Content warning: This article contains graphic language, including hateful anti-immigrant rhetoric. Reader discretion is advised.
Content warning: This article contains graphic language, including hateful anti-immigrant rhetoric. Reader discretion is advised.
Sovereign citizens听are a diverse group of individuals whose activities and motives vary, but whose core tenets are the typically the same. They view United States citizenship, established government, authority and institutions as illegitimate and consider themselves immune from and therefore above the law.
As America continues to process the aftermath of white nationalist violence in Charlottesville, the nation鈥檚 premiere law enforcement agency appears to be focused on yet another emerging terrorist threat 鈥斕鼴lack Identity Extremists, or BIE.
An accused double-murderer 鈥 described as one of Florida鈥檚 most 鈥渘otorious criminals鈥 听鈥 apparently now thinks he鈥檚 a sovereign citizen.
Few flinch at Moore鈥檚 talk of outlawing homosexuality; NRA鈥檚 bogus claims it鈥檚 innocent of racism; FBI has 1,000 investigations of racists going; and more.
The ideology behind violent anti-abortion extremism
The religious concepts听of militia extremists
In this month鈥檚 Sovereign Files, a man shoots at numerous law enforcement personnel and shuts down a highway over a dispute about his driveway, a fake psychic skips his own sentencing hearing to watch the eclipse, and a New Hampshire politician who refused to pay his traffic ticket calls a judge a 鈥減rivate profit making corporation鈥 and says her court has no authority over him.
The religious concepts of the Sovereign Citizens Movement
The Christian and Norse mythology behind white supremacist violence
A self-described Moorish 鈥淕rand Sheik,鈥 who led a sovereign-citizen-style fraud scheme seeking more than $100 million in tax refunds, has been sentenced to 68 months in federal prison.