• @LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world
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      56 months ago

      Right? My first thought was a sovereign citizen meant they simply want to exist without needing documentation to prove that they exist. But then I saw how complicated it got like they really want a passport? They really want documentation but they don’t want WHAT exactly? I don’t understand.

  • Jaysyn
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    527 months ago

    My wife has found a YouTube channel that is nothing but SovCits getting arrested after escalating traffic stops & it is truly a salve for my soul.

    The fact that black American SovCits exist, absolutely blows my mind.

    The fact that British & Australian SovCits exist is absolutely ridiculous.

    • @BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.worldOPM
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      137 months ago

      The sovcit arrests are hilarious. The Moorish black sovcits are some of the wildest. I’m in all their Facebook groups and the things they believe are crazy bonkers batshit.

      • Jaysyn
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        7 months ago

        It’s on my wife’s phone, but she said to search for Van Balion to start down the rabbit hole.

        EDIT: Law Talk with Mike was another one.

      • @Crack0n7uesday@lemmy.world
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        37 months ago

        If it’s the same guy I’m thinking of, it’s a bald dude with glasses and he plays on MoistCritical’s competitive esports or video game team (whatever that is called).

        • @AquaTofana@lemmy.world
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          66 months ago

          Is that the dude who got stopped at an AG station between Nevada and Cali, refused to allow the service person to inspect his vehicle for foreign pests, and then proceeded to ignore the cops requests for documentation to issue him a ticket (that he could contest in court if he wanted, avoiding the whole situation), 100s of times before crying when they smashed his car window and arrested him?

          Because that shit was hysterical.

  • @frickineh@lemmy.world
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    437 months ago

    The fun part is that the Department of State will send them a letter saying, “you can either provide a birth certificate or not, but we’re keeping your money either way.” Also, if the parent tries to “correct” their own passport, they’ll get a different letter that says, “you can have the same regular ass passport you already have or you can have nothing, aaand we’re keeping your money either way.”

    So I guess enjoy spending like $300 for nothing.

    • Bonehead
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      207 months ago

      So I guess enjoy spending like $300 for nothing.

      Don’t forget the endless victimizing by a unjust government that they refuse to recognize as legitimate. They really get off when that happens.

    • @moog@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      What is with people doing this? Do they think it makes something more important? Seems like a trump thing. Or maybe it’s from how Christians always capitalize “God”. Idk.

      • @makuus@pawb.social
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        157 months ago

        These are the Magic Words of Power that make it possible to slip outside the Machine and live the Life of ultimate freedom. Say the right ones and They will have no ability to control you.

      • @voracitude@lemmy.world
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        26 months ago

        I’m not a sovcit nutter, I capitalise words when they’re pronouns (even if they’re not normally pronouns, like if I’m talking about a Training Module at work, it’s because it’s an official specific training module I’m referring to) to emphasise them.

  • @starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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    397 months ago

    renouncing my status

    Please tell me this means renouncing their citizenship. Always hilarious watching people set up a bear trap, sharpen the teeth real good, double check the springs, and then intentionally step right on it

      • @ABluManOnLemmy@feddit.nl
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        25 months ago

        US citizens, as an exception, actually can. But one has to be in another country first. Most other countries don’t let their citizens renounce their citizenship without having another citizenship.

  • @aesthelete@lemmy.world
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    247 months ago

    When I first read some judge’s summary of their ruling on a sovereign citizen case, I was puzzled about why the judge spent so much time talking about the capitalization of letters in it. Then I read further and discovered that a core tenet of their goofball belief system is that words have different meanings (legal and perhaps even material) when you capitalize them differently.

    What a fucking weird thing to believe. Reminds me of scientologists with Xenu.

    • @Burninator05@lemmy.world
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      357 months ago

      Sovereign citizen is a term some people to describe themselves. They feel they should be allowed to live in and benefit from society without being subject to the rules or duties that go along with that. It is not a real status and has no legal basis. The groups like this person has joined are an echo chamber where they feed each other bad interpretations of laws and loopholes. When they inevitably end up in court they will agree the loophole applies. It never works.

      • @trafficnab@lemmy.ca
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        66 months ago

        They often have a very poor understanding of the law, they think lawyers are basically wizards and if they too say the right magic words (“the flag in this court has a gold fringe which means it’s an admiralty court and you don’t have jurisdiction”) then they won’t have to pay their traffic fine or taxes or whatever it is that they don’t want to pay for

        • @AlfredEinstein@lemmy.world
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          56 months ago

          There is some truth in their belief that “the Law” is a lot more flexible than the rest of us realize.

          Look at the kid gloves the courts have used with Trump’s cronies and other right-wing kooks. Alex Jones is a great example; owes over a billion dollars in restitution and hasn’t paid one cent. The court’s response has been "lol, blood from a turnip ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ".

          The law is pretty much a sham.

    • @palebluethought@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      As an aside, sovcits are not an exclusively US phenomenon. Most Commonwealth nations have some version of “freemen on the land” which is basically the same thing, though the specific details they fixate on may be different. I’ve also heard there’s a German version as well.

      Even in the US it’s not exclusively MAGA-ish militia types or super fundamentalists. There’s also the Moorish National strain, for example, which operates under the idea that the US Government is actually just a corporation operating under the sovereignty of an imaginary “Moorish Empire” in Africa, East India Company-style, whose existence is covered up by some kind of conspiracy

      • Enkrod
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        16 months ago

        There are German, Austrian and Swiss versions, yes.

        The biggest and best known groups are the “Reichsbürger” who in one way or another reject the legitimacy of the German state. Very popular is the conspiracy-narrative that the Reich still exists and that Germany is actually just a corporation working on the territory of the Reich, that you can simply quit or that there is no peace-treaty between the Allied Powers and Germany and so Germany is still occupied by the Allies.

        Some of the so-called Reichsbürger are just a bit crazy, others are clearly right-wing extremists

        - Head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in the federal state of Brandenburg

        They are partly directed and supported by the Russian foreign intelligence service, have contacts to some SovCit movements in the US and Canada, QAnon and the Proud Boys and have been known to be violent, hoarding weapons and some have shot at police, so they are being cracked down on pretty hard right now.

    • @WaxedWookie@lemmy.world
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      117 months ago

      Idiots that think they know the magic words to make legal consequences for their bullshit disappear.

      Of course, even if they did have a point with their conspiacist nonsense (they don’t), they get humiliated in court every. single. time.

  • @Red_October@lemmy.world
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    156 months ago

    I’m sure it’ll be fine. When has anyone ever needed a birth certificate? And surely nobody would ever get pedantic about something like that!

  • @ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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    6 months ago

    I’m confused, they aren’t part of (country) but they registered with it and want a passport from it anyway?

    Why haven’t they been deported?

    • @Chocrates@lemmy.world
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      46 months ago

      Pretty sure you are not allowed to renounce your citizenship if you only have one. I’m guessing it is so at least one country is ultimately responsible for them.

      I know there are still cases where the country doesn’t exist anymore, but we are talking about people intentionally trying to abuse the system.

    • @phx@lemmy.world
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      16 months ago

      I’m assuming they want a passport for whatever fantasy-land sovereign state they think they actually belong to