Self-declared sovereign citizens, who believe Australia’s laws do not apply to them, are having a serious impact on the family court, experts say

Self-declared sovereign citizens, who believe Australia’s laws do not apply to them, are having a serious impact on the family court, experts say

Kind of odd to me becase even if you do believe this, the judicial institutions have armed police and jails on their side and you have your thumbprint, (unkess your name is Train I guess, which was a whole other thing) seems a losing battle from the get go? Whats the upside ?

  • maniacalmanicmania@aussie.zoneEnglish
    27·
    13 days ago

    I don’t think there is necessarily an upside for the people who fall for this stuff hook, line and sinker. But there does seem to be an upside for the grifters selling all kinds of sovereign citizen passports, IDs, licences, certificates among other things online.

    • Aradina [She/They]@lemmy.mlEnglish
      21·
      13 days ago

      The “upside” for the people who fall for it is that they feel like they discovered some big secret and that they get to feel smarter because of it. SovCit ideology is basically just magic. This odd idea that if you say the right magic words, things will always go your way.

        • Chip_Rat@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          12 days ago

          It’s a bit more complicated than that. Our society is held up by a lot of unspoken rules and guidelines, and frankly it’s a miracle shit is rolling along as well as it is (which isn’t well btw, but still amazing)

          When they first learned about sovcitz they probably started testing some boundaries. Maybe they stopped paying for parking or something, and didn’t get a ticket (because you don’t always get one) and they thought it was because of the note they wrote on their dash.

          Now they swap their licence plate for the stupid “traveller” one, and stop paying their renewal. Hey short term they win. Nobody pulls them over (because nobody notices or even worse a cop does and thinks “no thanks. Not worth my sanity”) and they realize they have cracked the code.

          There are tons of little things like that, little encouragements that lead them to believe they have it figured out when it’s just luck or the odds or they didn’t realize nobody cares what ID you show at the door. When something finally gives, it’s usually a serious issue like child support or a criminal matter, and that’s when shit gets real fast and if they weren’t grown adults who should know better, I’d kinda feel sorry for them for being blindsided.

          Tl;dr you can go a long time doing stupid shit and not have any consequences, but that’s not helpful to society and also the FO phase of this type of FA is very sudden and usually very serious.