Sep 15, 2014 3 min read

The greatest terrorist threat facing Americans are the barbarians in ISIS, who are marauding across Syria and Iraq, spouting pre-Enlightenment doggerel about establishing a caliphate and menacing Western hostages and anyone who opposes their warped brand of religiosity.

Right?

Well, maybe not. While the threat from ISIS shouldn’t be shrugged off – after all, there were a lot of savvy people before Sept. 11, 2001, who blithely assumed that Middle East terrorism would stay safely confined to that region of the world – it turns out that the most urgent terrorist threat in this country comes not from crazed ISIS recruits who are jacked up on blood and ideology, but from people who could well be your neighbors.

Over the weekend, The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia reported on how law enforcement officials in that state are being trained to spot adherents to the “sovereign citizen” movement. Peddling an idiosyncratic brand of anarchism, they refuse to adhere to state and federal laws, even down to the license-plate level, and spurn any form of taxation.

The Gazette detailed how, when a “sovereign citizen” was pulled over by police earlier this year in West Virginia’s Morgan County for not wearing a seat belt and driving a vehicle without an inspection sticker, the man explained that “he did not need a valid registration plate and that he was a ‘noncitizen U.S. national’ and therefore did not need to abide by the laws of the United States and the State of West Virginia.”

But lest you think this gentleman is a solitary loon pursuing his own oddball obsessions, other “sovereign citizens” have argued that elected officials need to be made obedient through “fear of the people,” apparently forgetting that we have these things that happen periodically called elections, and that “common law courts” should be established, which sounds to us like some combination of “Let’s make up our own laws!” and “Let’s gather up some pitchforks and torches!”

And it turns out that, according to one study, the “sovereign citizen” movement poses the greatest terrorist threat within the United States. The latest survey by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland found sovereign citizens to be the top terrorism concern of law enforcement officials around the country, ranking higher than Islamic extremists. In fact, most of the other groups that worry law enforcement can be found on the far-right fringes, particularly patriot and militia groups, neo-Nazis and adherents to Christian Identity, which serves up a bizarre, white-supremacist interpretation of Christianity.

It’s also useful to recall that, almost 20 years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, it was widely assumed that the crime must have been perpetrated by Middle Eastern terrorists, and some in the media took up that drumbeat. Within hours, though, it became apparent that the horrific deed was pulled off not by some follower of Osama bin Laden, but by homegrown terrorists who could be found in all-American corners of upstate New York and rural Michigan.

Of course, it’s helpful to keep the terrorist threat in perspective – no matter the source, you probably have a greater chance of being killed by a can opener than a terrorist. But it’s helpful to keep in mind that the terrorist might not be, say, a demented Yemeni who wants to impose some kooky variation of Sharia law, but the boy next door who supports what amounts to lawlessness.