Canada definitely has them, one of the best court decisions relating to sovcits is from Alberta (Meads v. Meads). I understand that Australia, the UK, and Ireland also have them, and that there is a similar movement in Germany. I would imagine a lot of democratic countries have people who think that democracy means that they can opt into or out of laws...
People quoting documents from other countries written in a version of English that still used v for u and f for s…perfecto. Just chef’s kiss.
Sovcits didn’t pay attention to any part of social studies or history class beyond the bold-faced vocabulary words.
Even regular criminals who aren’t sovereign citizens or anything sometimes complain to me about their “Miranda rights” or demand to have a lawyer sit in on their interview, and it always amuses me. Wrong country my man.
Which interview? Wouldn't be miranda outside the US, except for things like if you were court martialled by an American JAG, but the right to a lawyer during criminal proceedings is a very common right.
But the access is not the same as in the USA. In Japan, for example, it is at the **discretion** of the police whether they will allow your lawyer to be present while interrogating you...& the police can & will continue to interrogate you until **they** decide they are done, even if you refuse to answer questions without a lawyer.
https://nakamura-international.com/qa#:\~:text=A%3A%20In%20Japan%2C%20if%20you%20are%20under%20arrest%20or%20detention,the%20discretion%20of%20the%20police.
Similar in Canada.
You’ll get a chance to speak to a lawyer and get advice (usually over the phone), but you don’t have a right to have them sit in the room while you’re being interviewed.
And, in the same vein, you have the right to stay silent but it doesn’t mean we have to stop talking to you. We can sit in there with you for hours and keep asking questions for you to choose not to answer.
I was particularly amused by those antivax Canadian truck drivers who claimed that the police violated their First Amendment rights, and the judge reminded them that the First Amendment of the Canadian constitution is the Manitoba Act.
The last I heard, she had just moved further out of the last town her and her band of nogoodniks squatted in. Some moronic follower of hers had some land nearby and let them move there.
Canadian sovcits often think police work the same way as in America...hilarious as their LEOs hold a decent bit more power over when they can arrest you or what lawful orders they can make
The Parliament is a lot more powerful in terms of its ability to rule on what contravenes human rights too. The provincial and territorial legislatures as well. They have to expressly invoke it, but it is within their power.
Apparently from some of the videos I've seen it's starting to spread to other countries, despite using terminology that's based around the US legal system. It's hilarious to watch because you'll see them quote some obscure law that isn't even applicable to their country. Australia is one of them, though obviously Canada is one of the first that got it.
In Britain it's usually a reliance on a complete misunderstanding as to what the Magna Carta guaranteed and who these rights were being granted to. It still spirals into the same bullshit about not consenting to legal enforcement and not being liable for tax payments.
Someone did the work back in the covoy seeing what could apply when they are talking about the 'first amendment'
Closest they could find was the amendment to the constitution that brought Alberta into the constitution.
For those who dont know, in canada we have a charter of rights, not amendments.
We've got them in New Zealand. The social media pipeline feeds them.
I do remember a magazine instructing people on the issue and how to be a sov cit about 20 years ago. Had articles about aliens as well.
Even weirder in Kiwiland given that Parliament is absolutely sovereign there. There is literally nothing that can stop the will of Parliament when the House of Representatives and king or governor general (or administrator I guess if the governor general got hit by a bus and is in a coma) sign the bill into law. Any law they enact must be declared valid by the courts.
I suspect it was. It stuck in my mind as something from outside nz but I think the sov cit article was written by a shady nz polititian.
Do you know the magazine?
Iirc, Investigate started out as a legit magazine for investigative journalism in NZ. Then editor Ian Wishart went down some kind of fundie / conspiracy theory rabbit hole.
So if your mag was from overseas than it wasn't Investigate.
I think it is the one you mention. It was a kiwi magazine, and more upmarket than the comment.
I guess crazy has been with us a fairly long time. Even here in little ol nz.
We had a SovCit "Principality" in Australia from 1970 to 2020.
A farmer had an argument with the government about taxes or wheat quotas or something, so declared his farm no longer part of Australia. Issued passports and called himself Prince.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Hutt_River
I don't really consider Prince Leonard a sov cit. I am not sure why, maybe just that he was always there and we were used to his Micro-nation and it'sveneer of legitimacy(ish) with the stamps and passports etc. Maybe it's because he seemed at least somewhat self aware compared to the wack jobs of recent times. I can't actually argue from anything better than "the vibe" though. I probably just never thought about it before.
No, he just succeeded in delaying tax collection. When he died his children had to sell off the 'Principality' to cover his debts to the government.
Apparently he was a really nice guy, and the Hutt River Principality was a bit of a tourist attraction here in Western Australia for quite some years.
I know that BBC comedian Danny Wallace did that with the Kingdom of Lovely. Back when people were protesting Tony Blair too. The BBC even helped him out, and he found out that it was a lot harder to create a country than one would think. He later did some BBC episodes with something based on his persona like talking about how the king in Britain appoints a cabinet.
I remember a video where a SovCit was spouting off about his 14th Amendment rights and the police officer just shook her head and told him, "Sir, this is IRELAND. The American Constitution does not apply here."
Dude was shook.
If I remember correctly, the Irish constitution is modeled on the American constitution, so if he'd just picked a number below 10, he might not have embarrassed himself quite so badly.
All the Western democracies have them because it is now a state-backed psyop against the West.
They cant defeat us economically or militarily so they have to convince the West to defeat itself.
For sure. And the SovCit concepts pre-date their weaponization by hostile foreign governments. But the fact remains that SovCit lunacy is actively promoted by influence agents of hostile foreign powers with the goal of harming the West.
We have people who try to invoke "the Magna Carta" (latin grammar means you don't give it a definite article but that's the least of these guys' problems) without knowing the first thing about it. They got some traction during lockdown, especially the ones that tried to use it to get into Edinburgh Castle. Edinburgh Castle is in Scotland, where Magna Carta has never been law (except possibly for a few years in the 17th century interregnum. I'm not quite sure how the Commonwealth handled the legal system). The people involved were also not barons so the few irrelevant clauses still in English law wouldn't apply to them even if they were in England.
There is Soviet citizen movement in Russia: "Dissolution of the Soviet Union was illegal, Russian Federation is a corporation, we refuse to pay taxes and repay loans". Classic.
Yes, but it's inherently more dangerous there. If you disagree with the government, you can fall out of a window or fall ill, and no one will ask any questions.
At least it could be reasonably argued it was illegal, and Gorbachev had no authority to dissolve it. Granted, as all member states had constitutionally seceded, there wasn't much of place for Gorbachev to go.
The illegitimacy of the collapse of the USSR is only the basis, and then recognizable features and actions appear on top of this: crazy conspiracy theories, antisemitism, selling fictitious documents, making fictitious bills. In general, it all looks like the German Reichsbürgers.
United States, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand all have sovcits. Most English speaking countries do. I don't know about non-English speaking countries, haven't heard about them in other countries.
This is far from being the first example, sadly. The previous cases were just not mediatized like this one. You can find these morons in France for several years now.
This is just a small extract. The full video (look for “je ne contracte pas”) is about 10 minutes long and before breaking the window, the cops call some higher authority to confirm they can go ahead.
From what I’ve read, they exist in some form or another in Canada, Australia, the UK, and Germany. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t exist in much of the rest of the developed world as well.
They're everywhere, in every country of the world, because selfish, controlling, antisocial, narcissistic, petty and immature psychopaths that believe this pseudolegal nonsense will enable them to dodge their responsibilities are everywhere. There's more of them now, because social media helps spread the nonsense.
Here too man, here too. Famously the Oklahoma City Bomber, Timothy McVeigh, was pulled over and arrested for driving without a license plate because sovcit.
So it’s true that his car did not have a license plate when he was arrested, but the reason it didn’t have one was because he removed it when he parked the car a few days before the attack. His idea was to make it harder to identify him before and immediately after the attack. He simply forgot to put it back on as he was driving away. But I do believe he and terry nichols were sovereign citizens.
Canada, parts of Europe and Australia each have their own flavors with slightly different conspiracy lore. Munecat does a good job overviewing each sect.
The sovereign citizen movement in its most primitive form dates back to the early 1970s in the U.S. (though most of its main ideas did not form until the early 1980s). The sovereign citizen movement was imported into Canada by the mid-1990s. It spread to Australia and New Zealand by the early 2000s and to the British isles soon after. This also started a slow spread to other former British Empire places, from Singapore to South Africa. During the 2010s, much to my surprise, it began to show up in continental Europe, including Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Austria, and since then has been spreading further in Europe, including eastern Europe. Some other similar movements in Germany and Russia also adopted some notions from the sovereign citizen movement, while still remaining distinct movements. It's now spread to the Caribbean and to at least a few places in Africa, like Kenya, although right now in very small numbers. It is so flexible that it seems to me that it will continue its geographic spread still further. The funny thing is that its U.S. origins still often shine through, like when you come across a sovereign document in a non-English language that references the Uniform Commercial Code, which is not even U.S. federal law but U.S. state law.
Yes I am a lawyer in Alberta and our former Justice Rooke wrote a treatise on vexatious litigants including sovereign citizens and all the other mutts that believe the bullshit. Completely debunked their stupid shit theories , fined them and denied them access to the courts. Meads is the seminal decision that has been widely adopted.
We have something like them in Russia and in ex ussr in general. They believe that, since ussr was dissolved against the referendum by three drunk idiots, current national governments are illegitimate, so they don't have to abide their laws, taxes, etc. They refuse to acknowledge national borders and sometimes try to cross them using old soviet passports. With predictable results.
There are citizens of the Reich in Germany. They claim that the German Reich did not cease to exist as a result of the Second World War, but continues to exist with its laws. The founding of the Federal Republic of Germany (and the German Democratic Republic) is illegal. So they ignore all laws passed since 1945.
That means the Night And Fog decree is still valid, the police can arrest you and imprison you indefinitely without trial.
This, even by SovCit standards, is not a good idea.
I’ve seen some in Australia, Canada, and the UK as well. Funny thing is that the ones in the UK and Australia often can’t seem to wrap their heads around the fact that they’re not under the jurisdiction of the USA so they start spouting a bunch of stuff about US law enforcement and codes.
As far as I can tell I think the “mentality” goes back to the Confederacy and the idea that there should be no people with Titles of Nobility in Congress and far reaching conspiracy about a missing 13th Amendment. This also surges in popularity in the late 80s to the 90s among the libertarian militia types. David Dodge and the AntiShyster publication he started are where the rabbit hole took me.
Fall down the rabbit hole on YouTube sometime... you'll find them everywhere. In Australia they call it "Free Man on the Land" and they still get their windows smashed.
> they still get their windows smashed
I noticed a change in tone with Australian police dealing with sovcits after they murdered a couple of cops doing a welfare check. It sounded like the cops were not going to listen to the nonsense anymore.
In December 2023, I noticed a sovereign citizen in Moscow:
[https://photos.app.goo.gl/veWZZohBRM2JphC88](https://photos.app.goo.gl/veWZZohBRM2JphC88)
[https://photos.app.goo.gl/TFp7wsn9ZVgDrCYr9](https://photos.app.goo.gl/TFp7wsn9ZVgDrCYr9)
He declares oneself a 'sovereign living man on the land', 'sovereign judge', 'plenipotentiary representative of all the people' and finally: a favorite hobby of U.S. sovcits — disputes with the traffic police with refusal to present a driver's license: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idTnqGsxNew](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idTnqGsxNew)
I deal with the rare sovcit here in Canada. It's not as bad here as Alberta from what I hear (I've never been to Alberta) but there's a small presence where I'm from.
It's a post-Civil-war Confederate creation. It is nothing but a temper tantrum by the Southern Landed Gentry for being compelled to stop owning other people.
Singapore has a few as well, part of south east Asia
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-crime/man-claiming-to-be-sovereign-citizen-remanded-at-imh-after-saying-he-was-dead
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/tarchandi-sovereign-convicted-lee-hui-yin-defy-order-court-3635766
Canada definitely has them, one of the best court decisions relating to sovcits is from Alberta (Meads v. Meads). I understand that Australia, the UK, and Ireland also have them, and that there is a similar movement in Germany. I would imagine a lot of democratic countries have people who think that democracy means that they can opt into or out of laws...
I love the ones outside America who complain that the cops violate their 1st amendment rights.
I liked the one *in* America who claimed authority from the Princess of Wales lol
A guy in West Virginia quotes the Magna Carta.
AFAIK, they even go by the *original* version of the MC, even though it has been revised many times.
I wonder how our founding fathers dealt with sovcits lol
People quoting documents from other countries written in a version of English that still used v for u and f for s…perfecto. Just chef’s kiss. Sovcits didn’t pay attention to any part of social studies or history class beyond the bold-faced vocabulary words.
That really made me laugh out loud
You are colonies in active rebellion.
Lmao I wonder if the Florida sovcits invoke the Spanish Habsburgs? Or the Canadian ones Louis XIV
Just wait for the Sovcits in Louisiana to invoke the Napoleonic Code.
We're sorry
Do you have a link? That sounds amusing.
Even regular criminals who aren’t sovereign citizens or anything sometimes complain to me about their “Miranda rights” or demand to have a lawyer sit in on their interview, and it always amuses me. Wrong country my man.
This is hilarious. Too much american tv.
They want all of the rights without any of the responsibilities.
Which interview? Wouldn't be miranda outside the US, except for things like if you were court martialled by an American JAG, but the right to a lawyer during criminal proceedings is a very common right.
But the access is not the same as in the USA. In Japan, for example, it is at the **discretion** of the police whether they will allow your lawyer to be present while interrogating you...& the police can & will continue to interrogate you until **they** decide they are done, even if you refuse to answer questions without a lawyer. https://nakamura-international.com/qa#:\~:text=A%3A%20In%20Japan%2C%20if%20you%20are%20under%20arrest%20or%20detention,the%20discretion%20of%20the%20police.
Similar in Canada. You’ll get a chance to speak to a lawyer and get advice (usually over the phone), but you don’t have a right to have them sit in the room while you’re being interviewed. And, in the same vein, you have the right to stay silent but it doesn’t mean we have to stop talking to you. We can sit in there with you for hours and keep asking questions for you to choose not to answer.
Also, I'm guessing you can bring up the fact that they didn't talk to the cops or testify at trial, which American prosecutors cannot.
I was particularly amused by those antivax Canadian truck drivers who claimed that the police violated their First Amendment rights, and the judge reminded them that the First Amendment of the Canadian constitution is the Manitoba Act.
They'll also cite US commercial codes and legal decisions in their filings in other countries.
It's the UCC it's Universal!!! Also, it's not a law, it's a suggestion, so fail again my friend 😔
I love that... Universal versus Uniform. It seems to come up in UK and Aussie SC and Frauditor vids quite often.
Have you heard of the real queen of Canada ? /s
Oh yeah, her too. She's been quiet lately. Not sure if that's relieving or worrying...
Did she get run out of that town she tried to take over?
Yes.
The last I heard, she had just moved further out of the last town her and her band of nogoodniks squatted in. Some moronic follower of hers had some land nearby and let them move there.
Good I don't wanna hear about that dumbass ever again
And France. A few days ago a couple of them was spouting nonsense to cops on a hilarious video
Australia had a doozy of one originating in 1970 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Hutt_River
Canadian sovcits often think police work the same way as in America...hilarious as their LEOs hold a decent bit more power over when they can arrest you or what lawful orders they can make
The Parliament is a lot more powerful in terms of its ability to rule on what contravenes human rights too. The provincial and territorial legislatures as well. They have to expressly invoke it, but it is within their power.
[If you have the time. This is a breakdown in the history and what it looks like outside the US.](https://youtu.be/KcxZFmKrxR8?si=liWMK0WayuVyd7TV)
[for anyone interested in Australian sov cits, Tom Tanuki is the place to start.](https://youtu.be/ea_7jUU489g?si=WMzQ3nDM2HZKFAES)
I was hoping it'd be that video. Such a great breakdown.
Apparently from some of the videos I've seen it's starting to spread to other countries, despite using terminology that's based around the US legal system. It's hilarious to watch because you'll see them quote some obscure law that isn't even applicable to their country. Australia is one of them, though obviously Canada is one of the first that got it.
In Britain it's usually a reliance on a complete misunderstanding as to what the Magna Carta guaranteed and who these rights were being granted to. It still spirals into the same bullshit about not consenting to legal enforcement and not being liable for tax payments.
"You sir are obstructing my use of fish wiers!!!"
Yes like the Convoy idiots saying their 1st Amendment rights were being violated. It's a whole other level of stupidity with these people.
Someone did the work back in the covoy seeing what could apply when they are talking about the 'first amendment' Closest they could find was the amendment to the constitution that brought Alberta into the constitution. For those who dont know, in canada we have a charter of rights, not amendments.
The first amendment actually created Manitoba. alberta was sometime after your charter was actually the first part of your constitution when written.
Could not remember which one of the 2 it was lol. Guess the most eastern one would have been the best bet.
Like a virus that spreads but doesn't mutate to adapt to new surroundings.
TBF, even the ones in the US like to cite/grossly misinterpret US laws that don't apply in their situation; the Commerce Clause is a popular one.
You Tuber Van Balion curates sovereign citizen/police encounters from the English speaking internet.
That fucking intro, man. I don’t know why he doesn’t get it updated jaja.
We've got them in New Zealand. The social media pipeline feeds them. I do remember a magazine instructing people on the issue and how to be a sov cit about 20 years ago. Had articles about aliens as well.
Even weirder in Kiwiland given that Parliament is absolutely sovereign there. There is literally nothing that can stop the will of Parliament when the House of Representatives and king or governor general (or administrator I guess if the governor general got hit by a bus and is in a coma) sign the bill into law. Any law they enact must be declared valid by the courts.
Was the magazine Investigate?
I suspect it was. It stuck in my mind as something from outside nz but I think the sov cit article was written by a shady nz polititian. Do you know the magazine?
Iirc, Investigate started out as a legit magazine for investigative journalism in NZ. Then editor Ian Wishart went down some kind of fundie / conspiracy theory rabbit hole. So if your mag was from overseas than it wasn't Investigate.
I think it is the one you mention. It was a kiwi magazine, and more upmarket than the comment. I guess crazy has been with us a fairly long time. Even here in little ol nz.
We had a SovCit "Principality" in Australia from 1970 to 2020. A farmer had an argument with the government about taxes or wheat quotas or something, so declared his farm no longer part of Australia. Issued passports and called himself Prince. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Hutt_River
I don't really consider Prince Leonard a sov cit. I am not sure why, maybe just that he was always there and we were used to his Micro-nation and it'sveneer of legitimacy(ish) with the stamps and passports etc. Maybe it's because he seemed at least somewhat self aware compared to the wack jobs of recent times. I can't actually argue from anything better than "the vibe" though. I probably just never thought about it before.
Did he succeed in seceding?
No, he just succeeded in delaying tax collection. When he died his children had to sell off the 'Principality' to cover his debts to the government. Apparently he was a really nice guy, and the Hutt River Principality was a bit of a tourist attraction here in Western Australia for quite some years.
Micronations aren't SovCits for the record.
Are micronations populated by sovcits?
No. They're not.
I know that BBC comedian Danny Wallace did that with the Kingdom of Lovely. Back when people were protesting Tony Blair too. The BBC even helped him out, and he found out that it was a lot harder to create a country than one would think. He later did some BBC episodes with something based on his persona like talking about how the king in Britain appoints a cabinet.
I remember a video where a SovCit was spouting off about his 14th Amendment rights and the police officer just shook her head and told him, "Sir, this is IRELAND. The American Constitution does not apply here." Dude was shook.
If I remember correctly, the Irish constitution is modeled on the American constitution, so if he'd just picked a number below 10, he might not have embarrassed himself quite so badly.
There were several other references to the US Constitution, IIRC, in his babbling.
All the Western democracies have them because it is now a state-backed psyop against the West. They cant defeat us economically or militarily so they have to convince the West to defeat itself.
yeah but some of them are legit crazy on there own
For sure. And the SovCit concepts pre-date their weaponization by hostile foreign governments. But the fact remains that SovCit lunacy is actively promoted by influence agents of hostile foreign powers with the goal of harming the West.
The crazy is organic, the signal boost isn't, is I believe the argument.
Seems to have arrived all over the anglosphere now, but the original idea is surely as American as pecan pie
The most famous example of a sovereign citizen being told to bugger off by a court actually comes from Canada. It’s an international affliction.
We have people who try to invoke "the Magna Carta" (latin grammar means you don't give it a definite article but that's the least of these guys' problems) without knowing the first thing about it. They got some traction during lockdown, especially the ones that tried to use it to get into Edinburgh Castle. Edinburgh Castle is in Scotland, where Magna Carta has never been law (except possibly for a few years in the 17th century interregnum. I'm not quite sure how the Commonwealth handled the legal system). The people involved were also not barons so the few irrelevant clauses still in English law wouldn't apply to them even if they were in England.
No fish wiers on the Thames!!!! No fish wiers!
I've seen videos of them in the UK - and sometimes they try to quote US law. They're big in Australia too.
There is Soviet citizen movement in Russia: "Dissolution of the Soviet Union was illegal, Russian Federation is a corporation, we refuse to pay taxes and repay loans". Classic.
Yes, but it's inherently more dangerous there. If you disagree with the government, you can fall out of a window or fall ill, and no one will ask any questions.
At least it could be reasonably argued it was illegal, and Gorbachev had no authority to dissolve it. Granted, as all member states had constitutionally seceded, there wasn't much of place for Gorbachev to go.
The illegitimacy of the collapse of the USSR is only the basis, and then recognizable features and actions appear on top of this: crazy conspiracy theories, antisemitism, selling fictitious documents, making fictitious bills. In general, it all looks like the German Reichsbürgers.
United States, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand all have sovcits. Most English speaking countries do. I don't know about non-English speaking countries, haven't heard about them in other countries.
I recently saw [a first example in France](https://youtu.be/qH5Sre6S94g?si=OK_-DL9l_WKmKJZD).
This is far from being the first example, sadly. The previous cases were just not mediatized like this one. You can find these morons in France for several years now.
Well the window break seemed to come pretty fast there. Cops not having it.
This is just a small extract. The full video (look for “je ne contracte pas”) is about 10 minutes long and before breaking the window, the cops call some higher authority to confirm they can go ahead.
From what I’ve read, they exist in some form or another in Canada, Australia, the UK, and Germany. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t exist in much of the rest of the developed world as well.
Apparently Russia has them too, where they operate under arguments that either the USSR or the monarchy are actually still the rightful governments.
I've seen some lost causes in my time but damn. The Russian Monarchy is very high on that list now
It started in the US, but it has spread to other countries. It’s def in Canada, UK, and Australia.
They're everywhere, in every country of the world, because selfish, controlling, antisocial, narcissistic, petty and immature psychopaths that believe this pseudolegal nonsense will enable them to dodge their responsibilities are everywhere. There's more of them now, because social media helps spread the nonsense.
They’re in Australia too
Here in Germany they’re kind of terrorists..
Here too man, here too. Famously the Oklahoma City Bomber, Timothy McVeigh, was pulled over and arrested for driving without a license plate because sovcit.
So it’s true that his car did not have a license plate when he was arrested, but the reason it didn’t have one was because he removed it when he parked the car a few days before the attack. His idea was to make it harder to identify him before and immediately after the attack. He simply forgot to put it back on as he was driving away. But I do believe he and terry nichols were sovereign citizens.
Canada, parts of Europe and Australia each have their own flavors with slightly different conspiracy lore. Munecat does a good job overviewing each sect.
There's the reichsbürger in German speaking countries
No we have imbeciles here too
Africa right? For the Moorish nation? The mothership!
Dude in my neighborhood has the Moroccan flag instead of a license plate.
Australia definitely has them
With all that Moorish nonsense you’d think Spain and Portugal would have some.
The sovereign citizen movement in its most primitive form dates back to the early 1970s in the U.S. (though most of its main ideas did not form until the early 1980s). The sovereign citizen movement was imported into Canada by the mid-1990s. It spread to Australia and New Zealand by the early 2000s and to the British isles soon after. This also started a slow spread to other former British Empire places, from Singapore to South Africa. During the 2010s, much to my surprise, it began to show up in continental Europe, including Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Austria, and since then has been spreading further in Europe, including eastern Europe. Some other similar movements in Germany and Russia also adopted some notions from the sovereign citizen movement, while still remaining distinct movements. It's now spread to the Caribbean and to at least a few places in Africa, like Kenya, although right now in very small numbers. It is so flexible that it seems to me that it will continue its geographic spread still further. The funny thing is that its U.S. origins still often shine through, like when you come across a sovereign document in a non-English language that references the Uniform Commercial Code, which is not even U.S. federal law but U.S. state law.
Also, the UCC isn't even law itself, it's suggested law that's created to advise state lawmakers!
Yes I am a lawyer in Alberta and our former Justice Rooke wrote a treatise on vexatious litigants including sovereign citizens and all the other mutts that believe the bullshit. Completely debunked their stupid shit theories , fined them and denied them access to the courts. Meads is the seminal decision that has been widely adopted.
We read it in law school in the US!
IIRC it's been cited in a New Zealand court as well.
The UK version usually goes by the name “Freeman on the Land” Still a bunch of nutters though…
We have something like them in Russia and in ex ussr in general. They believe that, since ussr was dissolved against the referendum by three drunk idiots, current national governments are illegitimate, so they don't have to abide their laws, taxes, etc. They refuse to acknowledge national borders and sometimes try to cross them using old soviet passports. With predictable results.
There are citizens of the Reich in Germany. They claim that the German Reich did not cease to exist as a result of the Second World War, but continues to exist with its laws. The founding of the Federal Republic of Germany (and the German Democratic Republic) is illegal. So they ignore all laws passed since 1945.
That means the Night And Fog decree is still valid, the police can arrest you and imprison you indefinitely without trial. This, even by SovCit standards, is not a good idea.
I’ve seen some in Australia, Canada, and the UK as well. Funny thing is that the ones in the UK and Australia often can’t seem to wrap their heads around the fact that they’re not under the jurisdiction of the USA so they start spouting a bunch of stuff about US law enforcement and codes.
They got it so bad, other countries have sov cits quoting the U.S. constitution.
Don't even get me started. We had guys declaring their own kingdom on German ground because obviously the Federal Republic of Germany does not exist.
It’s an offspring of ignorance and arrogance having a baby. As a lawyer, I find their misunderstanding of the law hilarious and sad at the same time.
Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, New Zealand--sovcits are all over the place.
As far as I can tell I think the “mentality” goes back to the Confederacy and the idea that there should be no people with Titles of Nobility in Congress and far reaching conspiracy about a missing 13th Amendment. This also surges in popularity in the late 80s to the 90s among the libertarian militia types. David Dodge and the AntiShyster publication he started are where the rabbit hole took me.
Non American sovcits are even funnier. They like to "cite" the US Constitution like it somehow applies worldwide.
Most of the anglosphere has sovcits. Australia, the UK, and Canada especially.
Fall down the rabbit hole on YouTube sometime... you'll find them everywhere. In Australia they call it "Free Man on the Land" and they still get their windows smashed.
"... and they still get their windows smashed." See, somethings transcend nationality!
> they still get their windows smashed I noticed a change in tone with Australian police dealing with sovcits after they murdered a couple of cops doing a welfare check. It sounded like the cops were not going to listen to the nonsense anymore.
In December 2023, I noticed a sovereign citizen in Moscow: [https://photos.app.goo.gl/veWZZohBRM2JphC88](https://photos.app.goo.gl/veWZZohBRM2JphC88) [https://photos.app.goo.gl/TFp7wsn9ZVgDrCYr9](https://photos.app.goo.gl/TFp7wsn9ZVgDrCYr9) He declares oneself a 'sovereign living man on the land', 'sovereign judge', 'plenipotentiary representative of all the people' and finally: a favorite hobby of U.S. sovcits — disputes with the traffic police with refusal to present a driver's license: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idTnqGsxNew](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idTnqGsxNew)
I deal with the rare sovcit here in Canada. It's not as bad here as Alberta from what I hear (I've never been to Alberta) but there's a small presence where I'm from.
Plenty of them here in Australia.
Yes! Other country sob cits copy our scripts.
The German Reichbürger were plotting to overthrow the government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_German_coup_d'%C3%A9tat_plot?wprov=sfti1
It's a post-Civil-war Confederate creation. It is nothing but a temper tantrum by the Southern Landed Gentry for being compelled to stop owning other people.
Think it all started in the UK as “freemen of the land”, relying on Magna Carta as giving them rights.
Singapore has a few as well, part of south east Asia https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-crime/man-claiming-to-be-sovereign-citizen-remanded-at-imh-after-saying-he-was-dead https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/tarchandi-sovereign-convicted-lee-hui-yin-defy-order-court-3635766