Most wacky conspiracy theories manage to survive by being impossible to either prove or disprove, but Sovereign Citizens love filming themselves trying to talk their way out of being arrested or charged and subsequently eating shit. All the conspiracists these days are downloading their beliefs from YouTube and going wherever the algorithm takes them, so anyone looking at information on Sovereign Citizenery is also seeing the videos of people trying to put it into action and failing miserably.

How do people convince themselves that this is real when there are so many videos of people with similarly melted brains proving that this absolutely never works? I’m genuinely curious about what the rationale is. Do they think all the videos of judges telling Sovereign Citizens to shut the fuck up are fake, or that they didn’t follow the script closely enough?

  • AntipastoAktion [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    3 years ago

    It’s what happens when you grow up in a country where you’re told that FREEDOM FROM TYRANNY and all that is paramount, but then you start to realize that, even in a society full of FREEDOM there’s rules to be followed, and those rules suck: you gotta pay fees to get a licence, and then you can’t do some stuff, and maybe you get a fine for some neighbourhood bylaw and now have to go to court. It’s the freedom fetish of American civic religion coming up against the reality of living in a modern society.

  • D61 [any]@hexbear.net
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    3 years ago

    Its Utopianism… the bad kind… “Hey, if I know the magic words, I can get out of any trouble!!” Its Harry Potter shit that predates Harry Potter by generations.

  • twitter [any]@hexbear.net
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    3 years ago

    Civic religion cargo cult, they’re dazzled by the power of the state over their lives (like, idk, speed limits and bans on raw milk) but also don’t understand where it comes from or how it works so they’re reduced to ritualistically mimicking its language and symbols in an attempt to wield the power for themselves.

    How do people convince themselves that this is real when there are so many videos of people with similarly melted brains proving that this absolutely never works?

    It’s a question of faith, not evidence, like any religion.