"Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth"
Franklin D. Roosevelt
From the Australian bush to the steps of the Capitol in Washington DC, sovereign citizens are organised, interconnected and ready to take violent action against any authority they reject - police, routine traffic stops, courts, elections and public health measures.
As the hunt for fugitive ‘sovereign citizen’ police killer Dezi Freeman continues in Australian bushland, the double murder has highlighted the deadly threat from the globalised far-right conspiracist movement. On August 26, police officers arrived at Freeman’s rural property in Porepunkah to execute a search warrant into child sex allegations. Freeman, 56, opened fire, killing Detective Leading Senior Constable Neal Thompson, 59, and Senior Constable Vadim De Waart, 35. A third officer was seriously wounded before Freeman fled into the bush, abandoning the converted bus where he had been living.
The search is now being led by the Australian Army and has passed its 9th day. More than 450 officers are involved, backed by helicopters, drones, thermal imaging, dogs, elite tactical units and raids across over 100 properties under a no-fly zone in Victoria’s Alpine region. Police believe Freeman is being harboured by sympathisers, pointing to disturbing local support networks.
Sovereign citizens or 'SovCits' reject the legitimacy of government, laws and police and have been classified as a domestic terrorism threat by the FBI. They view the government as illegitimate and fraudulent 'corporation' and use bogus legal tactics to try to obstruct and overwhelm courts with reams of paperwork. As criminologist and sovereign citizens academic expert Christine Sarteschi has warned in Conspiracy Watch: “They are willing to use violence against police, government officials, and even ordinary citizens who they perceive as interfering with their beliefs.”
Freeman is idolised by some in the sovereign citizens conspiracy sphere but he is no outlaw folk hero. Though he denounced the government and the police and courts, he lived off the state for decades, collecting a disability pension. He was notorious for filmed clashes with police during Covid-19 lockdowns in which he disputed the rules about face masks and declared police officers had the “intelligence of kindergarten children without any training”, and demanded to debate the law with the head of the local police.He lodged pseudo-legal actions, including an attempted “arrest” of Victoria’s premier during the pandemic Daniel Andrews, and repeatedly clashed with and filmed his neighbours in Porepunkah, who described feeling intimidated by his rage and volatility.
His fugitive standoff has drawn comparisons with the fabled 19th century Australian bushranger Ned Kelly. But unlike Kelly, sometimes mythologised as a rebel against colonial injustice, Freeman stands accused of police murder and faces allegations of being a sexual offender—violence rooted in conspiracist ideology, not rebellion.
At anti-immigration rallies last weekend in Australian cities, neo-Nazis and SovCit sympathisers were present and at least one carried a banner with Freeman’s image. One protester was arrested holding a placard calling him a "Free Man". Online, Freeman’s murders are being reframed as the act of a man supposedly driven to desperation by years of harassment, pressure and police bullying. This conspiracist inversion mirrors the way the movement routinely recasts violent offenders as martyrs persecuted by illegitimate authorities.
As Conspiracy Watch has documented, the SovCit ideology took shape in the U.S. during the 1970s, out of radical tax-protester groups like Posse Comitatus. Leaders such as William Potter Gale and Gordon Kahl claimed the federal government had secretly become a fraudulent corporate entity and that citizens could “withdraw consent.”
The doctrine spread abroad. In Germany, since the 1980s the Reichsbürger movement denies the legitimacy of the Federal Republic, insisting the Third Reich endures. In France, SovCit-style “common law” groups encourage tax refusal and rejection of traffic checks and legall rulings.
As Freeman's case illustrates, the pandemic was an excuse for SovCit ideology to go into overdrive online and in altercations with authorities. Conspiracy theories about lockdowns, mask mandates and vaccines gave adherents the perfect platform to reject authority and send their ideology viral. They flourished fake “common law” documents, berated police and spread videos of disputes spread online.
In Germany, Reichsbürger adherents treated Covid restrictions as proof the state was illegitimate. In Britain and France, SovCit slogans bled into anti-vaccine movements.
Freeman’s alleged sex crimes highlight a recurring pattern: SovCit adherents’ frequent offences against women and children.
SovCit ideology often fosters authoritarian family structures in which women and children suffer abuse—an extension of the same contempt for authority that drives attacks on police and courts.
In December 2022, the Train family — Gareth, Nathaniel and Stacey — lured police to their Queensland, Australia property with a hoax missing-person report. Constables Rachel McCrow and Matthew Arnold were executed at close range, and a neighbour killed before the trio died in a siege.
As reported by Christine Sarteschi, in December 2023, a U.S. federal grand jury indicted Donald Day Jr. on interstate threat and firearms charges. Court records show Day had been in contact with the Trains, praised their actions and told investigators he wished he had been present “so that he too could have participated in the killing of police officers.” He said he was prepared for a shootout with U.S. law enforcement on his own property.
Day’s case shows the Queensland killings were not an isolated Australian tragedy but part of a transnational extremist ecosystem, with SovCit believers in the U.S. cheering and seeking to emulate the violence.
The U.S. has endured some of the deadliest SovCit attacks:
On January 6, 2021, SovCits were among those storming the U.S. Capitol based on the conspiracy theory "stop the steal" and violently block certification of the election of Joe Biden of president. Taylor James Johnatakis used a megaphone to urge a group of insurrectionists to crash a police barricade at the Southwest stairs of the Washington Capitol and attacked police. He was scorned by a judge for using "bullshit" and "gobbledygook" sovereign citizen arguments during a federal trial. Johnatakis was convicted in 2024 of assaulting police officers and felonies and misdemeanours and sentenced to more than seven years in prison. However, in January 2025, Donald Trump pardoned around 1,500 rioters, including multiple convicted SovCits like Johnatakis. At the far right Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) some were hailed as “heroes,” reframing their crimes as patriotism.
In Germany, the Reichsbürger number in the tens of thousands. Armed adherents have killed officers, and in 2022 police foiled a coup plot to storm parliament.
In Britain, SovCit pseudo-law flourished during Covid, clogging courts with “common law” filings while police faced fake licences.
In France, SovCit offshoots urged tax refusal, refused routine traffic stops and claimed police could be arrested for enforcing health measures. Conspiracy Watch publishing director Rudy Reichstadt warns: “This is not just absurd legal play-acting. It is an ideology of delegitimisation that corrodes democracy itself, often overlapping with antisemitic and far right conspiracies.”
The Freeman case is more than a manhunt: it is a global alarm. From Porepunkah to Washington, sovereign citizen ideology has left officers dead, families shattered and democratic institutions eroded. Trump’s pardons of SovCits convicted of attacking police during the January 6 Capitol riots are emboldening adherents, feeding the fantasy of impunity.
What unites this movement is not leadership but conspiracist glue. Sovereign citizens claim governments have no authority and are essentially corrupt, that “real law” is hidden, and that individuals can opt out. SovCits insist laws mean nothing without their personal approval and consent. The delusion fuses with QAnon, anti-vaccine activism, and neo-Nazi propaganda.
The slogan “we don’t consent” becomes, in practice, a licence to kill.
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