The County Supremacy and Militia Movements: Federalism as an Issue on the Radical Right

The Sovereign Ascendant: Financial Collapse, Status Anxiety, and the Rebirth of the Sovereign Citizen Movement

“…The Sovereign Citizen movement can trace its ideological roots back to the early Posse Comitatus and anti-tax movements of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, when groups of primarily white men organized around the principle that the highest law of the land was that of the county, specifically the office of county sheriff (Chaloupka, 1996 ). In these early iterations, anti-government groups sought to challenge the power of the federal government, which they viewed as corrupt and tyrannical, by empowering local groups of armed citizens to enact the law of the land within their respective areas.…”

“…Like the earlier Sagebrush Rebellion in which people in the American mid-west demanded greater state and county access to federal lands, the Posse Comitatus movement rejected the supremacy of the federal government's control of federal land and declared that Washington's role in land-management should be as minimal as possible (Sullivan, 1999 ). To bolster their position, Posse Comitatus members would often arrive at town-hall meetings or state committee meetings bearing weapons and declaring their intentions to protect their land and private property from government incursions (Chaloupka, 1996 ). These same arguments would resurface in twenty-first century SovCit rhetoric, as was seen during the so-called “occupation” of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge by Ammon Bundy (Fantz, 2016 ), a rancher and anti-government activist associated with the Sovereign Citizen movement.…”

“…In the first half of the 1990s, groups like the Posse Comitatus tended to be clustered by observers and researchers under the rubric of “tax protest” (Dollar, 2013 ) movements, but in the aftermath of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the activities of the movement caused it to be categorized as a Far-Right extremist group, akin to the white supremacist and militia groups whose numbers had been steadily growing throughout that decade. While Posse members were quick—and loud—in their protests at being defined in such a way (Larizza, 1995 ; Chaloupka, 1996 ), there was enough cross-pollination between the various movements to warrant that conclusion. In some cases, militia members would speak at meetings using rhetoric pulled from the literature of the Posse Comitatus; in other cases, members of racist organizations like the Christian Identity movement would draw on the anti-tax, anti-government rhetoric of the Posse during their speeches and sermons (George and Wilcox, 1996 ).…”