As Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) founder and Advisory Board President Richard Mack kicks off a week of speaking engagements in Minnesota, IREHR takes a closer look at some of the on-the-ground organizations and individuals boosting the pro-paramilitary group’s efforts in the state.
This article briefly examines the group We Are The Taxpayer (WAT), the contact organization for Constitutional Sheriff and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) leader Richard Mack’s October 2 appearance in Le Center.
As we see, CSPOA’s contacts are again animated by far-right conspiracism and middle American nationalism.
Who is We Are The Taxpayer?
We Are The Taxpayer (WAT) is a state-registered Limited Liability Company that lists Marie Meyer as its registered agent.[1] In a letter to Rock County Sheriff Evan Verbrugge, Meyer announced that We Are The Taxpayer “is bringing guest speaker Sheriff Richard Mack from Arizona,” continuing, in far-right vernacular, that CSPOA and the “County Sheriff Project” served to “reaffirm the constitutional power of the Sheriff to refuse to enforce unconstitutional federal laws.”[2]
On its website, WAT promotes Mack’s speaking tour, gives out contact information for the anti-democratic group, and claims that Mack will “teach Sheriffs, the police, all public officials, and citizens as well, the authority and responsibility that exists under our U.S. Constitution to which all public officials take an oath to protect and defend.”[3]
IREHR’s September 28 letter to the Attorney General of Minnesota gives lie to this fallacious claim – providing ample evidence that “there is nothing Constitutional about the CSPOA.”
The Le Center-based We Are The Taxpayer casts itself as concerned with “the governance of our local Southern Minnesota Schools, Cities, Townships and Counties,” alleging a “top down” government shaped by NGOs that “enforces political agendas with little or no regard for the well-being of the taxpayer, their property rights or financial assessments assigned against them.”[4]
As quickly becomes apparent, the group mixes a defense of corporate interests, such as the oil industry, with a variant of the middle American nationalist ideology that animates diverse parts of the far right, ranging from white nationalists and neo-Nazis to national conservatives and so-called “constitutionalist” groups like CSPOA – an ideology depicting middle Americans squeezed between international elites “above” them and people of color and the poor “below” them.
Alongside this, WAT lashes out at environmental protection policies and boosts property rights claims that have long accompanied the machinations of pro-militia groups such as CSPOA.
On the pro-corporate front, We Are The Taxpayer declares that “Under the guise of needing to protect the earth against climate change,” restrictions and “changes in our sources of energy” are “costing the American citizens an astronomical amount of money” and placing “an undue target on fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas and has led to restrictions of these types of energy sources.” The group says alternative energy sources, such as solar and wind, “are heavily subsidized by grants” which are the equivalent of ‘the apple’ in the Garden of Eden,” the far right group claims.[5]
In addition, alongside defending some of the largest transnational companies on earth, We Are The Taxpayer demonstrates defining elements of middle American nationalism. The group casts “Non-Government Organizations,” or NGOs, as “non-profit entities that are heavily involved in environmental, humanitarian and social service programs, working to empower the disadvantaged and minority groups.” Continuing that they are “sanctioned by the United Nations” and “often serve as lobbyists for the World Economic Forum and work closely with political parties and trade unions,” We Are The Taxpayer concludes that
“NGOs help plan and write the agendas intended for use to ‘transform’ America from a free capitalistic society where honesty and hard work are the key to happiness and wealth, into a welfare state ruled with tyranny and stripped of freedom and rights, especially property rights.”
For WAT, the “threat” to America emanates from global elites alongside trade unions and groups “working to empower disadvantaged and minority groups.”
Coming back to its anti-tax moniker, the group concludes that,
“The ultimate goal of our ‘new government’ is to tax our private properties away from us and turn America into a socialist ruled country with all of the population dependent on government…This is exactly what we have present here in America. It is here by design. It has been planned. Unless we wake up from the ‘woke-ism’ that has been forced upon us and implanted in our brains through propaganda and brain-washing, we are destined for a ‘total transformation of America,’ as Obama foretold.”[6]
The WAT website’s “Glossary” also drives home the middle American nationalist combination of perceived dual attacks from international elites “above” and people of color and poor people and “illegals” “below,” including the following:
“AFFA Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing: It’s purpose is to enforce social justice standards in communities by requiring agencies that apply for HUD Grants to have a balanced mix of ethnicity and income/poverty levels evenly distributed within the community…
Agenda 21: A comprehensive blueprint for the reorganization of human society that was planned for the world by the United Nations…
Clean Water Act: Its proposed purpose was to regulate discharges into the water and to serve as a pollution control program, but has turned into a ‘sustainable development’ enforcement policy with the result of usurping private property and restricting common farm and ranching practices…
Equity: Redistribution of wealth. Creating equal outcomes for all regardless of whether a person works for what they have.
Global Governance: Governing all of the world’s people under the rule of one worldwide administration…
National Governors Association: A 501(c)(3) private organization. They advocate for Smart Growth programs, more benefits for illegals, block workfare requirements for welfare recipients…
PCSD: President’s Council on Sustainable Development. Created by Bill Clinton in 1993 to impose Agenda 21…
Social Justice: The redistribution of wealth. The demand that everyone should have identical resources, privileges, housing, education, etc., regardless of the effort they put into working for them.
Sustainable Development: An agenda to control the economy and the population by focusing every issue of life’s concern around climate change, redistribution of wealth, social, racial and environmental concerns, whether real or fictitious.”[7]
In line with the above, the group promotes several similar “Resources.”[8] These include Tom DeWeese’s American Policy Center, a group that promotes the Agenda 21 conspiracy theory, the common far-right refrain that a voluntary United Nations program amounts to an “international globalist grab for power.”[9] It also includes Cause of America, the so-called “election integrity” organization backed by election denier Mike Lindell.[10]
We Are The Taxpayers also promotes as a “resource” the conspiracy-obsessed and election-denial website Stop World Control, which alleges, among other things, that:
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“[P]andemics are not a natural occurrence, but meticulously orchestrated operations, unleashed on humanity with the purpose of reducing the world population, and increasing control over the survivors.”
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“Scientific data reveals how vaccines are greatly reducing the world population. They also start the process of transhumanism, by injecting substances that modify the human DNA and spread nanotechnology throughout the human body.”
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“CRY FOR FREEDOMreveals the officially promoted agenda of globalist organizations to create a new species of ‘humanoids’ or ‘cyborgs’: humans that will be genetically engineered and technologically enhanced, to greatly increase their physical and mental abilities.”[11]
Driving home the underlying nature of its conspiracism, Stop World Control promotes the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This crassly antisemitic forgery fueled pogroms against Jews in Czarist Russia and became standard fare for the German Nazis of WWII. On a page of its website dedicated to “The Cabal,” Stop World Control includes a video by Janet Ossebaard and Cytha Koeter that declares,
“The Protocols of Zion, dismissed as a hoax, but we can assure you after months of in-depth research, that they are not. They were slightly altered, yes, but they are not a hoax. In 24 protocols, the Elders of Zion described their vision of the world, its population, and their ultimate goal – absolute world dominance and a one-world government.”[12]
In particular, the video goes on to re-hash the Khazar conspiracy theory, claiming that leaders of the medieval kingdom of Khazaria, who converted to Judaism, migrated westward to form the nucleus of European Jewry (Ashkenazic). The video continues that the Rothschild family – a favorite canard of antisemites – were descended from Khazars who used the Protocols to gin up antisemitism. The video continues, “Ashkenazi, Nazi. Do you still believe that’s a coincidence?”[13]
In The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Movement and the Radical Right, Daniel Levitas describes how the “Khazar” theory became popular among Christian Identity adherents because it advanced the view that European Jews were imposters.[14] Christian Identity holds that whites are Biblical Israel, Jews satanic imposters, and people of color an inferior race.
CSPOA CEO Sam Bushman recently ran ads on his Liberty Roundtable show from the Christian Identity group Confederate Church of Christ.
In May, We Are The Taxpayer hosted Trevor Loudon, the far-right conspiracy theorist and anti-Muslim activist who pushes the idea that such things as a higher minimum wage, opposition to oil pipelines, and amnesty for undocumented immigration are part of a “far-left and Islamist” agenda. At the event, Loudon spewed his idea that “‘Minnesota is in the grip of Marxist revolution’ orchestrated by ‘subversives’ secretly working for China, Russia and other foreign adversaries,” in the words of the Le Sueur County News.[15]
NOTES
[1] We Are The Taxpayer. Minnesota Business Name. Office of Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon. https://mblsportal.sos.state.mn.us/Business/SearchDetails?filingGuid=ccfb9dea-39e8-ed11-9071-00155d01c440. Accessed October 2, 2023.
[2] Meyer, Marie. We Are The Taxpayer. Letter to Sheriff Evan Verbrugge. September 25, 2023.
[3] We Are The Taxpayer. Events. https://wearethetaxpayer.com/events/. Accessed September 29, 2023.
[4] We Are The Taxpayer. https://wearethetaxpayer.com/. Accessed September 29, 2023;
[5] We Are The Taxpayer. Issues. We Are The Taxpayer. Accessed September 29, 2023. https://wearethetaxpayer.com/issues/
[6] We Are The Taxpayer. Issues. We Are The Taxpayer. Accessed September 29, 2023. https://wearethetaxpayer.com/issues/
[7] We Are The Taxpayer. Glossary. https://wearethetaxpayer.com/glossary/. Accessed October 2, 2023.Other examples include: APA American Planning Association: A non government organization that engages in physical, economic and social planning. They create legislation and planning practices which threaten private property rights. Bloc Grants: Money compiled by taxing the citizens, then rolled into a lump sum to be offered back to the communities it was taken from with stipulations attached to ensure compliance of the demands of the dictators…CCE: The Center for Civic Education. A non government organization whose mission is to transform the idea of teaching in a sovereign state, to teaching Democracy Globally, Internationally, and Comparatively…Center for Sustainable Communities (Green Step Cities): Advances an ideology merging aspects of socialism with that of green politics, ecology and alter-globalization or anti-globalization…
[8] We Are The Taxpayer. Resources. https://wearethetaxpayer.com/resources/. Accessed October 2, 2023.
[9] American Policy Center. About Us. https://americanpolicy.org/about-us/. Accessed October 2, 2023.
[10] Cause of America. About Us. https://causeofamerica.org/about-us. Accessed October 2, 2023; Slcisco, Aila. Mike Lindell Funding New Nationwide Grassroots ‘Election Integrity’ Group, Leader Says. Newsweek. November 26, 2021. https://www.newsweek.com/mike-lindell-funding-new-nationwide-grassroots-election-integrity-group-leader-says-1653642.
[11] Stop World Control. Crimes Against Humanity. https://stopworldcontrol.com/crimes/. Accessed October 2, 2023; Stop World Control. CRY FOR FREEDOM – Why cyborgs won’t save the world. https://stopworldcontrol.com/cry-freedom/. Accessed October 2, 2023.
[12] Stop World Control. FALL OF THE CABAL – Discover the criminal network that terrorizes humanity. https://stopworldcontrol.com/cabal/. Accessed October 2, 2023; Ossebard, Janet and Cyntha Koeter. The Sequel to the Fall of the Cabal – Part 4. https://rumble.com/vmu0pc-the-sequel-to-the-fall-of-the-cabal-part-4.html.
[13] Ossebard, Janet and Cyntha Koeter. The Sequel to the Fall of the Cabal – Part 4. https://rumble.com/vmu0pc-the-sequel-to-the-fall-of-the-cabal-part-4.html.
[14] Levitas, Daniel. 2002. The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Movement and the Radical Right. New York: Thomas Dunne Books.
[15] Hughes, Carson. Speaker at Le Sueur County event levies claims of Marxist conspiracy. Le Sueur County News. July 24, 2023. https://www.southernminn.com/le_sueur_county_news/news/speaker-at-le-sueur-county-event-levies-claims-of-marxist-conspiracy/article_b1e92e24-f447-11ed-9dbe-b32e11a38451.html
