These guys are really entertaining. Flat earth people are boring by comparison. Sovcits will use 15 legal and Latin terms they learned from their redneck uncle, cram all of them into a single rage Facebook post not understanding what any of them mean. Wonderful.
They’re truly enjoyably bonkers.
What’s a Sovcit?
A sovereign citizen is a loosely associated group of right wing anti-government extremists that emerged in the 1970s as an offshoot of the white supremacist religion Christian Identity. They believe they are not governed by the laws of where they live (hence sovereign), and that they are not required to have licenses, plates, insurance, ID, etc, and that they can pay bills by sending in nonsense correspondence with magic codes they think will eradicate their debt. They believe the government holds a 2 million dollar secret trust in everyone’s name and that you can pay your bills by “accessing” that trust through magic paperwork. They are a huge nuisance to cops and courts, “paper terrorize” the government to the tune of millions per year in frivolous litigation, and are a frequent source of hilarity in YouTube for their notorious traffic stop videos where they almost always end up dragged out of their car. They are properly bonkers.
Sovereign Citizen
You say that like it explains anything
You asked, you got a polite response, no need to be salty.
Explaining it is a multi page response, you have the ability to go to Wikipedia or Google and figure it out yourself. They told you what to research, so don’t be the laziest Internet user and read up on it yourself.
Forget the Facebook rage. Hit up YouTube or your favorite more free alternative and you can watch amazingly confident sovcit nitwits square up against cops and judges.
Calling the judge a burger flipper. That’s a good tactic.
Judges love that kind of thing.
Can anyone actually explain what this person THINKS their rights are here? Like, are they just saying “you can’t give me a moving violation fine because I never signed up for that so it’s theft and slavery”? Or is there something more nuanced to their argument that I’m missing?
EDIT: Thank you to everyone who has contributed. My big takeaway from this is that sovcits pick and choose which legal language to believe like a modern American Catholic picks and chooses Bible verses to believe. 👍
The Articles of Confederation had some language in it. Those were quite famously superceded by a little document we call the Constitution. Sovcits will sometimes reference language used in the Articles to claim random stuff that just doesn’t apply.
They’ll also find random laws that can use niche definitions and stuff. As a sort of example, there’s a section of federal law that pretty clearly excludes your personal car from the definition of “motor vehicle”. Though I didn’t dig much further, the definitions section began with, “For the purposes of this chapter the following definitions apply.” Emphasis mine. They then use this to say states are not allowed to supercede
feedersfederal law and therefore the state is wrong.When you are born, the government creates a fake corporate entity with your same name. That’s the thing that accrues the debts, fines, and jail sentences, not you the person. As long as you never sign a document in black or blue ink they cannot assign those to you because of arcane law stuff.
This is FOR REAL the core reasoning of sovcits???
I think there might be multiple subgenres, but this person/corporation duality is definitely one of the subgenres. I think the common element is they all believe there is some sort of magic spell they can cast to be immune to regulations.
You know how dogs don’t necessarily understand the words you’re saying to get them to do a trick, or why they’re doing the trick? It’s basically that, if dogs thought they could make you do tricks by barking correctly. How much lead exposure factors into it is up for debate.
a modern incarnation of cargo cult?
You know I’ve never connected it to SovCits but the cargo cult comparison matches well. With a dash of conspiracy theorizing.
They think that because they do not “create joinder” by accepting the ticket that it doesn’t apply to them. They will “rescind” them by sending them back with some nonsense written on it at a 45 degree angle in red ink with a thumbprint and believe that cancels the ticket. Here is an example.
I would argue the drivers license is the proof of a contract stating you’ll follow the law pertaining to it. The ticket is a penalty for breaking that contract, not a new contract. But I know their lack of understanding logic.
I see. That’s… Just so patently false on the face of it. I suppose if people want to believe hard enough, they will.
Not sure how they fail to understand the difference between a notice and an agreement but good luck to them, I suppose.
Why are they so obsessed with red ink and 45° angles? It’s so arbitrary.
Ok, so obviously, this doesn’t work, but let’s pretend for a second that it does for my following question. Why would the red writing need to be at 45°?
Some of their reasoning isn’t known. The red ink, 45 degree angle, thumbprint stuff, nobody seems to know where it came from, not even the researchers who follow this stuff. Sovcits are only loosely associated with each other and there are subgroups of them (called American state nationals, secured party creditors, etc), so basically everything they do gets passed around via word of mouth, and each is more nonsensical than the last. It’s only the last handful of years that researchers have been taking a good look at them, but they’ve been around since the 1970s, so a lot of the origins are probably lost to history.
Why are sovcits batshit crazy? Who knows. It is funny picturing a county clerk with a compass and ruler going “It’s 44.5°, we got them boys”
I won’t claim I know what the “Truth in Lending” act is, or if it refers to red ink at a 45 degree angle. But even if it is real, I highly doubt it has anything to do with moving violations.
I frequently have to explain to people that the statue of limitations does not mean a ticket from 20 years ago is done with.
The truth in lending law or another similar law does indeed allow you to cancel a loan. Tickets aren’t loans obviously though. The goal is you could get a car loan or a mortgage, and then decide it was a bad idea and cancel the loan, and give back the property.
It’s always these people trespassing on other people’s property and then wondering why there’s consequences.
It’s not even that hard to get permission. Just register for use of the roads, chip in your money to keep them open and running, and you get to use the government’s property all you like! Just respect their rules like you would any property owner, and you can
drivetravel on their roads as much as you need. If it were anyone else’s roads, you’d probably get denied and then shot unless you paid a huge access fee. Use of state property is amazingly easy and reasonable.It’s not even being able to use them, anyone has the right to travel on foot or by non-motorized bike. It’s specifically driving heavy machinery that can tear up the roads or injure someone you need a license for (ie, a car). Though even then, there are still rules to follow as a pedestrian.
I love how every sovcit post here could be posted to !aneurysmposting@sopuli.xyz
I need to start cross posting. No reason those folks should miss out.
