Many have heard of and even seen some videos about so-called "sovereign citizens" in the United States (and in this day and age in a few other countries, such as the UK and Australia), although most of them have stopped calling themselves with that moniker because of its bad rep and bad publicity (which in itself is funny: They say "I'm not a sovereign citizen" yet follow the sovcit script word-for-word, going though every single talking point, every single claim, every single antic.)
Most people, however, don't know much about them and only have the notion that they are just deluded individuals who have declared themselves as not being "citizens of the US" and instead being "sovereign", ie. they belong to their own mobile "mini-country" of sorts, population 1, and thus they don't need to follow the laws of the United States because they aren't citizens after all, that they have diplomatic immunity, like they were some kind of ambassadors of their own single-person countries within the US.
However, that's just scratching the surface of the entire madness.
"Sovereign citizenship" (even though they have stopped calling it that because of the bad rep) is a bona fide gigantic conspiracy theory. That's just not namecalling nor throwing random terms around; it actually is a conspiracy theory.
The leaders of the movement (which goes back at least a century) have taken individual sentences and even individual words from the US Constitution and all kinds of legal and non-legal documents, completely isolated them from their context, misinterpreted them in wild ways because of this lack of context, and formed an entire conspiracy theory about the United States government, with miles and miles of completely made-up pseudolegal nonsense.
They believe (based on out-of-context individual words in some documents) that the United States government is a private corporation, and that the citizens are some kind of "assets" with monetary value in this corporation, and that every citizen is treated as some kind of abstract asset rather than a person, a human being (secretly denoted by writing their names in all-capital letters instead of lowercase), and that every such abstract asset has some secret billion-dollar bank account that belongs to that person (no, I'm not making that up, they truly believe that).
They also believe that if they keep themselves separate from the abstract "asset" that the government has assigned them to be, by not making any "contract" with the government, the government will genuinely have no jurisdiction over them. In other words, that the US government and judiciary system will have jurisdiction only if they have made a "contract" with it. And how do they think that you make a "contract" with the government? By being in possession of any government-issued legal documents (such as driver's license, a license plate, or mandatory insurance) or signing any official government-issued document (which is why they always refuse a free lawyer, because they think that by signing the document needed for that they are "contracting" with the government.)
They also believe, and this is where the conspiracy theory goes into its craziest form, that there's a "secret code" that can be used by the sovereign citizens, a particular set of words and terms, a particular vocabulary, that they can use to manipulate the system. That not only can they keep themselves independent and separate from the that abstract "asset" that the government has assigned them to be (so that the government has "no jurisdiction" over them), but that by using certain words, terms, vocabulary and official forms they can manipulate the system to their advantage and eg. not be convicted of crimes.
What's even crazier is that these people, when they get tried on court, will go to court and genuinely expect the judge to be part of the secret conspiracy, to know all those secret code words, to understand what they mean, and to respect them. For example (one example of literally hundreds), when they say "I'm not the all-capital letters name, I'm lowecase xyz", they genuinely expect the judge to secretly know the significance of that, and to respect it.
Yes, they genuinely think that they have "cracked the code", the big secret that all judges, lawmakers, lawyers and law enforcement officials are privy to, and that by using these terms and words they can get in the secret, to use the "secret code" to get out of jail free. They genuinely think that when they spout these nonsensical pseudolegal terms, the judge will secretly understand and acknowledge it.
That's the craziest part of the entire conspiracy theory.
Of course in reality there is no "secret code". It's 100% the invention of sovereign citizens leaders. None of what they believe is taught in law school, nor is it documented in any government documents, nor are any lawmakers, judges, lawyers or law enforcement officials knowledgeable of any of it. (The only way any of them may have any knowledge of it is if they have researched what sovcits believe. And they are laughing at it.)
But a surprising amount of Americans believe it. They truly believe that there is this "secret code" and that it will allow them to get out of legal predicaments. Like a secret handshake that if they do right will make them look the other way and just set you free. (Granted, many of these sovcits haven't studied the conspiracy theory to that level of detail and may just be parroting some sovcit "tutorials" word-for-word without even understanding what it all is supposed to mean. However, at least equally many have, and they truly believe it.)
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