When watching the video, Internet users undoubtedly hesitated between laughter and amazement. A couple in their car refuses to submit to a police check. The reason ? The two spouses
“no longer belong to the French Republic Presidency company”
, a
“company since 1947 (...) registered in Washington DC”
, like all institutions
.
They believe they are traveling on a departmental road,
“private property”
de facto
prohibiting
control.
“We don’t contract
,” the occupants of the vehicle repeatedly insist. This formula quickly became an inexhaustible source of misappropriation on the web.
“You are a private company, we do not enter into a contract with you”
, they explain to the gendarmes, described as
“mercenaries on French soil”.
If this viral sequence makes you smile, it highlights the existence of a conspiracy movement, which recently appeared in France, that of
“sovereign beings”
. In its 2021 report, Miviludes (Interministerial Mission for Vigilance and the Fight against Sectarian Abuses) considers that
“this group does not constitute a sectarian deviation to date, but arouses vigilance”
from the organization,
“due to its strong influence on its members and its anti-system philosophy
.
The
“legal name fraud”
The theoretical basis of this movement is old.
“Tinged with New Age references, (it) finds part of its origins in the Sovereign Citizens movement, a phenomenon that appeared in the United States in the 1970s and challenges the legitimacy of the federal state
,” describes Rudy Reichstadt, journalist and creator of the website Conspiracy Watch.
The Sovereign Citizens doctrine is based on a conspiracy theory according to which the legal and political system established in the United States by the Founding Fathers was secretly replaced by a new system of government based on maritime law and international trade. . The Sovereign Citizens then spread to Canada, Germany, and France.
Each individual would be transformed into a Treasury bond
In France, the heart of their doctrine is
“legal name fraud”
. This conspiratorial belief is based on the postulate that
“France has been a private company since 1947”
, as the driver of the video explains. Since then, the State has secretly robbed each of its citizens of their
“legal name”
, in other words their
“legal personality”
, all with the complicity of officials responsible for registering civil status, magistrates, bankers and the media. . Through this scam, each individual who was the subject of a declaration would, in fact, be transformed into a Treasury bond, explains the Conspiracy Watch site.
To put an end to this conspiracy, the followers of the movement believe that it is enough to declare themselves
"sovereign"
by refusing to respect the laws, by not honoring the contracts they have signed,
"since they would have been by their legal counterpart and not by themselves
,” underlines the specialized site.
In the video of the couple arrested by the gendarmes, the driver states his identity as
“Pierre from the Legrand family by hearsay”
.
“In lower case, please, we are not businesses
,” adds his wife. This method would conveniently allow them to pay neither taxes nor submit to police authority. In short: to free oneself from rules, particularly financial ones.
A dangerous move?
If
“sovereign beings”
therefore refuse any legitimacy to the government and consider that the exercise of their freedom requires a refusal of any citizenship, of any obligation with regard to the State or its administration,
“they proclaim their refusal violence and nourish explicitly utopian projects
,” indicates Rudy Reichstadt in the Miviludes 2021 report.
Not dangerous,
“sovereign beings”
? In the United States, the threat is taken seriously, since the movement was ranked first internal threat by the FBI in 2011, ahead of Islamist terrorism. And for good reason, since 2000, followers of the movement have killed six law enforcement officers, according to the agency.
In France, the movement especially gives rise to grotesque situations. The social network specialist Vincent Flibustier, at the origin of the broadcast of the video, recently gave the example on calculate their surface areas and establish local taxes. The owner of a subdivision sent him back the statement of results, refusing to sign it and therefore to pay. On the ballot, he declared himself independent of his
“country plot”
. The man had even put a
“customs”
sign on his gate.
Mia affair, Alice Pazalmar...
One of the most emblematic representatives of the
“sovereign beings”
movement is French and is named Alice Martin Pascual, better known as Alice Pazalmar. In 2019, she co-founded the One Nation website, which presents itself as
“a wave of planetary emancipation which invites us to serenely reclaim our personal power and refuse all illegitimate authority”
.
As is often the case in this type of movement, there is a sort of
“convergence of struggles”
between all the conspiracy theories. Thus, Alice Pazalmar has distinguished herself on several occasions with virulent attacks against vaccination and Bill Gates. The wife of the driver of the viral video, a liberal nurse, is also fiercely opposed to vaccination against Covid, indicates
La Voix du Nord
, which contacted the couple.
Sentenced to six months in prison last February, notably for repeated traffic offenses, Alice Pazalmar notably declared that she no longer identified herself with her identity card and burned her passport. She is also at the origin of an ecovillage project in the Lot, which was intended to be
“a place of community life, in the form of an oasis bathed in harmonious interdependence with the living, populated by sovereign beings”
. The mobilization of local residents and local elected officials derailed the project.
The movement behind the Mia affair
Alice Pazalmar has also long believed that there is a
“network of people highly placed in the upper echelons of this world who would like (...) to attack our children”
. In this context, she shared her
“letter of liberation of children”
, addressed to
“Emmanuel of the Macron family, the being who plays the role of president of the Société République Française”
. She then took her children out of school. The movement of
“sovereign beings”
has also hit the headlines with the affair of little Mia. His mother, who was a follower of the One Nation organization, kidnapped him in April 2021, to save her from what she believed was a social services plot.