Is the Czech Republic an illegitimate state that operates like a corporate organization rather than a democracy? No, that's not true: Such claims are based on a conspiracy theory, linked to the Sovereign Citizen Movement, that began in the U.S. and spread to other countries, including the Czech Republic.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) published on TikTok on September 13, 2023, with a caption in Czech. As translated by Lead Stories into English, the caption read:
The Czech Republic does not exist.
The Czech-language video shows a conversation between the driver of a car and a policeman. The driver tells the policeman (translation by Lead Stories):
The Czech Republic does not exist, sir. You will stop doing this soon and will go serve in Ukraine. You can have a chat there with Zelenskyy.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of the writing of this fact check:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Mon Sep 18 08:47:15 2023 UTC)
Claims that the Czech Republic does not exist and that the police and other public officials have no real authority stem from the ideology of the so-called U.S.-based Sovereign Citizen Movement (SCM). The SCM is an anti-system, conspiratorial group of people who believe they are above government laws and authorities, by not recognizing them and declaring themselves "sovereign," according to the Czech Interior Ministry´s analysis of SCM-inspired activities in the Czech Republic. Groups that deny the existence of the Czech Republic as a legitimate state gained traction in 2022 through social platforms, disinformation websites and anti-establishment influencers, according to the ministry. The ministry also warns that the worldview of such people is very similar to that of SCM, which is considered a "terrorist and extremist" movement in the U.S..
In the first of half of 2022, Czech authorities began receiving from citizens hundreds of affidavits, called "Sworn Declaration of Life," that demanded the termination of all "contracts" the officials allegedly had with the Czech Republic, Echo24 news website reported on May 21, 2022. The affidavits claim that the Czech Republic is a corporation, and that people want to end the obligations to it that they supposedly unknowingly took on when they received a national ID card or when their parents signed their birth certificate.
This is part of the so-called paper terrorism tactics, often used by SCM followers. Paper terrorism includes a wide array of measures such as filing frivolous lawsuits or sending false documents to intimidate police, government officials or private citizens.
Among the groups inspired by the SCM, the Association of Legitimate Creditors of the Czech Republic is one of the most prominent in the Czech Republic. Its supporters believe that the 1992 split of the former Czechoslovakia was an illegal act and that, therefore, all of the Czech Republic's official documents, authorities, laws and elections are illegal and invalid. Czech Republic citizens would still be, therefore, citizens of the former Czech and Slovak Federative Republic, and current judges and police officers are nothing but impostors with no authority, according to this claim. The group also prints their own ID documents that identify them as citizens of the Czech and Slovak Federation.
The same views were expressed by a Prague mob who WHEN? stormed a court building in the Czch capital where the hearing of Czech disinformer Jana Peterkova was taking place. Peterkova received a suspended sentence for spreading fake news on COVID-19 vaccines on May 30, 2023. Czech state TV reported on the violent protests at the trial, during which protesters compared local authorities to the Nazis, as seen in the television report.
The Sovereign Citizen Movement ideology originated in the U.S. and is considered by the FBI to be an extremist, domestic terrorism movement, whose members may sometime resort to violence, when confronted by authorities. They believe that the U.S. government illegitimately rules over the American people, and that by declaring themselves "sovereign," they will not be obliged to follow the government legislation. In recent years, the ideology began to spread to other countries including Germany, or Singapore, fuelled by protest against COVID-19 pandemic rules.
