IF IT WALKS LIKE A SOVEREIGN CITIZEN AND BABBLES LIKE A SOVEREIGN CITIZEN...

PERSPECTIVE: Growing Threat of Sovereign Citizen Extremism Spans Borders and Ideologies.

Their numbers and activities are increasing. Freedom from taxes and laws is very seductive to those who get drawn in.

https://youtu.be/KcxZFmKrxR8

Sovereign citizens are anti-government, loosely affiliated extremists who deny the legitimacy of their respective governments. Illegitimate governments, according to sovereign citizens, cannot produce legitimate laws and thus they claim they are immune from all laws and all government authority. They refuse many aspects of citizenry, for instance, to pay taxes, acquire driver’s licenses, or register their vehicles, and they ignore laws requiring them to possess car insurance.

https://youtu.be/hJFzJE2_ehE

Engaging in resistance, they often flood courts, government offices and, more recently, school boards with excessive, meaningless paperwork. This tactic has been defined as “paper terrorism.” Sovereign citizens also engage in real estate and mortgage fraud. They move into repossessed homes or otherwise empty buildings, file quick deed transfers, and then claim the property as their own. Some sovereign citizens have committed acts of extreme violence including murder, rape, child abuse, and kidnapping, among others, although how these crimes link to their ideology is not always clear. Sovereign citizens have been labeled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as a serious domestic terrorism threat. Estimates suggest that there are 300,000 to 500,000 sovereign citizens in the United States, and their numbers are growing.

https://youtu.be/vVUMENVPlhs

In the United States, sovereign citizens are especially problematic for law enforcement. A 2020 analysis found 94 instances in which sovereign citizens attempted to harm, did harm or killed law enforcement officers (LEOs). Since then, sovereigns have been involved in the death or critical injury of an additional five officers. Ray Kelly allegedly killed a police officer when attempting to drive away from a traffic stop. Jessica Worsham shot and killed a female police officer who had been called to the shooter’s residence. Lashawn McNeil, who authorities suspect is a Moorish sovereign, shot and killed a New York Police officer and critically wounded another. Ronald Troyke ambushed and fatally shot an officer in Colorado.

https://youtu.be/bHpejuvatig

https://www.hstoday.us/featured/perspective-growing-threat-of-sovereign-citizen-extremism-spans-borders-and-ideologies/

SOVEREIGN CITIZENS MOVEMENT.

Sovereign citizens believe they are not under the jurisdiction of the federal government and consider themselves exempt from U.S. law. They use a variety of conspiracy theories and falsehoods to justify their beliefs and their activities, some of which are illegal and violent.

The sovereign citizen movement continued to see membership growth in 2022. The QAnon conspiracy theory that initially brought new people into the movement has remained a gateway into sovereign citizenship. A new group, which calls itself Life Force Network, is a fusion of Q-centric conspiracy theories, science fiction and fake alternative governments and courts called sovereign citizen “assemblies.” The organization’s main villain is “The Order,” which they describe as an international group that has “dominion over the governments” and is made up of regular antigovernment bogeymen such as the Rockefellers, the Rothchilds and seemingly fictional characters such as the Annuanake, and Dragon Families.

In the Life Force Network document titled, New Declaration of Independence the organization claims to have successfully fought “The Order” for global control of the world’s finances and over “every military, intelligence agency and law enforcement structure in the world that currently exists or will exist in the future.” The group is run by New Yorker Steffen Rowe is active in 17 states.

The proliferation of conspiracies and grievances about public health measures during the Covid-19 pandemic brought new followers into the sovereign citizen movement. The two largest rival sovereign citizen organizations in the U.S., the American States Assembly and National Assembly, were able to maintain or increase their membership numbers in 2022.

Two groups held common law court hearings that were accessible to the public The Oregon Statewide Jural Assembly held theirs in a city park while the Reign of the Heavens Society conducted theirs online. These fake courts based on the old British legal system usually involve individual grievances or grievances against the government brought forth by ”plaintiffs,” and most often the court’s grand jury “assigns” guilt and punishment. The Oregon Statewide Jural Assembly brought the Oregon Department of Education up on charges in its fictitious court. Reign of the Heavens Society charged a Satanic Temple leader with war crimes, stating that the punishment could be up to and including death.

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/sovereign-citizens-movement

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/AD1027164.pdf

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

ON STUPIDITY: A WARNING | JEAN-FRANÇOIS MARMION

“Good sense is the most equitably distributed thing in the world,” wrote Descartes. And what about stupidity?

Whether it oozes or drips, trickles or gushes, it’s everywhere. Without borders and without limits. Sometimes it emerges as a gentle, almost bearable lapping; other times as a nauseating, stagnant swamp. Still other times, it’s an earthquake, a storm, or a tidal wave that engulfs everything in its path, smashing, trampling, befouling. No matter what form it takes, stupidity splatters us all. Rumor has it that we ourselves are the source of it. I am no exception.

Uncertainty Makes You Crazy, Certainty Makes You Stupid

Morons will condemn you instantly, with no appeal possible and no extenuating circumstances admitted, on the sole basis of the appearances they glimpse through their narrow blinkers. They know how to rouse their sympathizers, to goad them to lynching in the name of virtue, custom, respect. The idiot hunts in a pack and thinks in herd fashion. As the Georges Brassens song goes, “The plural is useless to mankind; whenever / More than four are gathered, you’ll find a band of fools.” He also declared: “Glory to the man who, lacking lofty ideals / Contents himself with not being a nuisance to his neighbors.” Alas! Our neighbors don’t always return the favor.

Not content with making you miserable, the irksome idiot is delighted with himself. Unshakably. He is immunized against self- doubt and convinced of his rights. The happy imbecile tramples your rights without a second thought. The fool takes his beliefs for truths graven in marble, whereas all true knowledge is built on sand. Uncertainty makes you crazy, certainty makes you stupid; you’ve got to choose your camp. The asshole thinks he knows better than you—not only does he know what you should think, feel, and do with your ten fingers, he knows how you should vote. He knows who you are and what’s good for you better than you do. If you disagree with him, he will despise you, insult you, and assault you, literally and figuratively, for your own good. And if he can do that in the name of some higher ideal, he won’t hesitate to attack the scum that your existence represents for him, with utter impunity.

And here’s a bitter truth: justified self-defense is a trap. If you try to reason with an idiot or to change his mind, you’re lost. The moment you decide it’s your duty to improve him, the moment you think you know how he should think and act (like you, of course), the jig’s up. There it is; now you’re the idiot—and you’re naïve to boot, since You think you’re up to the challenge. Worse, the more you try to reform an idiot, the stronger he gets. He delights in seeing himself as a victim who annoys others—and who must for that reason be in the right. In reproving him, you allow him to believe in good faith that he’s a hero of anti-conformity, someone who ought to be defended and admired. A member of the resistance . . . Tremble before the vastness of this curse: if you try to reform a moron, not only will you fail, you will also strengthen him and encourage imitators. Before, there was only one moron: now there are two. Fighting against stupidity only makes it stronger. The more you attack an ogre, the more souls he devours.

As long as there have been humans there has been human stupidity, but with wit and wisdom these great thinkers can help us understand this persistent human affliction.

The Scientific Study of Idiots | Serge Ciccotti

A Taxonomy of Morons | Jean-François Dortier

A Theory of Assholes: A Conversation with Aaron James

From Stupidity to Hogwash | Pascal Engel

To Be Human Is to Be Easily Fooled | Jean-François Marmion

Let Justice Do Its Work (of Digestion) | Jean-François Marmion

Critique of the Pure Reasoner | Jean-François Marmion

Common Biases (and Heuristics) | Jean-François Marmion

Stupidity and Cognitive Bias | Ewa Drozda-Senkowska

Thinking, Fast and Slow: A Conversation with Daniel Kahneman

The Nudge | Jean-François Marmion

Kahneman and Tversky: A Beautiful Friendship | Jean-François Marmion

On Stupidity in the Brain | Pierre Lemarquis

Intentional Idiocy | Yves-Alexandre Thalmann

When Very Smart People Believe Very Dumb Things | Brigitte Axelrad

Why We Find Meaning in Coincidences: A Conversation with Nicolas Gauvrit

Stupidity as Logical Delirium | Boris Cyrulni

The Language of Stupidity | Patrick Moreau

Emotions Don’t (Always) Make Us Stupid: A Conversation with Antonio Damasio

Stupidity and Narcissism | Jean Cottraux

Manipulation on the Internet: The Art in Its Infancy | Jean-François Marmion

The Same Old Song | Jean-François Marmion

Stupid and Evil Social Networks | François Jost

Animated Wisdom | François Jost

The Internet: The Death of Intelligence? A Conversation with Howard Gardner

Stupidity and Post-Truth | Sebastian Dieguez

The Metamorphoses of Nationalist Folly | Pierre de Senarclens

How Can We Fight Collective Error? | Claudie Bert

We All Consume Like Fools: A Conversation with Dan Ariely

The Paradoxes of Abundance | Jean-François Dortier

The Human: The Animal That Dares All | Laurent Bègue

More Meat Than Reason | Laurent Bègue

What Can Be Done About Assholes? | Emmanuelle Piquet

Stupidity from the Child’s Perspective: A Conversation with Alison Gopnik

Do We Dream of Stupidity? | Delphine Oudiette

The Worst Stupidity Is Thinking You’re Smart: A Conversation with Jean-Claude Carrière

Making Peace with Your Stupidity | Stacey Callahan

Unconditional Self-Acceptance | Stacey Callahan

Stupidity Is the Background Noise of Wisdom: A Conversation with Tobie Nathan.

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/jean-francois-marmion/the-psychology-of-stupidity/9781529053869