General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Armed Militia stand off in Wakefield Ma, my home town [View all]wnylib
(21,447 posts)between BLM and the Sovereign Moor movement.
I did not know about the Sovereign Moors until now. So I read through the SPLC article about them. If SPLC info is accurate, it is insulting to BLM to be compared with them.
According to SPLC, the Sovereign Moors consist of two separate groups, a small religious group (which denounces the other group) and a bunch of non-organized people who use the sovereignty idea as an ideology for immunity from a host of illegal activities that include financial scams, tax frauds, making and selling their own licenses and citizenship papers, house squatting, filing false liens on properties, engaging in armed confrontations with police (and deliberately provoking them). Individuals operate web sites, but there is no centralized organization.
They are not so much anti government as anti US government. They consider themselves a "government" unto themselves.
Their claim to immunity from US law and opposition to the existence of the US is based on the false premise that Moors are the original inhabitants of the Americas, the true indigenous people, and all Africans are Moors.
As an American with Native American ancestry, I see the indigenous claim of the Sovereign Moors as not only inaccurate, but ludicrously offensive. It's not enough that little white kids put on face paint and run around waving tomahawks as Halloween costumes, or white, adult plastic shamans claim to teach the "secrets of the (name the tribe) for huge fees to gullible New Agers. Now other ethnic groups try to usurp Native American identity to claim immunity for criminal actions. Not the first time in US history, considering the Boston Tea Party.
The Sovereign Moors have, according to SPLC, also at times aligned themselves with criminal gangs, e.g. the Bloods and Latin Kings.
These people are not protesters on behalf of human rights. They are people using an ideology as justification for illegal and violent actions.