Just over a week ago I’d never heard of the ‘Freeman’ movement. I now wish I could say the same, as it is disappointing to discover that there are people in Ireland who believe in such rubbish.
‘Freemen’ are essentially a cult-like group that claims citizens
do not have to obey civil law. It sprang from the US Sovereign Citizens movement
which believes in similar nonsense.
It is interesting to note how ‘freemen’ in different
countries adapt different pseudo-legal arguments to prove the same point (that they don't have to comply with civil law), for example much emphasis is
placed on the Magna Carta in the UK while in Ireland the collective tribe-based
Brehon Law is put forward as being superior in some way to our current legal
system.
More detailed explanations of the ludicrous claims of the
Freeman movement can be read here and here.
Another interesting aspect of the movement is the widespread
belief in conspiracy theories. One of the most common ones is the claim that a
tiny secretive cabal of politicians and bankers are seeking to enslave humanity
in an oppressive global ‘New World Order’. This is apparently being done by a whole host
of real and imagined organisations like the Illuminati, the Freemasons, the
Bilderberg group, the Rothschild family etc.
Having had some knowledge of the Sovereign Citizens I was
aware that there is an anti-Semitic variant of the NWO theory which claims
that Jewish people are controlling this alleged attempt at world domination.
So I decided to search the websites of the leading Freeman group in Ireland,
Tír na Saor, and its internet radio station, to see if any of their users subscribed to this particular theory.
Here is what I found:
*The notorious Nazi propaganda film, ‘The Eternal Jew’, made
by Joseph Goebbels in 1940 prior to the commencement of the Holocaust.
*Claims that the US Federal Reserve (Central Bank) is a ‘private counterfeiting organization run by Jewish bankers’.
*A post on the site commemorating anti-Jewish postage stamps issued in 1941 by the pro-Nazi puppet government in Serbia depicting “a strong and
victorious Serbia crushing an evil Masonic-Communist-Jewish plot for world
domination." The post also contains an article by US Neo-Nazi William Pierce on the NATO-Serbian conflict in 1998 which he describes as an attempt
“to use White Americans to kill White Europeans in order to advance the Jews' schemes.”
*Comments claiming that 'Jewish People' killed the Russian Royal family in 1918 “because they warned the world of the enslavement of the world from the Jews.”
*Praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin for opposing ‘oligarchs’ Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Boris Berezovsky who are ‘both Jews just by chance.’
*An article uploaded on the Tír na Saor internet radio website written by recently deceased ultra-conservative Catholic writer Deirdre Manifold claiming that Jewish bankers orchestrated the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia,
and
*A video of an anti-Semitic speech by US Nation of Islam
leader Louis Farrakhan.
By the way, I have also found two anti-Semitic
comments on the website forum of the new political party Direct Democracy Ireland, which
has extensive links to the Freeman movement.
Comments on the party's online forum state that ‘Zionist Jewish bankers’ control central banks around the world while another claims
that ‘rothschild zionists are out to murder the lot of us and future generations.’
I have also found evidence that an activist with Direct Democracy Ireland has posted anti-Semitic material on the internet.
All in all it’s a pretty shocking state of affairs that DDI
and Tír na Saor would allow such offensive, hate-filled bigotry on their websites.
Neither organisation has responded to emails I sent them with questions about this disgusting anti-Semitic material.