Toxic Individuality

One of the great flaws of American (and by extension, Western European) culture is that our desire and provisions for individual liberty and civil rights also opens a door for abusive behavior by narcissistic and / or sociopathic bordering psychotic individuals raging against society at large.

We’re not talking about individuals or groups with focused protests and proposed solutions against specific injustice or society failings, we’re not discussing those availing themselves of transparency laws to familiarize themselves with the actions of local authorities so as to make better choices when voting.

No, we’re referring to that class of free range imbeciles that include the sovereign citizen (SovCit) and so-called “first amendment auditor” types.*

Typical of the SovCit / first amendment auditor class:
They create a hierarchy in their minds that all others should be compelled to obey and are amazed and dismayed (dismazed?) when nobody takes them seriously.  Totally self-involved, they create their own interpretations of civil and criminal law which fly in the face of not merely clearly enunciated and legally verified laws and ordnances but also literally thousands of years of historical legal precedent.

Numerous first amendment auditor videos show them insisting they have authority over the police because they “pay their salaries” and can thus order them around. I’ve heard numerous sovereign citizens tell judges that courts have no authority over them because the SovCit has declared the court to be invalid and without authority (Spoiler: The judge almost always demonstrates their authority by having the bailiff jail the SovCit for contempt of court).

There’s a Venn diagram where the two movements overlap with one another and libertarianism.  Not all libertarians are malicious loony toons, of course, but that current certainly runs through their movement, fueled and reinforced by the rantings of Ayn Rand.    

Real hard core libertarians remove themselves from society and go off into the wilderness to live as they wish. Genuine auditors aren’t annoying people at work, disrupting service for others, or snooping on legally protected private information. 

What these YouTube clowns are doing is making it more difficult for legitimate problems to be dealt with because they’re choking the system with their antics, making it easier for real issues to be ignored. 

The first amendment auditors I’ve seen invade public spaces with cameras, despite posted notices not to record. They’re fond of zooming in on posters saying they have the right to record (which is technically true) but overlook the fact the posters also say the law forbids recordings for commercial reasons (such as to make money on YouTube; I’ve yet to see a first amendment auditor who didn’t beg for money more shamelessly that PornHub streamer operating out of Russia), and that SCOTUS also ruled anyone in authority at a public building may issue a ban on recording without permission. 

(I mean, it’s literally right there on the poster they zoom in on when claiming their “rights” but they never read past the first part of the paragraph.)

Many of them gleefully record themselves barging into social service offices, medical offices, family law offices, etc. where there are laws banning the recording of minors and patients or copying personal data that might be on computer screens or paperwork that employees are going over.  

One so-called auditor raised his camera to record through a window above eye level outside a bank, capturing data of a customer’s account on a computer a teller was using. 

That’s an invasion of privacy, not an exercise of first amendment rights. 

Several auditors have been arrested filming around prisons because there are very specific laws banning unauthorized recording around jails and prisons because of the threat of jail breaks or targeting of prison employees.  To go to a prison with the intent of recording without permission is different from seeing a crime being committed and then taking out your phone to record it as evidence to hand over to the police. 

They do this because they are pathetic little people who lack any real agency in their lives and think they are proving something by intruding on the lives of others with impunity. 

They got away with a lot of stuff during the pandemic when for health concerns courts were reluctant to jail people for minor offenses; it’ll be interesting to see what happens to them after the pandemic is declared over. Metaphorically they’re like annoying little puppies who think they can’t be stuffed in a pillowcase and tossed in the river. 

And to stress the point yet again:
There is a world of difference between these confrontational assholes and legit journalists, or even upstanding citizens like Darnella Frazier (who recorded the killing of George Floyd).  Frazier stayed far enough back not to be charged with interfering with the police; too many so-called auditors do interfere with active police investigations (one taped himself being arrested when he insisted on entering an area where police were actively searching for an armed suspect).

The police have an enormous amount of leeway in investigating complaints, and even if the complaint does not rise to the level of a crime, they’re required to conduct an investigation at least to the level of finding out what the problem is and what needs to be done about it. This includes identifying who the various parties are.  I may not have committed an actual crime but if the police stop me for an incident in which someone has accused me of committing a crime I can’t tell them to go away and leave me alone even if a cursory investigation will prove I did nothing wrong. 

Common sense tells you we need this sort of authority in the hands of police because otherwise no murderer or rapist could ever be arrested. “I didn’t do anything wrong.  Go away.” 

The SovCit / auditor / extreme libertarian overlap is not based on any coherent legal or political doctrine. Rather, it’s a form of mental dysfunction where the person suffers from a delusion that their rights are the only rights that matter, that there is no authority over them, and that they may behave as they wish and others must cater to their whims. 

© Buzz Dixon

*  I’d include Qarens of all genders because they certainly behave out of a sense of narcissistic entitlement, but most Qarens are genuine amateurs, acting like anusoids for the sheer love of the game, not wannabe professionals like first amendment auditors; however, Qarens have been known to go full SovCit when insisting on representing themselves in court, typically receiving justice in a spectacularly hilarious manner.