While the movement has no defining text, centralised leadership or accepted creed, sovereign citizens are united by a belief that the state and its laws are illegitimate. During routine traffic stops involving adherents of the ideology, several US law enforcement officers have been murdered.
Last week in Germany, special forces arrested 25 people involved in a plot to storm the Bundestag, overthrow the country’s government and attack the power grid. Members of the Reichsburger movement believe the 1871 borders of the German Empire are the country’s true borders and that the Federal Republic should not exist. The Reichsburger group previously had plans to attack state representatives, including the carrying out of killings.
On January 6, 2021, the US Capitol was stormed by a mob who wished to prevent the counting of electoral college votes that would confirm the victory of president-elect Joe Biden. While the mob consisted of a motley crew of Donald Trump supporters, militia men and QAnon devotees, they were united in their belief that the results of the 2020 election were false. More than 2000 rioters entered the building, leaving faeces in hallways, while outside they erected a gallows chanting “Hang Mike Pence”.
What unites the sovereign citizens, the Reichsburgers and the mob who stormed the US Capitol is a fundamental belief that the state is illegitimate or should not exist at all. Whether it is in defiance of laws, the overturning of government or the repudiation of democratic elections, the common thread that unites is rejection of state institutions and state authority, and a willingness to carry out violence in support of such beliefs.
Two young police officers lost their lives this week in Queensland in part because their killers appear to have been adherents of a similar anti-statist ideology.
Online posts written by Gareth Train point to deep paranoia about vaccines, Bill Gates, big business, artificial intelligence technology, the military, the Queensland government and law enforcement. While many people subscribe to such theories, the Trains were willing to commit cold-blooded murder in support of them. The Australian has reported that the Wieambilla property was set up with obstacles, sensors and cameras designed to lure visitors into a death trap with little chance of escape.
Stacey Train, it has been reported, was a long-time teacher but quit her job the day before she was required to have her first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. Anti-vaccination beliefs, traditionally associated with the far left, have proliferated on the right in response to Covid and now appear to be a core plank of the Reichsburger, QAnon and sovereign citizen movements.
In the US, the outgoing director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci, has armed federal agents with him at all times because of the credible threats made against his life.
In Germany, four members of the Reichsburger group were arrested for plotting to kidnap the German Health Minister in April.
In Australia, one GP had to flee his home after he became the subject of anti-vax disinformation early this year. Writing on Facebook, Dr Wilson Chin described “utter fear” when his practice was deluged with violent threats after false claims about children dying at the practice circulated online.
“We are just doing our jobs – we just want to care for our patients … I’m on the last thread here,” he wrote.
Former Queensland chief health officer Jeannette Young received so many threats during pandemic restrictions that a police detail was stationed outside her house. West Australian Premier Mark McGowan was threatened with beheading.
And one anti-lockdown protester in Melbourne was arrested when he encouraged fellow protesters to bring guns to shoot Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews.
When we think of far-right ideologies we tend to conjure up images of brown shirts and jackboots, and the totalitarian movements of the first half of the 20th century. Or we may recall images of skinheads and neo-Nazis as depicted by films such as Romper Stomper and American History X. But today’s extremists do not fit this historical archetype and, beyond that, do not fit neatly into a left versus right binary at all.
In The Coming Storm, a BBC podcast about QAnon, British journalist Gabriel Gatehouse pushes back against the notion that QAnon is far right. He explains that today’s extremist political cults should be understood as the “fringe against the centre”.
They do not seek to impose a utopian vision of economic governance or a hierarchy of racial purity. They seek to undermine, attack and delegitimise mainstream institutions, from the media and public health to democratically held elections and the rule of law. But beyond the undermining of institutions there appears to be no coherent vision.
Those most at risk of harm from these extremists appear to be our public servants. Health officials and law enforcement have been in the line of fire, and if we follow US trends this hostility may expand to include teachers and education officials as well.
Moderates of all persuasions – left or right – need to resist the pull of fringes and reject the rhetoric that leads to such paranoid anti-statism. While thoughtful people can disagree on matters of policy, we should respect the neutrality of our public institutions – the good people who work within them – and protect them from attack. We should never accept a society where public servants face threats against their lives simply for doing their jobs.
Claire Lehmann is founding editor of Quillette.
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In 2014, US law enforcement officers ranked the sovereign citizen movement as the highest domestic terror threat, above Islamists, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, skinheads, and environmental and animal rights extremists.