The absurdity of ‘sovereign citizens’

IN SINGAPORE, there have been at least three recent legal cases where a defendant has claimed to be a “sovereign citizen”. This would supposedly let them be exempted from abiding by the laws of the land or respecting its courts.

These claims have received short shrift from a legal system that refuses to recognise any such status – with good reason.

The origins of the sovereign citizen idea lie in the Posse Comitatus, a far-right agglomeration of groups founded in the US in the late 1960s. A racist movement that was anti-Black and anti-Semitic, it claimed that Jews controlled and manipulated federal institutions and that only county-level elected government was legitimate.

It further claimed that the highest legal authority was the county sheriff, who was duty-bound to implement the will of those who elected him.

If state and national governments were not legitimate, it followed that citizens were not obliged to comply with their laws or regulations or pay taxes to them.

This message proved seductive to some Midwest farmers in the late 1970s and 1980s, who faced a double burden of taxation and high interest rates. It undoubtedly still appeals to some people who would not otherwise embrace the ideology of Posse Comitatus and may not even have heard of it.

What we owe to each other

It may be tempting to compare the sovereign citizen movement to anarchism, which also rejects the authority of states, but there are fundamental differences between the two.

Notably, anarchists believe that human societies can function best on a cooperative basis in the absence of states and private property.

In contrast, the sovereign citizen movement represents a form of extreme individualism, in which a person owes no obligations to the rest of society and sees no need to part with their earnings or wealth for the common good. Their responsibility towards others is limited to refraining from doing them harm.

This idea may work to an extent for people living in isolation, able to make a living from their own land or the wilderness, and with a gun at the ready to repel threats, real or imagined – although even this seems doubtful. It certainly can’t work where people live in communities, especially in cities.

In Singapore, a few individuals have claimed that they are “sovereign citizens” when refusing to abide by government-mandated anti-Covid rules. Yet to be consistent “sovereign citizens”, they would not only cease paying taxes, but also desist from using any of the facilities that the state makes possible.

They should forfeit the use of public medical services, and not expect the police or emergency services ever to give them any assistance. They should not drive, walk or otherwise travel on publicly maintained roads or footpaths; they should not have identification cards, driving licences or passports, all of which are issued by state agencies that are supported by taxation of the citizenry.

And is there even any way they can exclude themselves from benefiting from state provisions such as anti-terrorism precautions or food safety checks, which serve society as a whole but for which – as “sovereign citizens” – they decline to pay their share?

Reciprocity across borders

True, non-citizens of states can benefit from the state-supported facilities of other countries while visiting, even though they may not pay taxes to those states. However, this is based on reciprocity: state revenue generation within each country, chiefly based on taxation, sustains this transnational norm.

“Sovereign citizens”, however, attempt to locate themselves outside this obligation-based system. There thus can be no reciprocity between them and a state to which they might turn, if, for example, they are robbed, injured in a traffic accident or simply wish to go somewhere by publicly funded means: they have nothing to offer in return.

“Sovereign citizenship” is an implicit rejection of democracy. Democracy fares badly in a country without broad social cohesion, where there are deep socio-economic divisions and a substantial proportion of the citizenry feels powerless.

Government taxation, spending and policy can act to remedy or at least mitigate these evils – and thus uphold an order that at best works well and at worst, has enough general consent to go on functioning.

A person may choose to uphold, to reform or to fight for radical change in this system – but what they can’t do, in reality, is to declare themselves outside it.

The writer is a Singapore-based freelance writer