Belonging to Extremists

• In Event: The Politics of Belonging: How Identity Informs Inclusion and Exclusion

Abstract

Measuring belonging in the modern state system has long been complicated—who counts as a citizen? Is citizenship enough to be considered part of the group? Which rights does citizenship guarantee access to? Belonging becomes even more difficult to assess when we include debates about nationalist identities, and layer in conspiracy theories. In this paper I use the Sovereign Citizens Movement, an extremist group, as a lens through which to better understand belonging both to the nation and to fringe groups in democratic systems. Sovereign citizens claim to both be independent of state authority, and to be the real Americans, yet it can be difficult to determine who actually is a sovereign citizen. The stakes here are high, both for modern liberal democracies that depend on the binding functions of a shared identity, and for the individuals who find themselves inside networks of conspiracy theories.

Author

• Piper Biery, West Texas A&M University