00:05:22.540i remember them yeah they were like white nationalists parents or something i don't think
00:05:29.420that's true of the family from which this person came and the the context in which they were raised
00:05:34.700in fact this is not i would say it's framed by organizations like the southern poverty law
00:05:39.680centers is white nationalists but actually it has this growing and significant black contingent
00:05:43.740as you can see from the video we're going to start with the video well i mean our friend who
00:05:48.060she's referencing here i won't say her name but i think that she sort of represents this in that
00:05:52.300She used to be married to a famous white nationalist leader, and now she's married to and has a number of kids with a famous Jewish leader.
00:06:05.360And I think with a lot of these types of people, it's sort of just like, you know, any interesting intellectual philosophy that, like, grabs it, right?
00:06:16.860and and i don't know i can't speak for these people but i do think that that that is a
00:06:21.520characteristic of someone who was raised by this movement it is it is bigger than we thought if
00:06:25.820we're just randomly running into people whose whole lifestyles were touched by something adjacent
00:06:31.060to this movement i think that's significant here's the video that he sent me what state is this
00:06:36.940this is the whole thing you're in you're indians yeah
00:06:40.720okay okay is this your government man and you're dead about from the same thing with you this is0.67
00:06:48.920not a driver's license or this is a form of identification but it's not a driver's license
00:06:54.140what is your nation good to log your cherokee in those are the guns in the back of his car0.75
00:07:00.920so keep in mind this is two black americans are you gonna keep playing this are you gonna take0.61
00:07:07.000white nationalists um i mean it's not yeah not much more happens i mean like basically they both
00:07:12.000get arrested um and that's good to hear but then you can yes yes but like so here's here's what's
00:07:18.320going on um in this particular altercation i mean they don't get violent basically a georgia
00:07:24.040sheriff's deputy stops his vehicle uh from preliminarily because it has a broken headlight
00:07:29.860and a non-standard tribal marshal plate and that's why they're like where are you from
00:07:34.880And the driver and passenger claim, as you heard, that they are sovereign Cherokee tribal marshals.
00:07:41.180The top comment in the YouTube video was like, Cherokee, huh?
00:07:46.160With authority nationwide, they said they had diplomatic immunity and they had no need for state issued licenses.0.62
00:07:53.780And they said they well, I mean, you saw the self-issued IDs that they gave.
00:07:58.880And they cite this unsigned document that allegedly was submitted to Georgia's governor as proof of their legal status.
00:08:06.080The deputy notes that it's neither signed nor valid.
00:08:09.900And also they found after they looked up the driver that he has a suspended Pennsylvania license, despite repeatedly his insisting that he never held one.
00:08:19.860They also identified inconsistencies in the driver's name, supposed military history, his vehicle registration, his claims destination.
00:08:28.740And they just said that the driver and his companion, that is that they were conducting a confidential law enforcement investigation.
00:08:38.280They couldn't provide any sort of verifiable agency or supervisor or jurisdiction or legitimate credentials.
00:08:44.120and then after the deputy established that they were just presenting themselves as peace officers
00:08:48.760while operating without valid credentials obviously he arrested the driver both for
00:08:53.700driving on a suspended license and also impersonating an officer and he arrested his1.00
00:08:57.700friend for impersonating an officer they're malicious in this i think they just are idiots0.99
00:09:02.960right like genuinely that seems to be the case here in that like in the end it actually turned0.97
00:09:08.620out that when they looked further and through their stuff in the car according to the video
00:09:13.340at least kind of suggested that their investigation mostly just involved pressuring someone to clean
00:09:19.140up their property rather than any sort of legitimate police work and i'm like what of all the things
00:09:24.940i mean i get it like and it could have been really bad i mean who knows there could have been a storm
00:09:31.860some branches down i don't know but it seemed like a lot of a lot of bullets for all that but this is
00:09:37.840very and we'll do an entire episode on this where i point out that like this is very backwoods
00:09:42.700american culture this is traditional uh i mean the regulators famously were like an alternate
00:09:47.540police force that the backwoods people would organize themselves because they just didn't
00:09:51.320trust normal police and uh for a while like that was the main police force in their regions because
00:09:57.160they just had a distrust and backwoods culture heavily influenced black american culture and
00:10:01.760they're very very very similar to each other super connected foods a lot of a lot of folkways in
00:10:06.740general um are distrust of authority high amounts of conspiratorialism yeah and yet they're framed0.89
00:10:12.320just like oh but like the white backwoods people are super racist against black people and it's
00:10:19.220like uh not really they're more just similar yeah they're just like yeah and like i mean also
00:10:25.520i just feel like anyone who's based they generally got along pretty well historically speaking when
00:10:31.820with other white groups um and uh they uh like this is just very much like yeah i'm a police
00:10:37.700office with a hat like i gotta handle joe over there right you know like yeah like take these
00:10:42.620well what i think is very interesting and why i wanted to ultimately do this even though like
00:10:47.420this particular video i don't really see this as a sign of some greater uprising although you're
00:10:51.600going to see they're way more organized than at least i thought um in a world in which we actually
00:10:58.000aren't really seeing law enforcement follow up with so many things in a world in which now one
00:11:03.100of the most viral clips of the week is a uk police officer saying and what am i supposed to do about
00:11:09.040it in response to a guy being like what he's doing is illegal like literally the guy is right there
00:11:14.380breaking a law what am i supposed to do about it gets in her car you're missing the point he's
00:11:19.820breaking the law right now are you serious okay he's breaking the law what i'm he's breaking the
00:11:28.580law what am i supposed to do that's gotta be one of the best quotes of all time by a police
00:11:33.000constable he's breaking the law what am i supposed to do like in that age where we can have tens of
00:11:42.280thousands of dollars stolen from our business we report it to the proper authorities we hear
00:11:45.680nothing crickets right you know that even though we're above whatever threshold i would have assumed
00:11:50.000would have you know ignited some kind of investigation i think a lot of people are
00:11:53.840starting to feel like okay we're gonna need to turn like do i need do we need just to handle this
00:11:58.820like ourselves yeah and also we're in on in addition to that which is very much here and now
00:12:04.660today we are anticipating demographic collapse in a world in which just literally
00:12:09.580cities able to pay their police pension funds let alone their police departments we might just see
00:12:16.740a complete shutdown of police services and very very spotty service um someone that we're a good
00:12:22.960friend that we're i'm chatting with right now on signal um like today we were chatting about um
00:12:27.120falling response times to 9-1-1 calls and she was telling me how in some cities like they're
00:12:33.380literally putting people on hold with their 9-1-1 please hold uh which is not i remember that was a
00:12:40.600joke that i made up as a skit for a school play when i was a kid well we live in that timeline
00:12:46.260now our entire life is a joke that you made up in your high school plays um sorry this was
00:12:52.220elementary school, Simone. This is middle school. Of course. Well, you're so I'm quite a sophisticated
00:12:57.460humorist. You were, though, actually, given all the other family stories I've heard. It's true.
00:13:04.020But yeah, I just I think there's a reason why we should be talking about sovereign citizens now.
00:13:09.800And this might actually help to explain why suddenly, for example, sovereign citizen is
00:13:14.520skyrocketing in Google and Grand Viewer and trending upward in Google Trends, despite the
00:13:20.300fact that most people seem to think that like it reached its height in the 90s but a lot of it
00:13:25.140actually is that it's just become a little bit more sophisticated and that the actually functional
00:13:29.780parts of it are just on the dark web and like happening and churning along one of the things
00:13:34.880that could be happening and this is where we get into complete conjecture and conspiracy theory1.00
00:13:39.520territory is that a lot of people are unfairly discounting it because of the retarded things0.95
00:13:45.360that they're seeing online like this video like these yeah and you're gonna see some of the0.93
00:13:49.560websites. So when you say functioning parts of it, have people been able to use it to get
00:13:55.020certain rights or anything like that? Like what have they been able to capture?
00:13:58.440Well, I mean, I think what we're what I think may be happening is more functionally off the
00:14:03.620grids communities forming. You and I know people who participate in militias, who engage in forms
00:14:11.300of private security, which also are not at all weird or exotic. Consider the fact that, you know,
00:14:17.320jewish communities in new york city have their own private police and ambulance systems like this
00:14:22.020isn't it's it's not technically illegal depending on how it's executed and it's not an unreasonable
00:14:28.840thing for a population that feels police itself yeah yes and so i think what we may have happening
00:14:35.940to an increasing degree as conventional law enforcement and courts are falling apart
00:14:41.380is an increase in this and it's one of those things of like it could be a bad to pay problem0.99
00:14:46.540where you're only going to see it really when when it's really stupid and bad when like the
00:14:53.200the lowest capability people find it and run with it and either try to exploit it financially or0.87
00:15:01.120exploit it personally and logistically often those people seem to be quite paired well together
00:15:06.820because they're buying the you know kits like those licenses you can pay someone I'll get into
00:15:12.260it it's great but first yeah I want to give you a little bit more of a sovereign citizen 101
00:15:16.260want an update because it's not exactly what you said it was. But yeah, it is true that it's this
00:15:21.680like very loosely connected movement of people that think that the current government is legitimate.
00:15:27.120Most statuses do not apply to them unless they consent, as you said, and that they can opt out
00:15:32.700of the legal system through filings and wording and ritual. There are a ton of YouTube videos that
00:15:40.020you can easily find of sovereign citizens showing up to court and like thinking that they can use
00:15:44.640certain words and you see them using them very conspicuously same with dash cam or it's interesting
00:15:50.940because it's very mythological like if you're against mysticism when you look at sovereign
00:15:56.720citizens they are applying what looks like mystical rituals to the legal process and there's
00:16:02.180enough people like hundreds of thousands of people in the united states alone though there are also
00:16:07.160and i didn't know this freemen of the land movements in canada and australia new zealand
00:16:12.120in the uk so basically the commonwealth countries they're like the mere world version of them where
00:16:17.800they also do this same ridiculous stuff so there's since there are hundreds of thousands of people
00:16:22.540who participate in this ideology there is just this wealth of social media content of dash cam0.65
00:16:28.740footage and court footage of them making complete fools of themselves but i think that's where the
00:16:33.540system is failing it may be starting to hum along quite nicely well they think the united states0.80
00:16:38.140court system works like mormon heaven you've got to say all the right words to get in genuinely um
00:16:44.240it's it is bizarre um yeah i mean where it falls apart clearly is when it comes into conflict with
00:16:51.900a still sufficiently powerful system in the united states when the court systems and the
00:16:57.980police systems in the united states falter more emphasis on the more because they're already
00:17:03.020faltering as we can all see who knows what could happen when we get a president comancho now i0.95
00:17:09.380understand everyone's shit's emotional right now but listen up i got a three-point plan to fix0.96
00:17:16.700everything he's gonna be like sovereign citizens are now they do whatever they want0.95
00:17:22.440yeah like we are shutting down our systems now we're shifting to that system because it's free
00:17:28.320Yeah, it's like the it's the it's the it's the free open source AI, like super like dumb version that like we can switch to the the LLM response is not going to be great, but like technically it will give a response.
00:17:43.000The problem is what really happens when you do this at scale and without any additional rules is you get something like what happened in Chaz, where a series of warlords take over and start shooting people.
00:17:54.400right? I do think, yeah, that there are serious governance problems with most of the sovereign
00:17:59.440citizen-related collectives, but there are some that seem to be more functional than others,
00:18:03.840which is interesting. Because again, a lot of it comes down to, okay, is this one person kind of
00:18:09.200holding this entire assembly of people? Is it a group of people that have set up systematic and
00:18:13.860sustainable rules? There is variance. And that's, of course, what you would expect from a grassroots
00:18:18.740movement like this. But where you were a little bit off in your description of sovereign
00:18:24.120citizens is that they don't believe that from the very beginning, the government was off.
00:18:29.080They think that the government was secretly replaced, which I didn't know. So they typically
00:18:33.460say that the original constitutional or common law republic was swapped for an illegitimate and
00:18:39.240corporate admiralty or commercial system. And some people say this happened with the 14th Amendment
00:18:46.160in 1868. Some think it happens with the Civil War or the abandonment of the gold standard in 1933.
00:18:52.940but at any rate under this old system they would be free sovereigns and under the new one they're
00:18:59.100treated as subjects or collateral so there are two types of citizenship uh and per many of these
00:19:05.620people common reading of the 14th amendment holds that it created a second class federal citizen
00:19:12.520distinct from the original state citizen or natural born sovereign and they think that if
00:19:18.320you accept a social security number hence our friend born without one or a driver's license
00:19:24.820or a zip code or other government paper it's treated as a contract that pulls you into the
00:19:31.100federal and corporate jurisdiction so the key is to go completely off the grid to be free of them
00:19:38.060because it's like you know you you created a an account on a website and you like say yes
00:19:43.760sort of like magical thinking right oh totally yeah like don't accept the food from the person
00:19:49.580of the underworld because as soon as you take one bite you're going to be stuck in the underworld
00:19:53.440forever it's very that and so they have this concept of the straw man complaining they they
00:19:58.680sort of see that every person is said to have two identities so there's you malcolm the the person
00:20:04.420and then there's this separate legal fiction of and this is the straw man that's created at your
00:20:10.180birth because you you fool have a social security number and a birth certificate so this all caps0.94
00:20:16.840name on your birth certificate your social security card like john like malcolm collins0.96
00:20:21.440versus you malcolm the person is proof of your corporate shell and then if you have tickets and
00:20:29.440taxes and court papers all addressed to the all caps name that's that's like malcolm llc
00:20:35.840that is not malcolm the person but what's funny is they're kind of right so let me explain um
00:20:44.560oh no if you uh in the united states are born without a social security number um and you're
00:20:51.540never like registered right you could get away without paying taxes you just wouldn't be able
00:20:57.160to like get a job or make significant money or travel outside the country yeah yeah you wouldn't
00:21:04.180You wouldn't, like, you are giving up way more freedoms for that taxless status than the taxless status buys you.
00:21:13.280Like, it'd be so cool if, with our company, we just didn't have to pay taxes, but we wouldn't have our company if we weren't paying taxes, right?
00:21:20.820Yeah, I mean, the amount of trouble we go through to just set up a business bank account.
00:21:27.940I mean, it's easy to set up a human bank account, especially a credit card account, because they just want your money.
00:21:32.040but that's because they have your social security number and that's because they can ask for things
00:21:35.600although i still cannot believe that companies accept debt from people considering how easy it
00:21:40.680is to just declare bankruptcy in the united states that freaks me up but anyway we did a whole debt
00:21:45.040jubilee thing on that but i guess you are somewhat right i still think this is somewhat ridiculous
00:21:50.820but here's where it got extra crazy for me and i really didn't i think this is maybe one subfacet
00:21:56.180of the sovereign citizen um delusion but it also kind of like dovetails into um
00:22:05.380oh what's his name everyone loves him he's a t-shirt of him he had a t-shirt of him at
00:22:11.920manifest everyone was wearing like his robin hansen robin hansen robin hansen's fertility
00:22:16.400bond concept where like when a baby was born the parents would like get their like three hundred
00:22:23.200thousand dollar like future and then taxes future yeah they could like sell that bond it takes too
00:22:29.620long to explain it's not relevant to the episode well anyway so sovereign citizens believe that
00:22:33.920after 1933 the government pledged citizens as collateral for national debt and then opened a
00:22:39.840secret account which is often claimed to be six hundred thousand dollars uh to even millions of
00:22:45.760dollars tied to each birth certificate so i'm like oh that reminds me of robin hansen's whole
00:22:50.520bond six hundred thousand dollars per birth certificate so anyway so here's the problem
00:22:55.400is some sovereign citizens attempt to redeem their bond in an attempt to tap that account
00:23:02.420to have it like pay their credit card debt or they try to issue homemade financial instruments
00:23:07.940like against their bond um and uh courts obviously treat these as frivolous um and often even as
00:23:15.080fraud but but it's like it's like magic against yes it's like oh i have the secret money no one
00:23:21.760told you about the secret money did they um why don't you figure that out um and of course they
00:23:27.320they treat statuses as as or statutes like laws as contracts and according to them if you don't
00:23:33.540consent if you don't join the proceeding or use the right phrases like i do not consent or am i
00:23:40.180being detained you'll see this a lot in the body cam footage i am a living man woman it's another
00:23:46.500thing they believe that the police and and courts lack authority you're receiving an
00:23:51.460infringement notice in the mail for failing to wear a sepa okay do your best okay do you
00:23:56.660i don't consent to any of this what are your details if that's right just your name and date
00:24:00.740of birth i would have to get that to you for so am i under obligation to give you that license
00:24:05.860So you provide us to give me your name and address.
00:35:25.620Yeah. Anyway, so they have these courts. Sovereign citizens also had some historic compounds.0.99
00:35:35.000There was one called Montana Freeman's Justice Township, but justice was spelled J-U-S-T-U-S.
00:35:42.320Is that how you spell justice? It seems wrong.
00:35:44.700I don't know. I don't spell, Simone. People know this from my title cards.
00:35:48.160Yeah. Anyway, it ran its own court. It issued its own instruments. And it sounds basically to me like an early version of seasteading and charter cities. And I think to a great extent, this is kind of like the free version, the poor person's version of future techno feudalism.
00:36:08.860You know, as people escape to their walled cities that have their own private security and all their own infrastructure.
00:36:16.660Maybe what's going to happen with a lot of the people who are, quote unquote, left behind is they become sovereign citizens and just kind of have to figure out their own court systems, their own justice systems, their own security.
00:36:29.620The thing about the current court system is that right now it seems to mostly just involve harassing law enforcement and existing agencies.
00:36:37.080so some of these fake courts um would hold hearings but then indict judges like u.s judges
00:36:45.080government judges and prosecutors and sheriffs and then they would assign punishments to government
00:36:50.540workers u.s government workers one group called the colorado eight was convicted of racketeering
00:36:55.900after running such courts against colorado officials so like all these policemen are
00:37:01.040getting like you know we have to i don't know you have to go to jail for i don't know doing
00:37:06.420their jobs um in oregon and in some of some other ascending sorry oregon and some other
00:37:12.100just the confidence of this like you know what i'm gonna put on a court and put you in jail
00:37:17.120well literally some have put entire state agencies on trial in parks or online so also it's it's
00:37:24.460online internet justice wait do they go to like the park and set up a court where else are you
00:37:29.760gonna do it i don't know let's uh let's see look space rental is very expensive these days you
00:37:35.560know the contracts to just get like a terrible conference room in a hotel the irs on trial here
00:37:41.020people yeah like meet me in lincoln park um the montana freeman tried officials in their own court
00:37:48.000and then issued a writ of execution against a federal judge written of execution
00:37:53.340like dream big guys um i mean it takes a lot of balls to like show up in a u.s court
00:38:00.300and be like i accuse you and we've already tried you and we've got your execution so
00:38:06.660all the police here take them in yep um and and to your joke about like writing just your permit
00:38:13.980or whatever yes those courts also will issue warrants and liens and sometimes try to hand
00:38:21.420them to real sheriffs for service and the standard fbi described tactic of common law grand juries
00:38:29.320is that states passed anti-paper terrorism laws in the 1990s
00:38:34.380because what they are calling this in many cases is paper terrorism
00:38:40.160where just sovereign citizens will spam them
00:38:43.360with all these like really bogus weird lawsuits
00:38:46.220but it takes time to process all of them
00:38:48.420and to say like roughly this isn't even wrong.
00:38:52.100The U.S. legal system against five schizophrenic people.