"I'm a sovereign human being, I stand under common law only" - Thread of Freemen

fringed flag and throbbing vein!

(tbh he looks like china mieville who is many things but surely not a sovcit)

Austria again...

(thought it was Mieville too at first glance, wondered what he'd done now!)

Not in the Mirror article:

According to media reports he has also written a musical about the Austrian rock star Falco – known for his 1985 hit Rock Me Amadeus – who died in a car crash in the Dominican Republic in 1998. Mr Landon, who was living on the island at the time, claims to have found the body and that there was a cover-up about the true cause of death.

i blame salieri

BOOMING POST

I thought "Has Howie Mandel gone off the deep end?"

i know this (ilx) thread is just running on the spot but this (twitter) thread is full of meatily deranged stuff:

2. Derek believes the govt & statutes are illegitimate. He believes individuals have 2 personas, one of flesh & blood (the “live human”) & the other a separate fictitious identity. In his classes, he teaches ppl how to become “live humans” & escape their legal liabilities pic.twitter.com/6AjoGgs3yb

— Vaxatious Litigant 💉 (@ExposingNV) February 12, 2023

does the proponent believe any of his legal claims or is he simply a conman?

https://img.memegenerator.net/instances/59376719.jpg

lol this sent me straight down the "here's what the por que no los dos girl looks like today" rabbithole

first you con yourself, then the marks come flocking

kinda wondering when "have literally never won a case anywhere in the world based on this shit" starts to turn around, and where?

for now, even the absolute worst in the conservative legal movement in the US (which is hugely lawyered up and has placed judges in the system all the way up to SCOTUS) will surely be extremely and indeed lethally hostile, so it's not going to get political or institutional traction

(at least on the right lol: there's a kind of reactionary anarchist sea-lawyer energy here which you do encounter on the morbid-symptom pseudo-left also, but of course they also don't really have significant traction either yet) (the bigwig tycoons who fund some of the "transcends left and right" bogus chaotic mud-stirring are generally p careful to keep the best actual-real lawyers on-board) (elon tho… )

(this particular guy is australian) (they also pop up in UK courts)

and also those germans who tried some doomed stunt last year (reichsburgers)

similar notions on the move in belgium, france, italy, russia

lol of course: "elon musk's new terms of service for the starlink app have shades of 'sovereign citizen' about life on mars"

there is zero comprehension of jurisprudence or the de facto workings of legal systems in these fantasies, so any possible win a freeman might achieve would be coincidence and dumb luck, likely due to getting the right cranky low-level judge on the right day

which leads me to the conclusion that for the grifters making money or clout from selling this stuff, winning is not the point. not internally the point either, it would be terrible for reality to intrude in their metaphysical forts of solitude

the lack of significant cost or enforcement of repercussion of cost means that these are free hits so that "dumb luck" more becomes a case of "will win one eventually and then what"

i am mainly hedging my bets a tiny bit bcz i don't feel "the institutions are strong and will repel this bullshit" is a stance i can these days take without some reservation!

as i say, you could maybe land a one-off win in your fight against wearing a seatbelt/having a TV licence/harrassing GP receptionists but the institutions are at least strong enough to slap that down on a replay

darragh's point is solid tho, it places the specific freeman bug as just one option in the toolbox of people who enjoy dicking around during their day in court

i'm not particularly critical of dicking around during your day in court, mind

if you get caught fare-dodging on a train and just keep insisting that your name is Uther Pendragon until you get arrested by the transport police and your barmy shtick gets completely demolished by the man. That's how dangerous these fools seem to me. Not that there is anything wrong with fare-dodging either.

i guess what i'm speculating about -- more in the context of US politics than UK politics, i don't know about the workings of german or french ditto -- is the point at which "just one option in the toolbox of people who enjoy dicking around during their day in court" crosses over from beleaguered low-information numpties who think they've been given one weird trick to game the system and dodge their fine or (since the situations are sometimes somewhat more pointed) not get their house taken away, and arrives in the hands and mindsets and just-asking-questions projects of lawyers looking for ever-new ways to game and rewire the established electoral system

such activist lawyers do already exist in substantial numbers: but for now they mostly merely disdain the numpties and the sovcit project: it wd be more chaotic than helpful! and while there *are* always individual lawyers who function as chaos-goblins, they are one-offs, while the federalist society for example is highly disiplined tactical and strategic as an activist movement

i think i agree that the crossover is some way away, but

i was gonna say before it seems like the stakes are a bit different in the US also because there are fewer professional disadvantages for judges who want to play the maverick, in fact it looks like there are career benefits to doing that? whereas in other countries' legal systems you get the odd publicity-hungry douchebag but it's largely in a judge's interests to behave like a good establishment player

but then my understanding of the freeman stuff is it was born in that US context and so is much more ridiculously cargo cultish when you try it on outside the US?

tbf Australia seems to have its own chaos energy which might account for yerman in the video that launched this thread revive

they have compulsory voting in Australia, that can't help.

There do seem to be a disproportionate number of these heid-the-ba's in Australia. Pioneer spirit, wide open spaces etc.

hi darragh, nice to see u

good posts all, solid analysis imo

co-sign at the nice to see you, darragh

American legal ideas derived from English common law or the US Constitution (I think some of the Canadian “truckers” a couple years ago were claiming that their “1st Amendment” rights were being violated, and weren’t some Scots weirdos recently going on about the Magna Carta) are spreading to places that have totally different Civil Law systems, can’t see how that will be successful.

Those truckers were mega into the Manitoba Act of 1870

(xp) There was some nonsense where a few headbangers tried to occupy Edinburgh Castle or something during the lockdown, citing the Magna Carta ... it didn't take long for someone to point out that Scotland hasand always has had a different legal system to England and they could stuff the Magna Carta where the sun don't shine.

the section in magna carta abt the entry fee to tourist sites

― mark s, Wednesday, 18 August 2021 10:53 (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

what is Runnymede if not a tourist site?

Ugh that Balogh guy has friend-of-friends on FB that I recognise, lol. I only looked him up cos I went to school with some Baloghs (one was an Olympic gold medal shooter) but I dont think this cooker's related.

West Ballina man Luke Daniel William Simpson fails in Ballina court ‘sovereign citizen’ licence appeal https://t.co/n297wOwN8p via @dailytelegraph

— Vaxatious Litigant 💉 (@ExposingNV) March 22, 2023

"You have no jurisdiction ...I have documents, I do not submit to the maritime law," he said.

Ms Stafford replied: "You say I have no jurisdiction, but you have requested a licence appeal under my jurisdiction."

"Yeah, but otherwise ..."

Worth reading the attached doc for insight into current kookiness:

Accused Jan 6 conspirator James Beeks files motion seeking to.... "TO DISCHARGE INVOCATION OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE"

He uses language & references potentially consistent w/ sovereign movement. And.. has list of grievances about recent news & federal government

====> pic.twitter.com/sHTzQ68wdt

— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) May 5, 2023

it's funny that they always say all this but then still abide by the government's authority anyway, like few of them are ever in the courtroom violently twisting and trying to run for the door, they just shout "THIS IS ILLEGAL" while people laugh

That's why they insist on the right to carry guns. Oh, wait ...

Anyone see that show 'Jury Duty'? Leaving aside the sketch ethics of it, somebody needs to do that show but for one of these creeps- 'judge' to be all like "You've got us, we're under admiralty law here... the flag in this courtroom has fringes/no fringes... furthermore, I am arraigning the state prosecutor on charges of high treason"

On top of everything else...fun font choices there.

xp "it's unconventional, but I will allow it"

remember this guy, as talked about 7 years ago upthread?

U.S. Superior Court Judge Bruce Doucette (not a real judge)

well...missed that this happened two years later (lmao)

https://www.cpr.org/2018/05/22/sovereign-citizen-bruce-doucette-sentenced-to-38-years/

handy solid and detailed study of how well the sovcit manouevre is playing e.g. in australia:

🧵
1. “I’m a living man, I was travelling not driving!”

A pseudolaw adherent w/ an affinity for Latin maxims & United States case law, has failed to convince the Victorian Supreme Court that he was not a “driver” of a “vehicle” pic.twitter.com/Pfwrbr8JNH

— Vaxatious Litigant 💉 (@ExposingNV) August 28, 2023

Why do all these weirdos think US law is like, the law everywhere. (I know the answer, American cultural domination of the Anglosphere)

It's not just weirdos who think that everywhere is the US ime.

Starting to think my next door neighbor might be a sovcit — his pickup truck has no license plates at all, not even hand-drawn fake ones.

when these folks are locked up do they spend all day going "i'm not locked up, I'm free to leave whenever I want, I just don't want to right now"

"I meant to do that"

His driver's license just says McLovin

I’m guessing that when these folks were kids, they were the ones who ruined games by saying “you’re it, times a million and no returns” and walked off congratulating themselves

joke's on this guy for failing to cite Maritime Law