A Sovereign Citizen walks into a bar

Mark Honeychurch - 23 January 2024

Thames-Coromandel mayor Len Salt

The Thames-Coromandel’s mayor, Len Salt, was in the media recently for a response he sent to one of his ratepayers that was, to put it politely, less than cordial. When asked, the mayor confirmed to the media that he stood by his words, which were:

_Morena Ant, or Matthew Cure, or whatever name you prefer. Please keep a record of my reply in case you need to refer to it for legal reasons or future court cases.

My official response, as Mayor of Thames-Coromandel District Council, to your request for personal details of staff names and addresses, is this.

Go fuck yourself.

Kind regards

Len_

Of course, once you know the background to this story, Len’s response starts to seem perfectly reasonable. It turns out that the letter was leaked just a few days ago by one of Len’s rivals, Steve Hart. Although the Herald describes Steve as “a person who thinks outside the box”, the reality behind this euphemism is a little more extreme. Steve believes that the Three Waters project was “part of a bigger agenda of theft of resources by the global elite”, and appears to be something of a COVID conspiracy weirdo. Check out his official candidate Facebook Page for more.

The email from Len was in response to a request from “Anthony-John” for staff members’ names and addresses. In the request, “Anthony” said that the council is a “fictitious entity” (well, he actually wrote “fictious”, but at least he tried), said the staff were “all liable to prosecution” and accused them of having “intent to coerce to deceive, to enslave myself and others”. So, pretty standard Sovereign Citizen nonsense, then.

As Radio NZ pointed out, local councils - including Thames-Coromandel - have been putting up with a barrage of idiocy, including threats of violence (some of which have been carried out), from people who consider themselves somehow free from the strictures of law that the rest of us are beholden to.

This story made me think of the Twitter thread about Nazis in a bar, and how sometimes you just can’t risk giving any leeway to people who don’t play by the same rules as everyone else (I can’t link to the original Tweets, as they’ve since been deleted):

I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you.

So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, “no. get out.”

And the dude next to me says, “hey i’m not doing anything, i’m a paying customer.”

and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, “out. now.” and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed

Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, “you didn’t see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them.”

And i was like, ohok and he continues. “you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it’s always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don’t want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.

And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it’s too late because they’re entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.”

And i was like, “oh damn.”

and he said “yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people.”

And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven’t forgotten that at all.