Ben Harvey: The rabbit hole of the bonkers world that sovereign citizens live in proved Col Blanch was right

“We’ve all come from the same place, which is the divine source creator energy. We’re all going back to the same place. The divine source creator is just walking around in this body temple that you witness when you look in the mirror. “All of the statutes and legislation in place written by the system of parliament which really began in 1265 has been written to position humanity as the debtor. You were monetised for everything, which is why you are paying for your electricity and your water and many other things you shouldn’t be paying for inside the private banking system which is owned by 13 bloodlines.” Welcome to the thoroughly bonkers world of being a sovereign citizen — someone who doesn’t recognise the authority of any institution or government because of, well, a lot of conspiratorial hogwash. The woman talking the entertaining nonsense about source energy and an inbred financial system was doing so on a webinar organised by the Sovereign People’s Assembly of Western Australia. It’s an institution created for people who don’t recognise institutions and is a construct that comes perilously close to the strict definition of government. Don’t tell them that, though. I sat through the half-hour presentation on their website to get my head around sovereign citizenry, having been forced down this rabbit burrow by WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch. Col’s troops recently seized 135 weapons from dozens of self-confessed or suspected sovereign citizens during a secretive, weeks-long police operation. It was code-named Operation Ascendant but, after some light investigating of the Sovereign People’s Assembly, I think it should have been called Operation Batshit Crazy. I logged on to the assembly’s website because, while I knew what they didn’t believe in (legislation, the judicial system etc etc), I didn’t know what they did believe in. The answer? God only knows. Or maybe that should be the divine source creator only knows. The movement seems to be a mix of astrology (“We are emerging out of the ages of Pisces, which has been an age of guardianship, and we are emerging into the age of Aquarius, and these are 2000-year ages where humanity is managing itself”); Tony Robbins-style self-help (“Do no harm because I am you and you are me”); and factually questionable legal history (“When the Magna Carta got developments in 1297, the Vatican didn’t like that and put us into this trust in 1302, where you became a chattel slave”). After several hours of research, I am still confused about whether they think the Magna Carta is good or bad and I don’t know what divine creator source energy is. Maybe it’s a flux capacitor and if we hit 88 miles per hour we’ll all go to a higher spiritual plain. What I do know is this: the cops were right to disarm these people. The lefty journo in me is deeply uncomfortable about infringing the rights of people “suspected” of thinking certain things (that’s as close to 1984 as any action by a government department or agency I have ever seen) but this concern is trumped by a greater worry: if you don’t recognise the legal system then you might not adhere to statutes that discourage the shooting of smart-arse journalists. The deaths of two police officers (allegedly) by Victorian sovereign citizen Dezi Freeman proved these tinfoil-hat wearers are a serious menace. It wasn’t always thus. Sovereign citizenry has its roots in the anti-tax movement in 1960s America. Now, that’s a cause I could get behind! WA had a high-profile SovCit (as they are sometimes called) in Leonard Casley, who in 1970 was so pissed off with “the man” over wheat quotas that he founded the independent micro-nation, The Hutt River Province. Prince Leonard’s realm turned into quite the tourism drawcard. It turns out there’s nothing like a bit of batshit crazy to break up a long drive through the Mid-West. Leonard went to the padded cell in the sky in 2019. The SovCit movement exploded in popularity soon after his passing. Mandated vaccinations and enforced COVID lockdowns hardened the resolve of the converted and pulled many hapless others into the fold. Dictating the size of your cereal crop is bad enough; forcing you to have a needle? That’s just outright oppression. I make a living out of reporting on whackjobs and love talking to people with nutbar views of the world. You might bitch and moan about Col Blanch but he’s a better bet for you than me. If I had my way you wouldn’t be able to hold a driver’s licence, lest you ignore the law requiring us to drive in the correct lane.