Outlawed

What if someone told you your debts were fake, your mortgage illegal, your taxes voluntary, and that with the right words you could free yourself from the system forever?

Across the world, people are falling for pseudolaw - a fast-growing movement built on conspiracy theories, quasilegal rituals and the promise that ordinary people can outsmart governments, banks and courts. Its followers call themselves sovereign citizens, freemen, state nationals or constitutional warriors. Critics call it a scam.

Outlawed takes readers deep inside a world of courtroom confrontations, YouTube gurus, viral traffic stops, online radicalisation and anti-government extremism. It traces the movement from its 19th-century origins to deadly shootings, attempted coups and bizarre court cases involving doppelgangers, secret trusts and accusations of treason and sorcery.

More than a book about fringe beliefs, this is an exploration of how pseudolaw thrives in times of inequality, crisis and distrust - and why people are willing to believe the system is rigged against them. Outlawed argues that defeating pseudolaw requires confronting the social, economic and legal failures that make it so seductive in the first place.

Disturbing and darkly funny, this is the story of how conspiracy became law's outlaw twin.