Arizona’s recent increase in “sovereign citizen filings” connects to a New Age spiritual center called the Ultimate Light Mission. Julian talks to investigative reporter Isaac Stone Simonelli. Show Notes Sedona's wellness to radicalization pipeline Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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| Hi friends, Julian Walker here with a brief titled Sovereign in Sedona. | |
| It's a short interview with Isaac Stone Simonelli, who's published a series of articles through the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting about the troubling rise in sovereign citizen legal filings within that state, and specifically about the overlaps with spiritual communities in Sedona. | |
| Which is a real hub, an epicenter of spirituality, not only in Sedona, but throughout the United States. | |
| So imagine going to a place with a name like the Universal Light Mission, where you might take your kids for martial arts classes, you might do a radical rebounding trampoline session. | |
| At night you might get wild and free joining the ecstatic dance class or the drum circle. | |
| What a great community! | |
| Only to find that you start increasingly getting invited to sessions on cryptocurrency investing or special workshops that teach you how to wake up. | |
| to your sovereign identity that, as it turns out, through legal filings, through a kind of word magic, | |
| can become free of the power of the state to demand that you follow certain rules and laws. | |
| Indeed, Isaac starts one of his reports talking about the kinds of rude awakenings that new age | |
| sovereign citizens are subjected to when yanked from their cars by police officers who've grown | |
| impatient with their refusal to show driver's license or registration or to listen to their | |
| instructions because they believe they are now liberated. | |
| So let's hear from Isaac now. | |
| Hello Isaac! | |
| Hello Isaac! | |
| Hello, Isaac. | |
| Thank you so much for joining me today. | |
| Thank you so much for having me. | |
| It's a pleasure to see you. | |
| You know, we talked in depth a couple months ago, so you could pick my brain a little on the overlaps between the phenomenon of conspirituality and the sovereign citizen movement. | |
| And this was for a series of articles you told me at the time that are now being published through the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting. | |
| But I want to turn the tables on you now. | |
| Tell us a bit about who you are and the work that you do. | |
| So I'm an investigative journalist. | |
| I was a Roy Howard Fellow at the time with AZCIR. | |
| Focusing specifically on the domestic extremism beat, and within that, really more narrowly focused on anti-government movements. | |
| You've been tracking the extent to which sovereign citizen document filings and paper terrorism is on the rise. | |
| Tell us more about what those things are, what that means, and how all of this works. | |
| So sovereign citizens is an umbrella term. | |
| They often don't identify as sovereign citizens, but it's an umbrella term used to kind of understand a group of people who think that the U.S. | |
| government was subverted 100 plus years ago and is not a legitimate government and then use pseudo legal or legalese in a way to try to justify not having to follow any laws in the US. | |
| So they'll often say they don't need a driver's license to drive a vehicle. | |
| They will sometimes start refusing to pay taxes. | |
| They might think they don't need to have pay their mortgage on their house, a lot of things that ultimately can have detrimental impacts on their own lives as well as others in the community. | |
| And so one of the things that came around is as I started poking around on the topic, I kept coming across that Pima County in Arizona was a hotspot for these filings. | |
| And what the filings are, there's a lot of different filings. | |
| It's where they use all this pseudo-legal terminology to justify what they decide they want to do and what rules they want to follow. | |
| And for some reason, it was all getting funneled into this one county in Arizona, and we were seeing this dramatic increase of filings happening there. | |
| Fascinating. | |
| And so when they file documents, how does this work? | |
| Is this a legitimate thing where you can just file documents with the government and then you can opt out of certain laws? | |
| Yeah, that is the idea, is that by following these certain steps, often starting off on this idea of a status correction, Where the one of the arguments is if you look at any of your documents you've received from the government, the your name is all in caps, which isn't you as a flesh and body human, but a trust held in the your name by the government. | |
| And so the first step is to make null and void all of these contracts that you inadvertently signed into the government and reclaim a lot of these sovereign rights because you're no longer in contract with the government over anything. | |
| Fascinating. | |
| Yeah, so I'm always struck by the sense that With this kind of idea about how the world functions, there's a magical thinking in there that has to do with the power of the word, the power of the legal document, the ways in which you can, like, the wool has been pulled over your eyes so that you think you're beholden to the government because of this document that was, you know, created on your behalf when you were born, but really, | |
| You can opt out of that and just be essentially a sovereign citizen, but it comes down to this almost magical sense of the power of language. | |
| Does that seem right to you? | |
| Absolutely. | |
| So, sovereigns are very symbolic in a lot of what they do. | |
| There's this idea sometimes you'll see them sign on a 45 degree angle because it shows an ascension from the the law of the land to ascending to like the law of like Celestial law or something along those lines. | |
| You'll see them often sign with blue pens, specifically blue. | |
| You'll see them use their thumbprints to sign in red ink, again, representing blood, flesh and blood. | |
| And then a lot of that language is they choose. | |
| You have these sovereign lecturers who are going out and teaching people their brand of this conspiracy. | |
| That's incredible. | |
| will give them very specific language to use and say, if you use this language, | |
| that will absolve you from this thing. | |
| So it's deeply tied to the language they use. | |
| That's incredible. | |
| And then what exactly is paper terrorism? | |
| Bombarding a system with lots and lots of paperwork, or you're taking out bogus liens on someone's house, | |
| which really has real world impacts. | |
| Um, even though there's no justification for that lien. | |
| So there's various types of very, quote unquote, paper terrorism, but that's really It's a very effective tool because even if a bogus lien is taken out in your home, you still have to hire a lawyer. | |
| You still have to go through the right steps, a real legal process to absolve yourself of that issue. | |
| Even though it doesn't really come from a A court filing. | |
| So it sounds like some people within this movement will discover legal technicalities and loopholes that they can use to harass people who they want to impact negatively or in order to advance some agenda that they have. | |
| Is that what they're doing with like taking out liens on people's houses? | |
| I almost hesitate to call it a loophole. | |
| It's almost an abuse of And do they take out these liens against enemies? | |
| There's just nothing necessarily stopping them from doing it. | |
| And states have caught up. | |
| And in some states, there are repercussions for taking out a bogus lien because of these | |
| tactics which have been used by the sovereign movement since the 1970s. | |
| And do they take out these liens against enemies? | |
| Is this one of the reasons they're doing it? | |
| Yeah. | |
| I don't think they would necessarily frame it up as against the enemy. | |
| I think it's often people they feel like have infringed on their sovereign rights who aren't upholding their oath of office, perhaps. | |
| But from an outside perspective, it very much seems as if they're using it to target Personal enemies or enemies against their ideologies. | |
| It was something in our reporting we had to be very aware of as a possible repercussion. | |
| Against yourselves? | |
| Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | |
| So however we interpret the intentions behind it, it's hostile in terms of its impact. | |
| Yes. | |
| Yes, it absolutely is. | |
| It is. | |
| It's kind of like old school cyber bullying. | |
| If that if that like helps you think about it. | |
| Yeah, absolutely. | |
| Absolutely. | |
| So my sense is that typically people who are drawn to the sovereign citizen kind of ways of looking at the world, if we use that umbrella term, have tended to maybe be more libertarian, probably more conservative, probably in favor of things like, you know, Really, really open gun rights and, you know, just feeling that they can live on their own terms in a way that fits with a right-wing libertarian worldview. | |
| But we come now to this fascinating and disturbing dimension of your work, which has overlaps with our own, with conspirituality. | |
| In part two of your series, you take readers on a visit to the ultimate light mission, Which is on the outskirts of Sedona. | |
| Of course, this is a town well known for the powerful energy of its sacred vortexes or vortices is the correct plural there, which of course draws energy healers and trance channels and alien spaceships alike. | |
| But you found something that anyone who doesn't listen to the podcast might find atypical at this new age spiritual center and in the community that's gathering around its leader, right? | |
| The Ultimate Light Mission is what set us on the journey of the series. | |
| I was alerted that there was this strange, what at the time felt like a very strange intersection between what are typically thought of as alternative right or far right movements, specifically with sovereign citizens, and this very alternative wellness yoga community center. | |
| And that's where I was like, okay, we have a place to talk about this and let's see what the story really is there. | |
| And as we continue to dig, it became very obvious that the center was hosting drum circles. | |
| It was hosting full moon events. | |
| It had a wellness expo that was full of a lot of the sort of things that you guys talk about on the podcast and in your book that come up. | |
| But Two weeks later, after this Alternative Wellness event, there was a Sovereign Citizen lecture that was an introduction to becoming a Sovereign Citizen. | |
| And in a lot of ways, really, that first step, that first round of recruiting that is in a slightly more official capacity than like a friend saying, hey, I heard about this thing, you should try it. | |
| And both events had some traction, several dozen people. | |
| I would argue probably more people at the Sovereign Citizen event. | |
| And again, they would not have framed it up as a Sovereign Citizen event, again, because of the terminology. | |
| But that's what they're preaching. | |
| So what's their pitch? | |
| If they don't call it, you know, How to Be a Sovereign Citizen 101, what is their kind of angle that is appealing to this particular demographic? | |
| There's a shared language about sovereignty. | |
| I think there's a shared belief that The government shouldn't be telling you what to do, and they're providing a tool. | |
| They're giving a tool to access that. | |
| So they're saying, hey, if you follow these rules, or if you follow like You file your status correction. | |
| There is a path to escape the system. | |
| There's a lot of talk about waking up and awakening. | |
| Again, language that resonates with what you see on the conspirituality side of things. | |
| As you start listening to you, you start understanding why in so many ways it can be a good fit. | |
| In the way of crossing over and having an attraction to that audience as well as people are on their own journeys looking for self empowerment looking for sovereignty and they're saying listen. | |
| The government is not actually in charge of you the way it says. | |
| There's ways to break those chains to this corporate system that's holding you down and stopping you from ascending. | |
| Yeah, that's a really good description of the verbiage and the kind of way that that pitch is laid out. | |
| I went and looked at the website for Ultimate Light Mission. | |
| What I found was a homepage that has, you know, pictures of kids seemingly doing martial arts or doing some kind of movement practice. | |
| Very nice pictures of quite young kids. | |
| It really seemed like it was a homey, you know, mom and pop community center. | |
| There's going to be stuff for the adults. | |
| There's going to be stuff for the kids. | |
| You know, Tell me more about, if you want to, if you feel it's appropriate, about the woman who runs the place, about the sort of overall tone of what's going on there, and how that fits together with these, you know, basically how-to-be-a-sovereign-citizen workshops. | |
| Yeah, so unfortunately, I didn't have as much contact with Shelly Evans, the person who runs Ultimate Light Mission, as I would have liked to. | |
| We reached out multiple times for interviews. | |
| At one point, early on in the process, it actually looked like we were going to get to sit down and really talk through it. | |
| I really wanted to understand her perspective, where she was coming at, for all these things, and why she felt like the Ultimate Light Mission was something Both important to the Sedona community and important in general. | |
| And we never ended up getting to have those conversations. | |
| So it's hard to say too much from interactions personally. | |
| What we do know is that she was involved in what prosecutors were describing as paper terrorism against Sedona officials, taking out millions of dollars of liens against I think there was a judge, there was like the city council, the mayor at the time, and a few other folks that were being named in these liens for millions and millions of dollars. | |
| And so Sedona ended up pushing back and is now, they have an ongoing court case there. | |
| Yeah, it's interesting. | |
| I'm going back to the website now. | |
| I see that their upcoming event is called Learn How to Protect and Grow Your Assets in the New Digital Era of Finance and Technology with Multiple Payback Rewards Programs. | |
| That's really interesting. | |
| So yeah, we have the familiar sort of intersection of being a sovereign spiritual being, They're sponsored by Sedona Quantum Consciousness. | |
| They have a life loop after school martial arts program. | |
| But then it also sounds like they're teaching you about cryptocurrency and how to, you know, how to find your way into these various circles where, you know, in our experience, it can be equal parts alternate reality. | |
| Maverick kind of conspiratorial belief systems, but also my sense is that it can actually be quite scammy where you're actually getting drawn into circles of people where they may not have your best interest at heart once you start talking about finances. | |
| Yeah, one of the sovereign citizens I spoke to who was incredibly open with me and really honest throughout the whole process had gone on his own journey and had started out He had first seen, come across the Sovereign Citizens Movement and felt that he didn't question it. | |
| It resonated with him. | |
| It made sense to him. | |
| He felt disillusioned with how COVID was handled. | |
| He struggled with what was happening in the election and how that was handled. | |
| So there were a lot of, there's a deep seated frustration and distrust of the government. | |
| And this was handed to him as something he should think about and be aware of. | |
| And he latched onto it. | |
| And part of that trajectory, though, was he started out with different sovereign citizen, often they call them like gurus, but sovereign citizen teachers. | |
| And he would find that one of them, he ultimately was like, that person is a scammer. | |
| What they're selling is a scam. | |
| It's not a real thing. | |
| And yet, he still believed deeply in the underlying principles of what was being taught through his own research. | |
| His own, you know, research, sometimes in quotation marks. | |
| I'm not sure exactly how he did it. | |
| I have bookshelves now of Sovereign Citizen, like, how-to guides. | |
| And then he tried someone else's methods. | |
| And again, He was seeing how reality was treating some of these people and was like, that's a scam. | |
| I don't think they're doing it right. | |
| But I think there's truth to what they're saying. | |
| And I'm going to find a way by using some of what they're doing to get there. | |
| Wow, yeah, thank you so much for sharing that anecdote because it's such an illustration of just how fraught and how sort of tangled together these, you know, in some cases idealistic beliefs, in some cases paranoid perspectives on reality, and then also the critical thinking that's saying, well, you know, I'm not sure how I feel about everyone Within this movement, some of them might be scammers, but nonetheless, I'm on board with the underlying belief system. | |
| And when I when I look through the website, I see, you know, it's it's not a yoga studio, but belly dance classes, Tai Chi. | |
| So it's in a way this is this is sort of A perfect microcosm of the stuff that we've studied on the podcast, the type of community that we've looked into in the podcast. | |
| And so I just want to thank you for bringing my attention to it and for covering how it's overlapping with this very specific aspect of libertarian and right wing and conspiratorial, you know, ways of sort of drawing people into really making quite radical changes in their lives based on adopting new belief systems. | |
| What you guys have done in your podcasts and our talks with you on the topic really helped me better understand what that intersection looked like. | |
| So we knew at Ultimate Light Mission there was something to be explored, but the expertise you all brought from your end really helped us flesh out the ideas that experts who have traditionally focused on sovereign citizens were able to bring to the table and find that You know, where they all came together. | |
| Yeah, I'm glad. | |
| I'm glad, Isaac. | |
| So, is there any kind of preview you can give us on the rest of the series? | |
| What you're understanding, what you might be hoping to accomplish through your great research and reporting on the topic? | |
| I think the only real goal of the reporting was to raise awareness about how shared spaces like this can radicalize people. | |
| I believe that we live in a society and country where people should be allowed to make choices and follow all their different belief systems. | |
| Um, and I always struggle putting on anything that like heavily stigmatizes, but I think when you're looking at any situation where people who might be vulnerable are being targeted and then Really, scammers are taking advantage of people and taking advantage of a larger distrust and frustration with the government and using that in what potentially could be a harmful way that impacts people's lives. | |
| It only takes three or four minutes on YouTube to watch dozens of videos of sovereigns getting pulled out of their vehicles. | |
| And shoved to the ground by police because they're not listening to lawful police orders. | |
| And that is a real impact on people's lives. | |
| That's hard to watch when you realize that they're getting pulled in through this kind of conspiracy. | |
| And to realize that shared spaces where you might have come to a space because you wanted to open your heart to love and to drumming and to community, that that can drive you into a direction where you're face down in the dirt. | |
| Is something I thought was important for people to understand. | |
| Thank you so much for listening. | |
| Thank you as well to Isaac Stone Simonelli, who joined me from Morocco. | |
| Having completed his fellowship now, he was the Roy W. Howard Fellow at the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting. | |
| You can find his article series about sovereign citizens in Sedona and in Arizona more broadly at azcir.org. | |
| He also has his own blog, Simonelli, that's with two L's, SimonelliStories.com. |