ARYAN NATIONS DEFLATES ‘SOVEREIGNS’ IN MONTANA

AP IMAGES/BILLINGS GAZETTE/LARRY MAYER (AERIAL AND BRAUNER); RYAN LENZ (SIGN)
police department the community
could do little to stop
that. “Researching them,” he
said, “you find that they’re big
in the [sovereign] movement.”
Kelly has some historical
reasons to be concerned.
It was just two years ago that
Craig Cobb, a foul-mouthed
neo-Nazi, attempted to take
control of another near ghost
town, Leith, N.D., to build a
white supremacist enclave.
And just two hours’ drive
from St. Marie, the Montana
Freemen, whose beliefs were
close to those of today’s
sovereigns, declared their
own independent “Justus
Township” in 1996. That
group engaged in an 81-day
standoff before finally surrendering
to the FBI.
And sovereigns in general
don’t have a good reputation.
In 2010, a sovereign fatherson
team murdered two police
officers in West Memphis,
Ark., and recent surveys have
shown that sovereigns are a
top concern of police. In 2011, the FBI
released a report calling sovereign citizens
“a domestic terrorist movement.”
Brauner and Frantz, aside from
Brauner’s run-in with police over his
refusal to get a driver’s license or insure
his vehicle, apparently have not employed
illegal tactics in their attempts to win
control over St. Marie properties. Still,
Brauner, at the very least, is clearly a true
believer in classic sovereign ideology.
Reached by telephone, Brauner
refused to speak to an Intelligence
Report writer until the writer had read
Plantation America, a book by longtime
sovereign theorist Anthony L. Hargis.
The book argues that the federal government
is working to enslave every U.S.
citizen and rob them of their rights. In
2005, it was advertised in the pages of
an infamous anti-Semitic tabloid called
American Free Press.
When Brauner finally did speak to the
Report, he referenced a racist version of
sovereign ideology promoted by the anti-
Semitic Posse Comitatus in the 1980s.
“Everybody’s an American, even the
blacks are American,” he said. “We’re
all Americans, but it’s whether you’re a
federal citizen, with benefits and privileges,
or a state citizen. … There are two
different citizenships.” The Posse used
to say only whites could be true sovereigns,
or state citizens, because black
people were granted citizenship by the
14th Amendment and so were beholden
to the federal government.
That idea of different types of citizenship
is a core belief of the sovereign
movement, although it does not
always take the racist form plugged by
the Posse. “Once you understand how
they’ve taken control of everybody,”
Brauner said in an apparent reference
to the federal government, “it just blows
me away that nobody stopped this from
happening and educated everybody to
the two citizenships.”
Terry Lee Brauner says he’s merely trying to
make money with the purchase of hundreds of
empty homes in St. Marie. His neighbors are
not so sure.
But Brauner insists that he’s genuinely
trying to spark development, and
that opponents are hurting St. Marie.
“They don’t want to see any development,”
he complained. “They have cost
the county and state of Montana over
$10 million in lost property tax revenues
because they stop every movement
of guys like me coming in here to develop
the place.” Apparently referring to Kelly,
Brauner added, “Trying to force us out
of there so he can take control, it’s all
this is about.”
Meanwhile, residents can only shake
their heads and wonder. As DeAnn
Ketchum of the St. Marie property owners
association told the Billings Gazette,
“We all find it a little bit, I don’t know —
I want to use the term unbelievable.”p
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