As an aside, sovcits are not an exclusively US phenomenon. Most Commonwealth nations have some version of “freemen on the land” which is basically the same thing, though the specific details they fixate on may be different. I’ve also heard there’s a German version as well.
Even in the US it’s not exclusively MAGA-ish militia types or super fundamentalists. There’s also the Moorish National strain, for example, which operates under the idea that the US Government is actually just a corporation operating under the sovereignty of an imaginary “Moorish Empire” in Africa, East India Company-style, whose existence is covered up by some kind of conspiracy
There are German, Austrian and Swiss versions, yes.
The biggest and best known groups are the “Reichsbürger” who in one way or another reject the legitimacy of the German state. Very popular is the conspiracy-narrative that the Reich still exists and that Germany is actually just a corporation working on the territory of the Reich, that you can simply quit or that there is no peace-treaty between the Allied Powers and Germany and so Germany is still occupied by the Allies.
Some of the so-called Reichsbürger are just a bit crazy, others are clearly right-wing extremists
- Head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in the federal state of Brandenburg
They are partly directed and supported by the Russian foreign intelligence service, have contacts to some SovCit movements in the US and Canada, QAnon and the Proud Boys and have been known to be violent, hoarding weapons and some have shot at police, so they are being cracked down on pretty hard right now.
As an aside, sovcits are not an exclusively US phenomenon. Most Commonwealth nations have some version of “freemen on the land” which is basically the same thing, though the specific details they fixate on may be different. I’ve also heard there’s a German version as well.
Even in the US it’s not exclusively MAGA-ish militia types or super fundamentalists. There’s also the Moorish National strain, for example, which operates under the idea that the US Government is actually just a corporation operating under the sovereignty of an imaginary “Moorish Empire” in Africa, East India Company-style, whose existence is covered up by some kind of conspiracy
There are German, Austrian and Swiss versions, yes.
The biggest and best known groups are the “Reichsbürger” who in one way or another reject the legitimacy of the German state. Very popular is the conspiracy-narrative that the Reich still exists and that Germany is actually just a corporation working on the territory of the Reich, that you can simply quit or that there is no peace-treaty between the Allied Powers and Germany and so Germany is still occupied by the Allies.
- Head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in the federal state of Brandenburg
They are partly directed and supported by the Russian foreign intelligence service, have contacts to some SovCit movements in the US and Canada, QAnon and the Proud Boys and have been known to be violent, hoarding weapons and some have shot at police, so they are being cracked down on pretty hard right now.