a self-described “contractor from Winnipeg” who tours Canada giving lectures to paying audiences on how to avoid paying taxes by declaring oneself a “Freeman on the Land,” was arrested by Canadian authorities on Nov. 24 at a hotel in Hamilton, Ontario, shortly after giving one of his talks. He was charged with failing to show up for court hearings regarding his July 19 arrest for alleged traffic violations, and remains under arrest today.

Clifford is well known in the Canadian movement of sovereign citizens, which is composed of antigovernment activists who generally believe they do not have to follow most tax and criminal laws (many sovereigns, in both the United States and Canada, refer to themselves as “freemen.”) His videos, featuring Clifford holding forth on various means by which ordinary people can “divest” themselves of government control and taxation, are popular among followers in both Canada and the United States, where the sovereign citizen movement has long been associated with right-wing extremists and antigovernment violence.

Canadian ‘Freeman’ Leader Arrested After Skipping Hearings | Crooks and Liars