COVID-19 is accelerating the rise of conspiracy and sovereign citizen movements in Australia

Graham Lyons does not think the COVID-19 pandemic is real, and he is willing to go to jail to prove it.

The experienced agricultural scientist, whose career includes a PhD in the field of micronutrients, is facing potential prosecution for failing to take COVID-19 tests.

He has also refused to wear a mask and will not sign-in to businesses he visits.

“The government has no right to track the citizenry like that,” he told the ABC.

“I am putting everything I’ve got into this because I don’t want my little granddaughter growing up in a techno-fascist dystopia.”

Dr Lyons’s work relates to agriculture in public health — he is not a medical specialist — but he said he had nevertheless concluded that vaccination was ineffective and, like many others opposed to COVID-19 controls, believed the pandemic was a front for organisations and individuals advancing a “globalist agenda to institute a world government”.

“The whole thing is fraudulent,” he said.

“You’ve got a global cabal behind this.

“I call them ‘global parasites’ who think they own the world and everyone else should pay obeisance to them.”

Dr Lyons believes the same group has previously made major attempts to control and change society, but that COVID-19 is their biggest challenge to his way of life, one that must be resisted.

“This is the big one. We’ve got to win this, otherwise we’re f****d,” he said.

Dr Lyons has a job, pays tax, and said he was opposed to violence.

He said he was not part of any organised group.

But other people with similar beliefs have been prepared to go much further and have been organising via the internet.

Last month, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) executed six search warrants in three states to disrupt a group that was meeting to discuss overthrowing the government and arresting politicians and bureaucrats.

The AFP said there was no evidence they had the capacity to carry out violent acts, but it told the ABC such groups had the potential to cause significant problems.

“Police are concerned when these beliefs manifest into criminal or violent acts,” the AFP said.

“We are always concerned about groups that seek to undertake activities that would endanger the safety of the community. We work with our intelligence partners to identify criminality or threats to public safety, and act accordingly.”

The group identified by the AFP was part of a loose movement of people claiming the government is corrupt and illegitimate, using a range of legal-sounding arguments, like “common law” or calling themselves “sovereign citizens”, to justify their views.

‘Pushing people into our open arms’

Some people have formed organised groups to discuss alternative governments.

Mike Holt is the convenor and “elected sheriff” of one “common law” group on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland.

“This is a spiritual movement more than anything else,” he told the ABC.

“Common law is the law of man, of God, of the universe, so it’s a natural law.”

The Vietnam veteran, a retired businessman, said the movement was non-violent and described the people raided by the AFP as “power-hungry nutcases”.

“They had nothing to do with us,” he said.

“We are not trying to remove the government, we are making them inconsequential.

“We are not doing anything illegal, we are certainly not going out there to start an insurrection.”

Mr Holt said he had become interested in “common law” theories after Julia Gillard replaced Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister in 2010.

He said the basis for the movement was the meeting of like-minded people to form assemblies that sign charters and elect sheriffs, pass by-laws and convene common law courts.

“We have the same powers as any other government but we’re a local government, so people like this idea because it empowers them to take back control of their lives,” he said.

Mr Holt said COVID-19 restrictions have increased interest in the group’s activities.

“There’s been a lot of people getting in touch asking how they can start an assembly, what they can do to empower themselves and how do we stop the attacks on their rights and freedoms by the government,” he said.

Alternative legal movements have existed for a long time in the United States, but researchers have recently noticed a sharp growth in activity in Australia.

“The people who were arrested recently are a signal of big things coming up — that is, undermining legitimate liberal democracy and its authority, a rejection of what we count as government,” said Mark Balnaves, an adjunct research fellow at Notre Dame University.

Dr Balnaves investigates the role of social media in spreading anti-government ideology, like the “sovereign citizen” movement in which people claim to be exempt from laws they disagree with.

“Two, three years ago in Australia there was no conversation on this,” he said.

“[On] sovereign citizens you might have 10-20 posts, now you’ll have something like 40,000 interactions in Australia online about the topic.

“It’s entered the lexicon, it’s part of the language and that’s a problem.

“People are taking the core element of rejection of authority and using it in their lives.”

The online ecosystem for anti-COVID, “sovereign citizen” and alternative legal groups regularly includes anti-vaccination groups, “wellness” enthusiasts and religious objectors, along with white nationalists, people opposed to progressive social change, and believers in the US-based QAnon conspiracy.

“A couple of years ago the NSW Police Force picked it up and they estimated it was a few hundred people as sovereign citizens,” Dr Balnaves said.

“Now you’ve got a range of people deploying the same tactics, whether they’re from anti-vaccination [groups] – and COVID makes a big difference here – and more recently you’ve got sovereign citizen-allied people clogging up courts, from lower courts to appeals courts.”

While the movement has been associated with violence in the United States, in Australia the only conflict seen so far has been protesters clashing with police at anti-lockdown rallies.

But Dr Balnaves said the potential existed for such groups to become dangerous.

“I think that is the ultimate worry,” he said.

“Violence is always the hard edge of it, but combine that with simple rejection of authority and you’ve got a toxic mix.

“If it was simply a narrow band of people who are violent, that’s normally under counter-terrorism [measures and] you can control it … but what if it’s your mum, or your dad or things like that?

“It becomes more difficult.”

Legal experts and courts have continuously rejected the many arguments put forward by alternative legal movements, saying they are “legal fictions”.

Dramatic increase in activity and interest

Robert Sudy, a former “sovereign citizen” who has become a researcher into the movement, said it greatly affected some followers’ personal lives.

“What I’ve seen over the years [is that] different adherents of the ideology — they end up having a lot of problems in the home with family and relationships because it encourages that sort of narcissistic mindset, so it’s pretty damaging for mental health,” he said.

Mr Sudy has tracked the various methods and groups propagating these ideologies for close to a decade and said he has noticed a dramatic increase in activity and interest.

“It’s grown from what it used to be when these concepts were first introduced … [when] it was basically tax evasion strategies and how to get out of different fines, whereas today it’s grown into more of a social phenomena and it’s growing as more people are exposed to it online,” he said.

“Definitely the last couple of years people are looking for solutions and this is offered as a false hope.”

Mr Sudy said the push for sovereign citizenship “provably has no basis in law”.

But he said many people ignored the comprehensive rejection of their legal-sounding arguments by courts — which have ruled that people do not have the right to opt out or disregard the law — because those individuals had often developed a religious-like devotion to the ideology.

“I’ve watched people become radicalised just from very simple needs or legitimate matters they had in their own lives, whether it be paying rates on their property, paying a speeding fine,” he said.

“Anyone who had a difference of opinion or tried to doubt the ideology in any way was shunned – they were called ‘sheeple’ [or] government agents.

“The paranoia was perpetuated.”

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