On researching “pseudolaw” in sovereignist movements

Abstract

The so-called “conspiratorial sovereignism” milieu in Germany is made up of groups that contest the authority of the state through ritualized interactions inspired by conspiratorial legal claims. Drawing on one year of ethnographic fieldwork and online observation, I analyze how these groups enact alternative sovereignties and legalities. Analytically separating the different ways in which states can be understood as fantasies through the dimensions of the imagined, imaginary, and un/acceptable, I suggest that anthropological frameworks that view the state as a social fantasy provide important insights into these performances, but risk normalizing and romanticizing the movement’s deeply hierarchical and exclusionary ideologies. The article calls for critical reflection on implicit normative biases in the scholarship, emphasizing the need to understand sovereignism’s political dangers beyond hegemonic/marginal divides.