Anti-Vaxxers and Domestic Terrorists Are Aligning

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.damemagazine.com/2022/03/29/anti-vaxxers-and-domestic-terrorists-are-aligning/


“You are being put on notice!” anti-vax activist Christopher Key thundered outside a Missouri pharmacy, adding, “and if they give one more vaccine, as of this day after being put on notice, then they can be hung up. And they can be executed.”

Key goes by the moniker “The Vaccine Police,” drives a custom wrapped Ford Mustang emblazoned with anti-vax iconography, and urges his followers to drink bleach and urine to cure Covid. He has been traveling across the country confronting health care providers and public officials about vaccines, which he falsely characterizes as bioweapons. Key’s ideology is an example of an alarming confluence between the anti-vaccination movement and the pseudo-legal doctrines of so-called “sovereign citizens.”

Counter-terrorism experts consistently rate so-called “sovereign citizens” as one of the gravest domestic terrorism threats, in no small part because they are prolific cop-killers. As the pandemic drags on, we are seeing alarming cross-pollination between sovereign citizens and anti-vaccine/anti-mandate activists. This convergence is partly a function of the market. People disillusioned with Covid measures sought pseudo-legal solutions to get out of pandemic restrictions, and sovereigns already had a lucrative industry furnishing people with fake legal exemptions and bogus credentials, but common ground between these two groups extends well beyond commerce. Many people who were merely anti-vax before the pandemic broadened their opposition to include all manner of government measures to contain the virus. Sovereign citizens and other anti-government extremists also see pandemic measures as illegitimate infringements by the state. After the failure of the January 6 insurrection, many far-right organizers refocused their followers on the anti-vax cause.

Sovereigns believe that they are above the law. The best way to describe their belief system is to say that they’ve elevated the concept of a cheat code to the level of a religious faith. They think they’ve found the “one weird trick” that gets them out of all their legal obligations from paying their debts to following the speed limit to, in principle, lynching their political opponents. Sovereigns have been causing an outsized amount of mayhem for decades. They are responsible for billions of dollars in tax fraud, billions of dollars in frivolous liens on their enemies’ property, countless armed standoffs large and small, conspiracies to kidnap and murder judges and police officers, and numerous murders. The sovereigns’ core belief that they are above the law emboldens them to rationalize anything, including violence.

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[Jm7603]

1. The religious undertones to this are unmistakable

Many fundamentalists are also of the opinion that man's law does not apply to them. This is a potentially terrifying development in American terrorism. We are seeing bonds developing between terrorist groups that I never saw coming. It is going to be a long battle ahead....