00:00The sovereign citizen ideology essentially comes from the United States, right?
00:07In the 1970s, it emerged during a particularly difficult financial context.
00:12But what happened quite quickly is it actually came to Australia.
00:15And we start to see it in Australia around the 1980s.
00:18And it really sort of took off and became a bit more litigious, a bit more vexatious,
00:25until we get to around 2017.
00:27And this is when we start seeing the sovereign citizen movement sort of escalating in rhetoric
00:33and becoming a little bit more violent in what they're saying and doing.
00:37Now, when we're talking about the movement, we're not talking about an organised group
00:41with a centralised hierarchy or anything like that.
00:44We're talking about a really diverse array of individuals and sometimes small clusters
00:50of individuals who are all united by this central belief that the government as we know it
00:56is fundamentally illegitimate.
00:58And because it's illegitimate, you can reasonably resist it and oppose it.
01:03And this is where we start seeing some of those really dangerous ideas come out about particularly
01:08politicians, but also law enforcement and members of the judiciary being traitors to the Australian
01:14people and therefore a possible threat.
01:18And, you know, as to the prevalence, I mean, do we know if it's growing?
01:23Is it hard to gauge that in Australia?
01:26Look, it is really hard to gauge.
01:27We have seen some reports from law enforcement in the past about possible numbers and academics
01:33as well have attempted to identify possible numbers through court rulings.
01:38One thing that makes it almost impossible to measure is that the sovereign citizen belief
01:44system is really personal in some ways and really hybrid in others.
01:49So one sovereign's belief system isn't going to exactly match the next, which makes it really
01:54difficult to both identify but also to calibrate the ideology.
02:00And, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but generally those who follow the belief claim to be
02:04non-violent, what have you found in your work?
02:08Look, the vast majority are non-violent and they generally pursue vexatious litigation and
02:13actions through the court system.
02:15But what we have seen in Australia in the past sort of seven or eight years is this escalating
02:22and violent rhetoric.
02:23So threatening people in all sorts of horrible ways, particularly in association with their
02:30jobs.
02:30So, you know, if you're a politician, if you're a member of the police force or if you're
02:34you work in the court system, particularly the family court system, within the sovereign
02:39ideology, generally speaking, they may see you as a malevolent insider, you know, someone
02:46who knows that the government is illegitimate and who is actively working to oppress Australian
02:51citizens, which in their view makes you the enemy.
02:55And so when you've got that sort of ideology in play, where you've got this sort of division
02:59between friends and enemies so obviously, it does lead to that legitimation of violence
03:06against these people.
03:08We know the movement is on the radar of our intelligence agencies.
03:11What do we know about that?
03:14Well, look, I think one of the things to be aware of with the sovereign threat today and
03:19also moving forward is that it's extremely adaptive, which means that, like, for example, during
03:25COVID-19, we take the normal sovereign citizen belief system that's largely anti-government,
03:31largely focused on alleviating mortgages and taxes, and then we throw COVID-19 into the
03:35mix.
03:36All of a sudden, we're seeing sovereign citizens catalyse around health conspiracies, ideas that
03:43the government is so oppressive that it's secretly trying to conduct these horrible health actions
03:50against the average citizen to ensure their slavery.
03:52We also see them catalyse against border lockdowns, and suddenly we see them focus on things like
03:58the Colonial Boundaries Act.
04:00So they're very adaptive.
04:02And COVID-19 was an example of just how resilient they are in changing contexts.
04:08So I think one thing we need to be aware of moving forward as a society is that as of
04:13events change in society around us, the sovereign ideology is uniquely positioned to adapt with
04:18that change in order to continue.
04:21And in that way, I think it's quite a persistent and established threat in Australian national
04:26security landscapes.
04:27Dr. Christy Campier, an expert on extremism and policing at Charles Sturt University, thank
04:32you for speaking with us.
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