I’ve spent years investigating ‘sovereign citizens’. Here’s what I learnt

When news broke that a so-called sovereign citizen was suspected of killing two police officers and injuring another in north-east Victoria this week, some of the loudest voices in Australia’s conspiracy theory circles immediately said it wasn’t true.

Based on the same news fragments that we all saw, they declared that the shooting was a fiction propagated by secret, nefarious forces to discredit them and their kind. A conspiracy.

Their version is plainly wrong. The accused shooter – Dezi Freeman – has a history of association with pseudolaw ideas. It’s a term for the beliefs of a type of anti-government conspiracy theorist who imagines that it’s possible to extricate him or herself from the obligations of the state – from driver’s licences, taxes, mortgage payments or court appearances – if they say the right legalese phrase or serve the correct document.

We still don’t have the full story about Freeman and what happened in Porepunkah. But having just co-written a book on Australian conspiracy theory culture with Ariel Bogle, it did not come as a shock that someone who shares some of these beliefs could graduate to violence. Not least because events like the eerily similar Wieambilla shooting by anti-government conspiracy theorists are fresh in our minds.

Some research suggests conspiracy theories serve the needs of those who believe in them by taking a complex and uncertain world and distorting it into a familiar, easy-to-understand story. Everything bad that happens is due to an evil plot. They fulfil the human urge to have a simple answer to a complex problem. And they’re not alone in this.

Soon after the shooting – with the alleged gunman still at large – there was immediately online chatter about “solutions”: Proscribe sovereign citizens as a terror group, charge them with contempt, surveil anyone who even hints at pseudolaw beliefs.

I’m not a law enforcement or terrorism expert. Nor do we yet know all the facts of this case, so I will leave the many questions about the handling of this incident to those who are and do. What I can say is that nothing that we’ve seen in our reporting suggests that punitive measures, harsher policing and mass surveillance will dissuade people from these beliefs.

Criminalising illogical beliefs and association among those who espouse them is unlikely to be a deterrent to people who don’t recognise the authority of the law. Drastically increasing our surveillance of pseudolaw believers is probably a fool’s errand. There are hundreds, even thousands, of Australians who speak and act like Freeman does. The vast majority of them never act on it. It is very difficult to know which ones will. (As someone who observed some of Freeman’s antics during the pandemic era, I’ll admit that I had no idea that it would lead to the crimes he is accused of.)

Pseudolaw believers, in my experience, tend to follow a familiar pattern: they have a run-in with the legal system, then in a moment of crisis turn to pseudolaw gurus for a quick fix. But shouting in court about the Magna Carta or mailing letters with red fingerprints often exacerbates their problems. A parking ticket leads to a bigger fine leads to a court summons leads to a warrant out for your arrest.

There is no quick fix for those dedicated to conspiracy theories, either. What we’ve observed is that the people who disavow conspiracy theories often tend to do so of their own volition. They can’t be forced.

Robert Sudy is a former pseudolaw adherent who now runs Australia’s most influential online database tracking pseudolaw concepts and figures, The Freeman Delusion. He told us about how he was drawn into pseudolegal arguments while researching online about how to contest driving charges. After he tried some of these claims in court, the magistrate that day carefully and respectfully rebuffed his arguments and recommended some further reading.

Sudy was ultimately responsible for deciding to take the suggestion and go on a journey that ended with him disavowing pseudolaw, but it was a quirk of fate that helped set him along that path. The magistrate had several hearings rescheduled, leaving him with an unusual amount of time to meaningfully engage with Sudy.

It’s one thing to tell the judges, lawyers, council workers and police officers who have regular professional interactions with pseudolaw adherents to be empathetic and patient. The bigger issue is that our legal system is not designed or resourced to give workers the space and grace to offer people an off-ramp from these beliefs.

Another person we spoke to for our book was Damien Stewart, a psychologist who had to learn to deal with his patients espousing conspiracy theory beliefs during pandemic lockdowns. A veteran patient started to spend time in online conspiracy theory groups after he had trouble getting help for an injury, placing him under financial and psychological stress. When he got the assistance he needed, the patient began to improve.

It’s easy to see how material conditions predispose us to seeing secret plots everywhere we look. This is borne out in broader research, which suggests the perception that a country is corrupt and inequitable can lead to populations being more prone to conspiratorial beliefs.

It makes sense then that if things are going well for us at an individual, community and national level, then there’s less reason to look for ways to blame others – an us-versus-them framing that is fundamental to most conspiracy theories. Addressing systemic issues like poverty, mental health, and corruption, and assisting people to navigate our complex legal system are ways to fight the prevalence and persuasiveness of these ideas.

These are not easy solutions. The causes of people’s conspiratorial beliefs are many of the same problems that have vexed Australia for decades. And it should be acknowledged that we will never fully eliminate conspiratorial beliefs, and the threat they pose when taken to their most extreme.

But we can’t accept the status quo. To do so would be to accept the countless lives disrupted, ruined and lost to these ideas. We must resist the allure of simple answers or demonising others so we can feel better about ourselves.

Cam Wilson is a journalist and co-author of Conspiracy Nation: Exposing the Dangerous World Of Australian Conspiracy Theories.