Freemen on the land in Australia: Shelley Stocken explains their bizarre beliefs

POLICE go to the house of a Melbourne man to talk to him about thousands of dollars’ worth of unpaid road tolls. They try to establish his identity.

“That’s not a natural name!” he says. “It’s a corporate trade name!”

The police ask him about the money owed, to which he replies, “There’s no contract with me. I am a human being. Live, flesh, blood man.”

It sounds nuts, but this man is part of a small but noisy movement that started in the US and Canada at the turn of the century, and has been simmering in Australia for about a decade.

Called Freemen on the land, it’s been popping up on billboards, in courtrooms and on YouTube videos wherever there are English-speaking vigilantes with an axe to grind and balls the size of caravans.

Among the Freemen’s complex and baffling principles is the idea that there are two versions of every person — an “official” one and a non-official, made-of-meat version who can drive on the wrong side of the road in an unregistered car, leaning naked out the window shouting at pedestrians. Only one version is answerable to the law.

It sounds like a fantasy, but for a group of impassioned dissidents across the globe, it’s reality. And they walk among us.

Freemen-on-the-Land, or FOTL, champion the idea that we are all slaves to our government, shackled against our will to unjust laws and regulations. But with special knowledge and careful language, we can circumvent those laws and regulations and live freely as an alternative version of ourselves under our own “natural” law.

How does the FOTL thing work? Strap yourself in. It’s going to get a little crazy.

FREEMAN BELIEF 1: THE GOVERNMENT IS A CORPORATION

Because the government does business with money, it is a corporation. Therefore, you only have to do what your government corporation says if you have an existing contract with them. But be careful — they will take any opportunity to trick you into signing your rights away.

FREEMAN BELIEF 2: YOUR BIRTH CERTIFICATE IS A CONTRACT WITH THE GOVERNMENT

You never signed a contract with the government, right? Wrong! Your birth certificate is your first contract with the government. As soon as it has been signed, you have a legal name that enslaves you to the corporation.

FREEMAN BELIEF 3: YOU CAN BREAK YOUR CONTRACT

Don’t despair — you can get around the government’s “corporate” laws. Simply write a letter called a “Notice of Understanding and Claim of Right” declaring your freedom and explaining your own version of the law. Once you’ve sent this letter to the Queen, the Prime Minister and the police (and published it on your website, of course), you’re officially free.

FREEMAN BELIEF 4: THERE ARE TWO VERSIONS OF YOU

Congratulations! There are now two versions of you. The first is your enslaved legal person, who exists only in writing (and who the cops are probably looking for). The second is the actual flesh-and-blood person who eats and sleeps and reads lifestyle articles — let’s call that the “meatperson” — at liberty to roam wild and free and possibly naked through toll collection points.

To distinguish between a legal person and a meatperson, Freemen use a specific naming system. A legal person’s name — the one on official documents — is written in CAPITALS as the traditional “JOHN SMITH”. A meatperson’s name, the flesh-and-blood one, is expressed as “John of the family Smith” or “John: Smith” for short.

FREEMAN BELIEF 5: SOME LAWS ARE OK

Freemen might be misguided fringe-dwellers with legally-interesting delusions, but they’re not completely devoid of standards. Most follow “common” law, which basically states that you can do anything you want as long as you don’t cause harm or loss to anyone and try to be honest. So I guess driving naked on the wrong side of the road is totally fine as long as you don’t hit anything.

DOES IT WORK?

Absolutely not. The Freemen on the Land movement is based on a combination of pseudo-legal concepts and good old-fashioned wrongness. Many Freemen have tried their game with traffic police, regulatory bodies and courts, without success. In reality, the most a Freeman can hope for is a judge throwing their fallacy-filled case in the bin out of frustration.

Andrew Tiedt, a partner at Armstrong Legal, works in Criminal Law. He has seen many Freemen on the Land try their arguments before the court and, without exception, each has failed miserably.

“People love the idea that there is a secret code or magic argument that can get them out of a criminal charge,” says Andrew. “The problem is that the charges they are facing are often serious, and they may well have a bona fide defence. But because they refuse to engage in the process, any legitimate argument they may have never sees the light of day.

“People have served jail sentences they may never have had to serve because they have been deceived by this pseudo-legal gibberish.”

Shelley Stocken is a freelance writer with a special interest in scepticism and rage-typing opinions on a coffee-stained keyboard. She tweets as @shellity.

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