Warren, outlined how the illegal foreclosure
unfolded:
Back in October 2010, the press broke
the news that several giant banks had
violated the law while foreclosing
against homeowners. It wasn’t just a
technical error here or there. The banks
had flat-out lied, over and over and over.
Foreclosure is a complicated process for
a very good reason: The law requires
safeguards to make sure that a family
isn’t thrown out of their home by
mistake. But it took time and resources
for the banks to comply, so several of
the big banks had apparently decided
just to ignore many of those laws.
“Robo-signing” was rampant: one loan
officer famously testified that he signed
off on ten thousand foreclosures every
month [for 5 years]. Documents had
been falsified, and tens of thousands of
families had been trapped in a nightmare
of lost paperwork and endless delays
that had turned their lives upside down
and landed many out in the street. The
stories were genuinely awful. (Warren,
2014, p. 197 see p. 320 [italics in
original])
Warren added that “[o]ne study found that banks
failed to provide ownership of the underlying
mortgage in 40 percent of the foreclosure
bankruptcy cases” (2014, p. 320).
Having been caught committing massive fraud,
10 American banks (in January 2013) agreed to
pay “3.8 million victims up to $125,000
depending upon the extent of the bank abuse”
(Michaels, 2013, p. 1). Not surprisingly,
“[c]ritics believe that the settlement does not do
enough to restore justice for families suffering
from criminal lending by banks” (p. 2). One can
sympathize with citizens viewing the
government, the banks that it supposedly
regulates, and the judicial system that
supposedly ensures justice, as illegitimate and
conspiratorial against ordinary people. In line
with the actions of some OPCA adherents (albeit
for different motives), an Occupy Homes
movement sprang up in 2011, involving
homeowners and sympathetic activists
demanding justice in the procedures by living in
houses facing foreclosure, despite the risk of
intimidation and arrest by police (p. 2). To the
extent that the Anti-Defamation League is
correct in identifying both “people who are
financially stressed” and “people who are angry
at government, especially government
regulation” (Anti-Defamation League, 2010, p.
10) as ones most likely to join antigovernment
movements, then recent political and economic
events in America (and to some degree, Canada)
have contributed heartily to the growth of these
groups.
From a strictly sociological perspective, the
Sovereign Citizens and Freeman-related groups
are part of a movement of “resistance and
rebellion” (Robbins, 2005, p. 293ff.) that share
characteristics with anticolonialist movements
that fought superordinate groups over the
capitalization of agriculture (in the 1970s) and
land (in the 1970s and the more recent housing
crises). Writing about peasant movements of
resistance, James C. Scott summarized the social
and economic conditions that gave rise to them:
It has been capitalism that has
historically transformed societies and
broken apart existing relations of
production. Even a casual glance at the
record will show that capitalist
development continually requires the
violation of the previous “social
contract” which in most cases it had
earlier helped to create and sustain….
The history of capitalism could, in fact,
be written along just such lines. The
enclosures, the introduction of
agricultural machinery, the invention of
the factory system, the use of steam
power, the development of the assembly
line, and today the computer revolution
and robotics have all had massive
material and social consequences that
undermined previous understandings
about work, equity, security, obligation,
and rights. (Scott, 1985, p. 346, as cited
in Robbins, 2005, p. 307).
Issues that gave rise to the Freemen and
Sovereign Citizens’ forerunners in the 1970s, the
Posse Comitatus, involved enormous jumps in
International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 6, 2015 7
unfolded:
Back in October 2010, the press broke
the news that several giant banks had
violated the law while foreclosing
against homeowners. It wasn’t just a
technical error here or there. The banks
had flat-out lied, over and over and over.
Foreclosure is a complicated process for
a very good reason: The law requires
safeguards to make sure that a family
isn’t thrown out of their home by
mistake. But it took time and resources
for the banks to comply, so several of
the big banks had apparently decided
just to ignore many of those laws.
“Robo-signing” was rampant: one loan
officer famously testified that he signed
off on ten thousand foreclosures every
month [for 5 years]. Documents had
been falsified, and tens of thousands of
families had been trapped in a nightmare
of lost paperwork and endless delays
that had turned their lives upside down
and landed many out in the street. The
stories were genuinely awful. (Warren,
2014, p. 197 see p. 320 [italics in
original])
Warren added that “[o]ne study found that banks
failed to provide ownership of the underlying
mortgage in 40 percent of the foreclosure
bankruptcy cases” (2014, p. 320).
Having been caught committing massive fraud,
10 American banks (in January 2013) agreed to
pay “3.8 million victims up to $125,000
depending upon the extent of the bank abuse”
(Michaels, 2013, p. 1). Not surprisingly,
“[c]ritics believe that the settlement does not do
enough to restore justice for families suffering
from criminal lending by banks” (p. 2). One can
sympathize with citizens viewing the
government, the banks that it supposedly
regulates, and the judicial system that
supposedly ensures justice, as illegitimate and
conspiratorial against ordinary people. In line
with the actions of some OPCA adherents (albeit
for different motives), an Occupy Homes
movement sprang up in 2011, involving
homeowners and sympathetic activists
demanding justice in the procedures by living in
houses facing foreclosure, despite the risk of
intimidation and arrest by police (p. 2). To the
extent that the Anti-Defamation League is
correct in identifying both “people who are
financially stressed” and “people who are angry
at government, especially government
regulation” (Anti-Defamation League, 2010, p.
10) as ones most likely to join antigovernment
movements, then recent political and economic
events in America (and to some degree, Canada)
have contributed heartily to the growth of these
groups.
From a strictly sociological perspective, the
Sovereign Citizens and Freeman-related groups
are part of a movement of “resistance and
rebellion” (Robbins, 2005, p. 293ff.) that share
characteristics with anticolonialist movements
that fought superordinate groups over the
capitalization of agriculture (in the 1970s) and
land (in the 1970s and the more recent housing
crises). Writing about peasant movements of
resistance, James C. Scott summarized the social
and economic conditions that gave rise to them:
It has been capitalism that has
historically transformed societies and
broken apart existing relations of
production. Even a casual glance at the
record will show that capitalist
development continually requires the
violation of the previous “social
contract” which in most cases it had
earlier helped to create and sustain….
The history of capitalism could, in fact,
be written along just such lines. The
enclosures, the introduction of
agricultural machinery, the invention of
the factory system, the use of steam
power, the development of the assembly
line, and today the computer revolution
and robotics have all had massive
material and social consequences that
undermined previous understandings
about work, equity, security, obligation,
and rights. (Scott, 1985, p. 346, as cited
in Robbins, 2005, p. 307).
Issues that gave rise to the Freemen and
Sovereign Citizens’ forerunners in the 1970s, the
Posse Comitatus, involved enormous jumps in
International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 6, 2015 7
