The Creepy Trend That Sparked a Highway Standoff With a Black Militia

Any of you following the Moors? I am showing you top part of the article.
The testimony was faux-legal nonsense. But in some seemingly widening circles, this jargon verges on religion. Over the past year, from Massachusetts to Washington, a growing slate of court officials and bystanders have found themselves muddling through conspiratorial legalese from people who claim to be “Moors.” The feuds range from takeovers of homes, which self-proclaimed Moors incorrectly claim to own, to the tense nine-hour standoff on a highway.

Preaching an alt-history based on a fictitious treaty between the U.S. and Morocco, adherents to the Moorish Sovereign Ideology claim that they and other Black Americans are governed by their own set of laws. But more reliably, after the standoffs end and the requisitioned houses are returned to their rightful owners, members of the Moorish movement have found themselves facing prison time.

Once an obscure offshoot of the sovereign-citizen movement, a typically conservative crowd that claims most U.S. laws are fake, the Moorish Sovereign scene appears to be having a moment.

“I’ve noticed it more,” Christine Sarteschi, author of a book on the sovereign-citizen movement, told The Daily Beast of Moorish sovereign citizens. “That might suggest it is [growing], but it’s hard to say with certainty.”

Rachel Goldwasser, a research analyst with the Southern Poverty Law Center, likewise said the movement’s size was difficult to gauge. “It’s hard to say whether there are more Moors, but I can say a number are active at this time,” she told The Daily Beast.

Few organizations keep tabs on the Moorish movement, making their ranks hard to quantify. But in recent months, members of the movement have repeatedly attracted local police attention, and in increasingly outlandish fashion.

In December, an affluent suburban Washington neighborhood reported a rash of would-be home takeovers. The culprits didn’t try breaking into houses, locals told police. Instead, the men—some of whom wore red fez caps—served homeowners with obscure legal documents purporting to be from the “Moorish National Republic Federal Government.” The papers (full of “rambling somewhat nonsensical statements,” according to a police report) claimed the Moorish National Republic actually owned the houses.

The Moorish National Republic, which did not return The Daily Beast’s request for comment, is one of several new Moorish organizations that claims to be the legitimate U.S. government for Moors. According to the organization, and others like it, Black Americans—adherents prefer the term Moors—are the rightful rulers of the U.S., due to a (nonexistent) treaty with Morocco. Per this alternative legal worldview, Moors are within their rights to seize land and vast sums of money.

The group’s current leader recently filed a “lien” against a Pennsylvania school district for one-quadrillion dollars in gold.

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