interest rates as banks reacted to global political
and trade realities but these increases crippled
farmers, many of whom had taken out low-
interest loans only a few years before. Bankers
showed no mercy (in the form of flexible
repayment schedules), and they used their
lawyers, courts, and local law enforcement to
foreclose on family farms across the Midwest.
Among the foremost beliefs among the popular
ideologies of an agrarian farmer is “the peasant’s
belief in his right to land” (Rudé, 1980, p. 30),
and that belief continues in the minds of
contemporary farmers and even suburban and
urban homeowners.
Within the Freemen and Sovereign Citizens,
structures of resistance to the American
government’s policies toward land and finance
date back into the 1970s, when groups such as
the Posse Comitatus and the California-based
antitaxers, the Committee of the States (from
1984 to 1988 [Paranoia and Patriotism, 2012])
established common-law courts (Durham, 2000,
p. 140). Flooding courts with documents (i.e.,
paper terrorism) and placing liens against local
officials also date back some forty years, as does
the desire to establish adherents’ own court
jurisdictions, which Freemen attempted in
Montana in 1995 (Durham, 2000, pp. 140–141
see Coppola, 1996, p. 62 Rosenfeld, 1997,
2000, 2011 Wessinger, 1999, pp. 37–42, 2000,
pp. 36–38 ).Having felt betrayed by layers of
government that refused to protect them from
harsh and often illegal banking practices that
courts supported and police enforced, Freemen
and Sovereign Citizens established what they
saw as competing organizations that challenged
the state. Ineffective as these challenges may be,
their operation and the behavioral norms
associated with them (such as refusing the
authority of judges and police) provide
“everyday forms of resistance” (Scott, 2008, p.
33) that reinforce their alienation from, and
rejection of, significant social norms associated
with institutions that they feel have failed them.
The British and Irish Freemen Debate9
Nowhere in the Western world is farming a
stable source of income, and farmers outside of
the United States certainly face difficulties that
reflect climatic conditions in interaction with
governmental policies and increasingly global
pressure. For example, in the 2 years preceding
the year 2000, “UK farm income ha[d] dropped
by as much as 75 percent..., driving more than
20,000 farmers from the land” (Gorelick, 2000,
p. 1). In 2001, 90% of British farmers felt the
impact of the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak
(Rayner, 2013b, p. 1), but current problems are
greater. The gravity of current problems stem
from the “appalling weather” (most recently,
floods) combined with more animal illnesses
(Hunt, 2013), leading to income reductions of
between 40% and 50% of previous levels
(Rayner, 2013b, p. 1). Perhaps these and other
conditions (such as the Occupy London protests
in 2011) have led to some individuals turning
toward a British version of the Freemen, but
barristers have been quite clear that such
practices will lead to jail time (Freeman on the
Land/RationalWiki, 2013, p. 2).
The recent British debate about the Freemen
seems to have begun in 2010 when Professor
John Kersey from the European-American
University published a sympathetic analysis of
the movement in a British libertarian magazine.
He concluded his analysis with this statement:
Although the issue of whether these
[Freeman] principles have a firm basis
in law is of considerable interest, it is, as
we have said, not the sole or even the
most important aspect of the Freeman
movement. The key to the importance of
that movement lies in the assertion of
the sovereignty of the individual, the
opposition to the bureaucratic state, and
the willingness through lawful and
peaceful means to disrupt the operations
of that state where they are perceived to
transgress upon the inalienable rights of
the individual, That disruption to the
9 For an example of a Freemen/Sovereign Citizens movement in
Germany called the Reich Citizens’ movement or the Provisional
Government of the German Reich, see Carlhoff, 2013.
8 International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 6, 2015

system of civil law has the potential to
effect fundamental change in the basis
of the relationship between the state and
the individual. (Kersey, 2010, p. 4)
Evidence that some Freeman ideas had entered
popular culture came in March 2011 when an
unspecified number of protesters espousing
Freeman-related concepts “tried to arrest a judge
after storming into a courtroom [i]n Merseyside
[located in northwest England]. The activists
went into the room at Birkenhead County Court,
while about 300 protestors gathered outside the
building” (Captain’s Blawg, 2011). A leaflet
accused both the court and the judge of
operating under maritime law, and that the group
was attempting the takeover in order to ensure
its Magna Carta rights (Captain’s Blawg, 2011).
Later that year (in August 2011), a newspaper
published an article about a mother and her
investigator who had been involved in the
manufacture and dissemination of false child-
sexual-abuse allegations against the father. To
the court, the investigator gave her name as
“Elizabeth of the Watson Family,” which is a
typical way that Freemen attempt to demonstrate
their sovereignty (by rejecting last names as a
form of corporate domination by the state
[Gardner, 2011a, p. 1 PA Media Lawyer, 2011,
p. 3]). Five days later in a London
Administrative Court, a man followed the same
pattern with his last name when providing it to
the judge. He called himself “Norman of the
Family Scarth (The Living Man)” (Williams,
2011). An author, Carl Gardner (2011a), noticed
the Freeman language and wrote a short piece
about it, and he was to reappear in a big debate
that occurred later in the year.
A fury of words about Freemen, however, came
forth after the Guardian newspaper carried
comments by two different bloggers who
attended the 2011 Occupy London protest. One
of them, Jon Witterick, wrote about his
resistance to debt collectors, which was partly
inspired by Mary Elizabeth Croft’s Freeman
book, How I Clobbered Every Cash
Confiscatory Bureau (Witterick, 2011). In a
second commentary, by a person who called
himself “commonly known as dom,” the author
wrote about the law as a prison that enslaves “by
a body of rules and statutory instruments” that
surround items such as one’s birth certificate and
automobile registrations (commonly known as
dom, 2011).
Then people involved with the British legal
system jumped in. On the same day as the
Guardian commentaries appeared in print,
Adam Wagner—in a UK Human Rights blog—
responded to them. He revealed that, during the
previous month, he had served on a jury in
which the defendant fired his legal team and
attempted to defend himself using Freeman
principles. The jury, however, found him guilty
of seven out of eight charges of car theft
(Wagner, 2011, p. 2). He then identified some of
the debt-payment-refusal and Freemen rhetoric
that came out of the Occupy London protests,
but he concluded,
“This stuff” is dangerous and it does
people harm. The common link between
the get out of debt and freeman articles
is that both promote the idea that if you
believe hard enough that the financial or
legal system does not exist, or is a
gigantic fraud, then your problems will
disappear along with the system….
These ideas are most attractive to
desperate, vulnerable people who are
going through terrible times in their
lives. They are also classic conspiracy
theories…. (Wagner, 2011, p. 2)
Wagner called his blog entry “Freemen of the
dangerous nonsense” (p. 1).
The next response to the Guardian articles
appeared—also on the same day—in a legal blog
written by someone who went by the pseudonym
Legal Bizzle, and it was scathing. He called the
opinions expressed by “commonly known as
dom … utter woo,” adding, “But ‘educating’ a
protest movement who [sic] frankly need all the
genuinely legal help they [sic] can get, in this
risible shite? That’s not ‘lawful rebellion,’ it’s
irresponsible” (Legal Bizzle, 2011a, p. 4).
The day after the two Guardian commentaries
appeared, the paper published a response by Carl
Gardner that also was critical:
The love freemen show for magic texts,
incantations and ritual is not just funny:
International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 6, 2015 9