“Special Envoy” met members of the “sovereign citizens” conspiracy movement

It’s a video that went viral in a matter of hours. On April 1, 2024, in the north of France, a couple very seriously refused to submit to a gendarmerie check, declaring “We don’t contract!” For “Special Envoy”, Clément Le Goff met Pierre and Laetitia, who present themselves as “sovereign beings” or “sovereign citizens”. To the police, they presented their new “identity cards”, supposed to also serve as driving licenses, on a yellow background: those, supposedly international, from a mysterious “Common Law Court”.

These papers have no legal value, but they are proud of them. For them, they represent a whole symbol, a way of affirming that they “no longer belong to the company French Republic Presidency”, according to Peter. “I am not entering into a contract, because I have not signed a contract with this company”supports Laetitia, unable to specify how France (“uh, sorry, the ‘French Republic presidency'”) would be a business.

The movement of “sovereign beings (or citizens)” in fact considers countries as private companies, which steal your identity at birth. So, to regain their freedom, “sovereign citizens” refuse the authority of the State. A conspiracy theory, anti-system, to which Pierre and Laetitia have adhered for more than three years.

Born in the United States in the 1970s, this movement of “sovereign beings” today brings together numerous followers (between 350,000 and 400,000, specifies specialist Tristan Mendès France), to the point of being judged “extremely dangerous” by the FBI. In France, if their action is most often limited to refusing road checks or burning their passports, they have still been talked about even in the National Assembly.