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Back to the Feudal, parts I, II, and III% for sovereign citizen sheriffs [1]

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Date: 2022-07-26

Will sovereign sheriffs be managing Trump’s proposed homeless camps if only to free up police forces to occupy every street corner along with the taco trucks. because for Trump, it’s always about real estate and martial law.

Trump at the America First summit just called for federal power to "send the National Guard to restore order and secure the peace without having to wait for the approval of some governor that thinks it's politically incorrect to call them in." Crowd applauds.

Trump just said "the only way you're going to remove the hundreds of thousands of (homeless) people, and maybe throughout our nation millions of people were talking about" is to create large-"tent cities" (aka: refugee camps) on cheap land outside of American cities.

x “Constitutional sheriffs” are basically the LEO versions of “sovereign citizens,” and both movements “arose from the ashes of the far-right, anti-semitic Posse Comitatus movement of the 1970s and 80s,” founded by white supremacist William Potter Gale: https://t.co/5XKDLcpouW — Chase Woodruff (@dcwoodruff) February 16, 2022

It’s called the “constitutional sheriff” movement, and as it grows, it’s increasing the risk of conflict between local law enforcement and federal authorities. Its animating idea is that a sheriff holds ultimate law-enforcement authority in his county—outranking even the federal government within its borders. Though the movement claims deep history in English law, its real roots lie in the more recent fringes of American right-wing thought. And its popularity helps explain why Arpaio’s defiance of federal law shouldn’t be seen as just one grandstanding sheriff crossing a line, but instead should be seen as part of a broader grassroots resistance to constitutional and cultural upheavals during the 20th century.

The strange idea that unites all members of this movement is that a sheriff is the highest law enforcement officer within a county’s borders—superior not only to local police, but also to officers and agents of the federal government. The actual influence of sheriff supremacy is hard to measure, but it has been growing in recent years, and today the official constitutional sheriffs’ association boasts 4,500 dues paying members and over 200 sheriffs. Its highest-profile members include Arpaio and David Clarke, who just resigned as sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, reportedly to help Trump in some capacity.

But those figures may underestimate how far its influence extends, and how fully it pervades certain regions of the country. In 2013, Arpaio joined nearly 500 other sheriffs who vowed not to obey any federal law that required them to confiscate guns from private citizens. In Utah, 28 of 30 sheriffs went even further, warning that “[n]o federal official will be permitted to descend upon our constituents and take from them what the Bill of Rights—in particular Amendment II—has given them.”

The constitutional sheriff movement arose from the ashes of the far-right, anti-semitic Posse Comitatus movement of the 1970s and 80s, led by William Potter Gale. The insignia favored by these Christian Patriots was a redesigned sheriff’s badge containing a noose, Bible and sword, to reflect their belief that sheriffs were responsible for the armed defense of citizens and higher law (a combination of their view of the Constitution and Christian Identity teachings). Before the movement collapsed with Gale’s death, its paramilitary figures developed an anti-tax, anti-government agenda that stoked conspiracy theories that Jews were responsible for oppressing farmers through crushing taxes and exorbitant loans. Its foot soldiers gained notoriety when they tried to stop foreclosures in the Midwest and engaged in shootouts with U.S. marshals.

The modern constitutional sheriff movement has revived the idea of sheriff supremacy envisioned by the Christian Patriots, tried to shed its anti-Semitic and racist origins, and now seeks to “take back America county by county, state by state.” Today, its ideology has gained traction with the militia movement, so-called sovereign citizens, separatists wary of centralized government—and increasingly, landowners, county commissioners, veterans and law enforcement figures. Cliven Bundy, who has clashed for years with the Bureau of Land Management, is an adherent of sheriff supremacy. In 2014, he demanded that the local sheriff step in and protect him from federal agents: “Sheriff, this is what We the People are asking this morning. Disarm the Park Service at …parks where the federal government claims they have jurisdiction.” One of his sons, Ryan Bundy, later said on TV, “The county sheriff is the only person that We the People have allowed to have policing power.”

www.politico.com/...

x I don't think we've reckoned with the damage done by the spread of anti-government extremism - including among civil servants. Also, if you care about democracy, don't allow people who don't accept the federal government to work in law enforcement (sovereign "sheriffs"). https://t.co/M8NDDRs6sS — Ruth Ben-Ghiat (@ruthbenghiat) June 21, 2022

x Soon the only safe place for gun owners will be Second Amendment Sanctuary Counties with good sheriffs.



Thanks to Senate Republicans. — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) June 22, 2022

x For starters, here's what I wrote back in 2016, about the meeting between Donald Trump & William S. Lind - one of the original thinkers behind the idea of uniting militias with county sheriffs, to fight state & federal authority:https://t.co/Jx9KsuPjgW — Bruce Wilson (@brucewilson) July 18, 2022

x 5) That's consistent with Richard Mack's behavioral pattern - although he actively participated in the 2014 "Battle of Bunkerville" that represented a major militia uprising against federal authority, after that Mack declined to participate in another similar uprising... — Bruce Wilson (@brucewilson) July 18, 2022

x 7) Around that time, Mack was also starting to pull back - under media scrutiny - from his more inflammatory public statements, such as his declaration that his CSPOA was "the army to set our nation free". https://t.co/5wYymiv1TI — Bruce Wilson (@brucewilson) July 18, 2022

x 20) They would tend to have the predominance of force at the local level, especially if local right-wing churches began raising their own militia. I covered that in this August 2020 Twitter thread: https://t.co/JNG9y9SHsM — Bruce Wilson (@brucewilson) July 18, 2022

x 26) PS - @DavidNeiwert, writing for the Daily Kos, covered this development in a July 14th story. Dave is one of the preeminent authorities on the militia movement. https://t.co/FcGeSpobeG — Bruce Wilson (@brucewilson) July 18, 2022

x The One Way History Shows Trump’s Personality Cult Will End - POLITICO “The wild card is guns. No other country in peace time has 400 million guns in private hands, militias allowed to populate, sovereign sheriffs, has so many extremists in the military.” https://t.co/TkSmysF7Wl — Miranda Shapiro ☮️ (@MirandaShapiro1) April 22, 2022

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/26/2112767/-Back-to-the-Feudal-parts-I-II-and-III-for-sovereign-citizen-sheriffs

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