Introduction: From Parallel Systems to Deadly Violence
Australia is facing a convergence of movements once seen as marginal. Sovereign citizen pseudolaw, conspirituality, survivalist prepping, and settler appropriations of Indigenous sovereignty have merged into a dangerous ideological ecosystem. This “Freedom” milieu rejects state authority, embeds itself in wellness and ecological language, and increasingly generates violent outcomes. Recent tragedies, including the 2022 Wieambilla massacre in Queensland and the 2025 Porepunkah police shootings in Victoria, demonstrate how fringe belief can escalate into lethal confrontation (SBS, 2023; The Guardian, 2025; AP News, 2025).
At the heart of this ecosystem sits the MySelf Reliance Freedom Summit, a festival that cloaks conspiracist and sovereign citizen content within a public-facing facade of “community” and “self-reliance.” It is here that figures such as Jake Cassar serve as brokers, connecting bushcraft, faux-environmental activism, and settler spirituality to pseudo-legal ideologies and anti-government networks.
Sovereign Citizens and Pseudolaw in Australia
The sovereign citizen (SovCit) movement emerged from U.S. anti-tax and white supremacist currents in the 1970s and entered Australia via freeman-on-the-land networks by the 1990s (Netolitzky, 2021; Taplin, 2023). Its doctrines are consistent: courts lack jurisdiction unless individuals consent, statutes are invalid unless “contracted,” and birth certificates create a “strawman” identity separable from a “living person.” Australian courts dismiss these claims as “nonsense” and “gobbledygook,” yet adherents persist, clogging dockets and harassing officials (McIntyre et al., 2024; Johnson, 2025).
Australian agencies now treat SovCit ideology as a national security risk. The Australian Federal Police (AFP) and state judiciaries warn of escalating “paper terrorism,” harassment of officials, and the potential for further violence. The ideology thrives in contexts of financial stress, custody disputes, and pandemic mandates, transforming personal grievance into a cosmic struggle against illegitimate authority.
Conspirituality: Wellness, Prepping, and Spiritualised Pseudolaw
Conspirituality, defined by Ward and Voas (2011), fuses New Age spirituality with conspiracy belief. In Australia, it manifests in yoga retreats, plant medicine ceremonies, and online wellness influencers who repackage pseudolaw as “spiritual sovereignty”. Workshops at the Freedom Summit, including “Take Back Your Sovereignty” and “Law for the People,” appear alongside yoga and sound baths, cloaking anti-law ideologies in aesthetics of empowerment.
Prepping culture adds a masculine, survivalist dimension. Stockpiling food, weapons, and skills is marketed as both resilience and initiation into hidden truths. Scholars describe this as “apocalyptic masculinity” and “apocotainment” (Mills, 2019; Foster, 2015; Luke, 2021). At the Freedom Summit, prepping is positioned not only as sensible resilience but also as spiritual and legal rebellion, linking daily skills to radical anti-state ideology.
Digital conspirituality accelerates these fusions. Influencers, memes, and livestreamed workshops normalize pseudo-legal jargon by embedding it in wellness and eco-spiritual content (Baker, 2022; Maurer, 2024). This multi-platform culture mirrors David Icke’s media ecology, reinforcing conspiracism across channels.
The Freedom Summit as Ideological Nexus
The MySelf Reliance Freedom Summit, scheduled for October 24–26, 2025 in Kenthurst, NSW, is publicly marketed as a family-friendly event on food, health, education, and community resilience. Its public program includes yoga, bushcraft, sound healing, and permaculture. However, its speaker lineup reveals deliberate ideological engineering.
Key figures include:
- Zev “Warrior at Law” Freeman, presenting sovereign citizen tactics such as Private Members’ Associations and Uniform Commercial Code arguments.
- Professor Gigi Foster, contrarian economist and co-author of The Great COVID Panic, amplifying pandemic skepticism.
- Jake Cassar, Central Coast bushcraft instructor, presenting on “Saving Our Wild Places” while embedding settler custodianship rhetoric.
- Zac Joseph, discussing “nanotech, bioweapons, and digital control,” a conspiratorial narrative common in Freedom networks.
The Summit exemplifies what analysts call a “Trojan horse” recruitment model. Attendees enter through wellness and resilience programming but encounter a curated ecosystem of pseudolaw, conspiracism, and anti-government ideology.
Jake Cassar and Settler Conspirituality
Jake Cassar occupies a pivotal position. Publicly branded as a conservationist and bushcraft instructor, he has leveraged his environmental activism through the Coast Environmental Alliance (CEA) to oppose development projects, often by invoking Aboriginal custodianship language without legitimate authority.
Cassar’s inclusion at the Freedom Summit alongside sovereign citizen ideologues situates him as an ideological broker. His bushcraft events and “sacred land” rhetoric function as accessible entry points into conspiracist spaces, a textbook example of settler conspirituality. Reports document Cassar’s alignment with campaigns that sidelined Aboriginal Land Councils, obstructed housing, and even fostered cultic community dynamics.
While some analyses caution that Cassar’s ties to SovCit networks may be associative rather than direct, his repeated presence in Freedom Summit spaces and CEA’s adoption of pseudo-legal sovereignty rhetoric demonstrate an embeddedness that cannot be dismissed.
Indigenous Identity Fraud and Epistemic Violence
A central feature of this nexus is the appropriation of Aboriginal sovereignty. Fraudulent GuriNgai claims in Northern Sydney and the Central Coast, discredited by both the local Aboriginal community, as well as Aboriginal Affairs NSW, have been instrumentalised by Freedom Movement actors to present themselves as “guardians of Country”.
This constitutes epistemicide: the erasure of genuine Indigenous authority through settler mimicry. At Freedom Summits, settler activists use Aboriginal idioms of “connection to Country” while simultaneously advancing sovereign citizen rhetoric. The result is confusion for institutions and further displacement of Aboriginal People and Culture.
From Epistemic Simulation to Violence
The pathway from wellness to violence is now well documented. Conspirituality reframes pseudolaw as spiritual awakening, prepping as initiation, and Indigenous fraud as sovereignty. These layered identities create emotional communities that reinforce grievance and alienation. As Wieambilla and Porepunkah show, when grievance intersects with paranoia and access to firearms, the consequences are deadly.
Policy and Educational Remedies
Addressing this ecosystem requires nuance. Over-securitisation risks conflating fraudulent settler sovereignty with legitimate First Nations resistance. Instead, remedies should include:
- Legal literacy: Public education to demystify pseudolaw and inoculate citizens against its allure.
- Judicial training: Court staff equipped to de-escalate SovCit confrontations.
- Cultural governance: Stronger institutional safeguards against fraudulent custodianship claims.
- Digital counter-extremism: Monitoring and disrupting recruitment pipelines within wellness and prepping spaces.
- Community disengagement support: Trauma-informed recovery pathways for individuals leaving high-demand cultic groups like Jake Cassar’s CEA.
Conclusion
The MySelf Reliance Freedom Summit epitomises Australia’s new radicalisation frontier: a curated space where wellness, prepping, pseudolaw, and settler identity fraud converge under the rhetoric of “self-reliance.” Jake Cassar stands as a symbolic figure of this fusion, translating bushcraft into a bridge for conspiracist ideology.
The stakes are high. These movements destabilise governance, endanger lives, and undermine Aboriginal sovereignty. A response grounded in education, legal clarity, and cultural truth is urgent. Australia must confront settler conspirituality not only as a fringe curiosity but as a systemic threat to democracy, sovereignty, and public safety.
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