I’ve worked with so-called sovereign citizens. They all believe they’re special

For many, Tuesday’s attack in Porepunkah has echoes of the Wieambilla shootings of 2022, when two Queensland police officers and a civilian were killed at the hands of sovereign citizens – brothers Gareth and Nathaniel Train, and Gareth’s wife, Stacey Train.

While less is known about Stacey and Nathaniel’s beliefs, Gareth Train had links to the sovereign citizen community, and had espoused anti-police and anti-government conspiratorial views (such as that the Port Arthur massacre was a false flag operation).

Like Gareth, Dezi Freeman, the Victorian man who allegedly fatally shot two police officers and wounded another before fleeing on Tuesday, is known to hold conspiratorial beliefs and has links to the sovereign citizen movement.

In 2021, Freeman was involved in a failed attempt to have then-premier Daniel Andrews tried for treason, and is known to have had a number of previous altercations with the police. On Tuesday, police were attending his property to serve a warrant in relation to historical child sex abuse allegations.

Through my work as a forensic psychologist, I’ve come face to face with several so-called sovereign citizens. Usually, it is for criminal offences such as assaulting police or engaging in action directed at state institutions, and attendances are mandated by the courts for assessment before sentencing and for treatment to reduce the risk they pose.

In Australia, sovereign citizens are not new. They have been active since federation in innocuous ways, such as Leonard Casley’s self-declared Principality of Hutt River in rural Western Australia. In their modern form, their views generally focus on a few key areas: the belief that they are not subject to the laws of the land and can thus “opt out” of authority, and theories such as foreign ownership of governments. While these beliefs are not strictly delusional, they are divorced from reality, and for some, they are held with a delusional and obsessional intensity.

While many people see sovereign citizens and others of their ilk as odd but not overtly threatening, this belies the real risk they may pose. It’s true that most are non-violent in nature, but their entrenched and extreme beliefs and their distrust of the state and authority renders them a group of interest for law enforcement due to the potential for escalation into anti-sociality and violence, especially when they link with other fringe right-wing extremists. More than a third of all counter-terror investigations in Australia now focus on extreme right-wing groups and individuals, including those associated with the sovereign citizen movement.

Yes, it’s difficult to accept the threat on our own shore when we have been told for decades that the threat comes from overseas, but the Wieambilla murders were Australia’s first fundamentalist Christian terrorist attack, conducted by two men who were also sovereign citizens, and highlighted a new front in the war on terror, in which individual operators who hold extreme far-right beliefs are not affiliated with traditional transnational extremist religious groups such as Islamic State.

Sovereign citizens have become prominent in public discourse since the COVID-19 pandemic, incensed and emboldened by lockdown and vaccine mandates, and what they perceived as tyrannical state regulation. This is particularly true in Victoria, which had some of the strictest regulations in the world.

Often, the catalyst for an act of violence might be desperation or exposure to a stressful experience to the point where their ability to cope breaks down. Violence is sometimes reactive and impulsive, but at other times is carefully premeditated and designed to highlight a cause, or to find the power and recognition that disenfranchised individuals often crave.

Despite being a part of an informal group or subscribing to a loose belief system, sovereign citizens who are aggressive or violent share a number of characteristics with lone violence perpetrators: both are immersed in strong personal grievances and have a sense of injustice. Both are socially isolated and disconnected from in-person communities. They also both tend to have mental health issues, traits of personality disorder and histories of other antisocial or aggressive behaviours.

Essentially, while violent sovereign citizens and lone actors believe they are powerful individuals who hold a special knowledge the rest of us aren’t privy to, they don’t. And of course, they aren’t special at all. Instead, they are usually a disenfranchised, isolated person with violent attitudes and beliefs, poor coping skills, cognitive rigidity and psychological inflexibility.

As tempting as it might be to brush off this movement or other forms of far-right and extremist beliefs as silly or inconsequential, we ignore this threat at our peril as it creeps ever closer.

On August 31, some Australians will march to protest against immigration and “protect” Australia. Prominent among these will be operatives with far-right and sovereign citizen views. And these views are moving closer to the mainstream by hiding in plain sight.

Dr Ahona Guha is a clinical and forensic psychologist, trauma expert and author based in Melbourne.

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