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Mark Pitcavage Profile picture
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28 Oct, 6 tweets, 4 min read
I've been talking recently about the sovereign citizen habit of taking a word and replacing it with a homonym or similar sounding word with a different meaning in order to change the meaning of a word or sentence. Here's another example. It is common for sovereign citizens not
to use the word "inalienable," as in "inalienable" rights, but to use "unalienable"--and usually "un-a-lien-able." In this way they can speak about the word "lien" (remember they are obsessed with liens and the UCC).
Here's an example mentioned in a court decision on a filing by sovereign citizen/tax protester Robert Beale (father of alt right writer Vox Day).
You can find examples of this everywhere.
I mean everywhere.
Everywhere.

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Mark Pitcavage Profile picture
27 Oct
Thanks to all who responded! Here's the answer: The "reliance defense" was one of the most popular tax protest strategies of the 1990s. In the 70s-80s, tax protesters generally tried to make their tax protest arguments in court, like the 5th Amendment meant they didn't have to
pay income tax or that the 16th amendment was never lawfully ratified. Those always failed. Then, in the early 90s, a number of tax protest leaders began selling "expert letters" to people telling them that in their legal opinion, those people didn't have to pay taxes. That
way, or so the reasoning went, if those people were ever charged with tax-related crimes (crimes that generally require a *willful* intent to violate the law in order for conviction), they could whip out those expert letters and basically say "Judge, I honestly thought I didn't
Read 4 tweets
Mark Pitcavage Profile picture
27 Oct
Sovereign citizen gurus consistently do a fascinating thing with language. They have the habit of taking a word in print that has multiple meanings and ascribing to it the wrong meaning rather than the actual meaning in context. They also do the same thing with homonyms or
similar-sounding words.. This allows them to really twist the meaning of the passage, because they have radically changed the ostensible meaning of a word in it. For example, they may refer to a defendant in a criminal case and say that this person is "on the defense."
Then they say that means the prosecution is "on the offense," which means that the prosecution are the real "offenders." See what I mean?

In the next two tweets is an example I found this evening, which deliberately conflates "birth" and "berth." It's quite fascinating to me.
Read 5 tweets
Mark Pitcavage Profile picture
24 Oct
I've been thinking a lot about extremist criminal recidivism recently, and this is a thread on that subject.

How often do extremists who committed an extremist-related crime come out of prison and commit another extremist-related crime? Especially for something like terrorism?
My knowledge base comes from having observed or tracked thousands of right-wing extremist-related crimes over the past 27 yrs, including hundreds of murders & scores of terrorist acts, so my thoughts are basically about RWE, though some are, I think, also applicable elsewhere.
Certainly recidivism does occur. Off the top f my head, I can think of white supremacists who committed several bias-related crimes. And I believe that recidivism is fairly high for the white-collar crimes of hard-core sovereign citizens.
Read 21 tweets
Mark Pitcavage Profile picture
25 Sep
Based on 25+ years of anecdotal observation, here are a few things I've learned about terroristic threats such as these.

1. Most have no chance of actually being followed through on; they're main effect is the threat/intimidation factor on the victim.

2. Although you might
think that extremists would make up the majority of these threat cases, they seem rather to be in the minority. Many threat cases are made by people with more or less "mainstream" views, but who are particularly unstable, volatile, and/or incitable.
3. Quite a few threat cases are actually made by inmates of jails/prisons. Not surprisingly, these actors may make threats for ideological/partisan reasons, but also for personal reasons bc of how they perceive they've been treated or how angry they are at judges, attny, etc.
Read 6 tweets
Mark Pitcavage Profile picture
21 Aug
Saturday is a good day for a leisurely thread--and composing one might take my attention away from the aggravated disc in my neck at the moment.

I think a good idea for such a thread is on what terms to use to describe what happened on January 6 at the Capitol in D.C.
Over the past half-year, I've heard so many different words used to describe what happened on that day, including treason, terrorism, mob action, riot, uprising, insurrection, overthrow, coup, attack, sedition, storming, protest, assault, and others.
I should note at the outset that what happened on January 6 was complex and unusual, with a variety of different types of people and groups taking part, each with their own ideas, agendas and compulsions. It's hardly likely one term is singularly perfect for what happened, nor
Read 25 tweets
Mark Pitcavage Profile picture
7 Aug
Today's Saturday, so let's explore one of the strangest domestic terrorism cases I've followed over the years, and also a relatively rare one in which I thought at the time that the government went rather too far. I'm referring to the Republic of Texas 'cactus needle' case.
The Republic of Texas (ROT) was a large & dangerous sovereign citizen group (today's "Texas Nationalist Movement" is its descendant) that emerged in the 1990s resurgence of the sovereign citizen movement. By the late 1990s, it had already developed an extensive criminal history.
The cactus case began in the spring of 1998 in the far southern town of Harlingen, Texas, when a concerned citizen reached out to the FBI to let them know about a man he had been doing some computer work for, John Roberts, owner of a local "Bargain Barn" store. The citizen, John
Read 18 tweets

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