I’ve seen YT vids and FB posts about them, but I still don’t understand. What are they trying to accomplish?
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They think they’ve found loopholes in the legal code that they can exploit to live outside the law – such as not pay taxes, drive unsafely, or take any legal consequences at all.
What they’re trying to accomplish is being selfish pricks who thinks they’re above living in polite society
They think laws don’t apply to them because *one million stupid reasons*. They’re trying not to pay taxes and fines, but none of them succeeded at that so far.
They are people with a severe misunderstanding of basically everything related to law, and believe they’ve found a sort of “cheat code” that makes them immune to being held to any legal consequence by claiming they are not subject to the laws of where they live (usually in the US) because they are self-governing (sovereign) citizens of the world.
For a true ELI5: It’s like the kid on the playground who believes that if he plugs his ears and yells “LALALALAA” really loud so he doesn’t hear the bell or the teacher announcing the end of recess, here’s therefore allowed to continue playing as long as he likes.
Check out r/Sovereigncitizen for all sorts of stories.
The general gist of it is that they think they have found some sort of code or loophole that means the government can’t regulate them. They don’t pay taxes, or register their cars, that sort of thing. They annoy police and judges with crazy legal theories and frivolous arguments.
In reality, they are usually frustrated by their responsibilities or lack of success and looking for ways out; add in some conspiracy theory type ideas, a few YouTube videos, and a dash of mental illness and you end up with a SovCit.
Delusional people who think they know a lot more about the law than anyone else but who don’t actually understand any of it, and largely think th law doesn’t apply to them while legal protections afforded by the constitution do apply to them.
They’re basically conspiracy theorists who believe in a conspiracy that there’s a way to be immune from the law, taxes, etc.
One common belief is the idea of a “government name,” which is assigned to them at birth. They believe that laws, contracts, taxes, etc. only apply to this entity, and if they reject their government name then those laws no longer apply to them.
Another belief is that the law is less a set of rules, and more like a secret code. Lawyers and judges know this code, which is why they’re able to send people to jail, or keep people out of jail. Therefore (according to the belief) all someone has to do is learn this secret combination of words and they can defend themselves and keep themselves out of jail, hence why sovereign citizens almost always defend themselves, and why their defense is completely incomprehensible gibberish.
They’re idiots who think they’ve found a legal loophole that exempts them from the law. They’re aren’t trying to “accomplish” anything, they’ve basically just been duped.
In true ELI5 fashion.
Basically, they are that annoying kid in the back of the class that thinks he knows all the loopholes to not get in trouble. He will throw stuff at other students from across the room and when confronted, says “Well there are no signs saying DON’T throw stuff!”
And on the other hand, if you send him to the principals office, he will start going on about how *he* never agreed to follow the rules of the school, he never accepted them and does not have to follow them. He is not *going* to school, he is just merely *roaming* the school, and choosing to go the classes he wants to. Then he gets in school suspension for a couple hours and gets mad, thinking he was in the right and the principal is a loser that doesn’t understand anything.
After his suspension is over, he goes to lunch and starts eating. The teachers start to tell everyone it’s time to go out to recess, he isn’t done eating though so he just puts headphones over his ears so he can’t hear the teachers, thinking that he is now allowed to continue eating because he can’t hear them say it’s time to go outside.
Sovereign Citizens, also known as “freeman upon the land” or sometimes “Moorish nationals,” believe that the current set of laws in their country do not apply to them (or, really, anyone) due to some, frankly, bizarre interpretations of geopolitical history.
These people believe that they can take advantage of all the rights, services, and privileges afforded to them by their government, but have no obligation to follow any of the laws or pay any taxes set down by the same government.
For example, they can drive on roads paid for by taxes, but they don’t need to pay any taxes themselves. They believe that “driving” is not the act of piloting a motorized road vehicle to get from one place to another; it’s the act of using a car “for commerce,” and that those not doing so “for commerce” are not driving, they are “traveling.” And therefore, since they also believe that they have an unlimited right to the freedom of movement, they cannot be required to register their car, get or display a license plate, get a driver’s license, or carry insurance, as those are all things that would be required for “driving,” not “traveling.”
When they land in court — which they inevitably do — they tend to use some particularly creative amount of pseudo-legal garbage jargon to try and convince the court that they are not the person being named in the charge or suit. They then pile on an absolute ton of additional garbage jargon to try and say that the court has no jurisdiction over them, and that the entire government is essentially a fiction and a fraud.
It, of course, never works, all it does is annoy the court, but they think if they can recite the correct magic legal words, they can make any legal action magically go away.
SovCits are found world-wide at this point, and just substitute local references into their particular belief system. For example, in the US, they might make references to the constitution and the Declaration of Independence, while in the UK they might reference the Magna Carta.
It’s intentionally all very confusing, because for the most part, they believe that if they can “baffle with bullshit” they can get away with anything.
These are people who through a mix of dishonesty, desperation, delusion, dumbassery, and dishonesty maintain that due to their rather selective understanding of the law they are not bound by the laws of the nation.
Being charitable – they see cases where wealthy and powerful interests are able to have their lawyers achieve improbable wins in court cases by clever arguments phrased in legal language think that if they say similar magic words they can exempt themselves from the law. Basically the legal version of a [Cargo Cult](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult)
Less charitably, a lot of them are criminals who take advantage of the fact law enforcement often can’t be bothered to deal with various types of property crimes between ordinary people, waving even fairly serious crimes away as “it’s a civil matter” – and then the SovCits slow walk the cases through courts, and as long as they maintain the veneer of a Civil dispute they know they’re unlikely to be criminally charged.
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