collecting) debts, and then rose in open rebellion
(which the Massachusetts militia suppressed [see
Szatmary, 1980]). In the contemporary period,
[d]uring the 1970s, stagnant incomes,
resentment against poor and minorities
who received welfare, and inflation-
induced “bracket creep” that drove up
tax rates sharpened this traditional
[antitax] sentiment. By 1980, the
proportion of Americans who viewed
their federal income taxes as “too high”
reached a record level. In addition,
Social Security taxes and state and local
income and property taxes rose sharply
during the 1970s. Growing antitax
sentiment among Americans of modest
means dovetailed with the antitax beliefs
of supply siders and other economic
conservatives. The “tax revolt” that
began in California in 1978 put the
antitax agenda on the front burner of
American politics. (Schaller, 2007, p.
42)
Tax resistance became a movement unto itself,
but it also blended into the ideologies of groups
within the broader antigovernment movement.
Although other forms of the OPCA movement
are more prone to violence, detaxers committed
a vicious attack against a California court clerk
in the mid-1990s for refusing to accept self-
made court documents that numerous
antigovernment groups (especially Sovereign
Citizens) were submitting to courts. In 1997, the
court clerk, Karen Mathews, wrote about the
attack against her in a letter to The New York
Times:
“Lady, you would be so easy to kill.”
More than three years later, these words
still haunt me. My assailant growled this
threat as I lay in the darkness on the
floor of my garage, stunned and dazed
from being beaten, kicked and knifed.
Then he put a gun to my head and dry-
fired it several times.
This was no random attack or botched
burglary. The man who all but killed me
was a member of a disciplined
organization with a specific mission.
And bizarre as it may seem, I was a
target because of my job. I am the
elected clerk-recorder of Stanislaus
County in central California, a sleepy-
sounding title until paramilitary groups
discovered that harassing and
intimidating officials like me is a way to
attack the basic workings of
government. One of their tactics is to try
to file liens against the property of
Internal Revenue Service employees and
other officials they regard as the enemy.
In California alone, clerk-recorders in
49 of the state’s 58 counties have
reported incidents ranging from fist-
pounding intimidation to threats of
physical harm. This is part of a guerrilla
war against democracy going on far
below the level of an Oklahoma City
bombing. I often felt while following the
trial of Timothy McVeigh that the
events are related in spirit if not in fact.
It is difficult to comprehend or convey
the anger and crazy sense of misguided
patriotism embraced by these people.
For example, after I refused to record
one man’s illegal “common law” lien,
he told me, “You are guilty of treason.”
He then snarled, “I am a sovereign
citizen of the Republic of California, not
the corporate United States, and the laws
you enforce restrict my God-given
rights.”
I find it hard to discuss some of the
details of what happened to me. But I
feel an anger that won’t go away, not
only against the self-styled patriots who
harass us, but also against those who
express or tolerate a certain “populist”
support for anti-government extremism
(Mathews, 1997 reprinted 2010).
Nine persons, all of whom were associates or
members of a Christian-sounding radical
detaxing group called the Juris Christian
Assembly, were convicted of assaulting
Mathews and committing related crimes (Trott,
1999 see Hallissy, 1995). Soon we shall see that
the language and self-identification that
Mathews’s attacker used is common among
International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 6, 2015 3
(which the Massachusetts militia suppressed [see
Szatmary, 1980]). In the contemporary period,
[d]uring the 1970s, stagnant incomes,
resentment against poor and minorities
who received welfare, and inflation-
induced “bracket creep” that drove up
tax rates sharpened this traditional
[antitax] sentiment. By 1980, the
proportion of Americans who viewed
their federal income taxes as “too high”
reached a record level. In addition,
Social Security taxes and state and local
income and property taxes rose sharply
during the 1970s. Growing antitax
sentiment among Americans of modest
means dovetailed with the antitax beliefs
of supply siders and other economic
conservatives. The “tax revolt” that
began in California in 1978 put the
antitax agenda on the front burner of
American politics. (Schaller, 2007, p.
42)
Tax resistance became a movement unto itself,
but it also blended into the ideologies of groups
within the broader antigovernment movement.
Although other forms of the OPCA movement
are more prone to violence, detaxers committed
a vicious attack against a California court clerk
in the mid-1990s for refusing to accept self-
made court documents that numerous
antigovernment groups (especially Sovereign
Citizens) were submitting to courts. In 1997, the
court clerk, Karen Mathews, wrote about the
attack against her in a letter to The New York
Times:
“Lady, you would be so easy to kill.”
More than three years later, these words
still haunt me. My assailant growled this
threat as I lay in the darkness on the
floor of my garage, stunned and dazed
from being beaten, kicked and knifed.
Then he put a gun to my head and dry-
fired it several times.
This was no random attack or botched
burglary. The man who all but killed me
was a member of a disciplined
organization with a specific mission.
And bizarre as it may seem, I was a
target because of my job. I am the
elected clerk-recorder of Stanislaus
County in central California, a sleepy-
sounding title until paramilitary groups
discovered that harassing and
intimidating officials like me is a way to
attack the basic workings of
government. One of their tactics is to try
to file liens against the property of
Internal Revenue Service employees and
other officials they regard as the enemy.
In California alone, clerk-recorders in
49 of the state’s 58 counties have
reported incidents ranging from fist-
pounding intimidation to threats of
physical harm. This is part of a guerrilla
war against democracy going on far
below the level of an Oklahoma City
bombing. I often felt while following the
trial of Timothy McVeigh that the
events are related in spirit if not in fact.
It is difficult to comprehend or convey
the anger and crazy sense of misguided
patriotism embraced by these people.
For example, after I refused to record
one man’s illegal “common law” lien,
he told me, “You are guilty of treason.”
He then snarled, “I am a sovereign
citizen of the Republic of California, not
the corporate United States, and the laws
you enforce restrict my God-given
rights.”
I find it hard to discuss some of the
details of what happened to me. But I
feel an anger that won’t go away, not
only against the self-styled patriots who
harass us, but also against those who
express or tolerate a certain “populist”
support for anti-government extremism
(Mathews, 1997 reprinted 2010).
Nine persons, all of whom were associates or
members of a Christian-sounding radical
detaxing group called the Juris Christian
Assembly, were convicted of assaulting
Mathews and committing related crimes (Trott,
1999 see Hallissy, 1995). Soon we shall see that
the language and self-identification that
Mathews’s attacker used is common among
International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 6, 2015 3
