#2614: Cliven Bundy

Cliven ‘Y’all Qaida’ Bundy is a rancher, sovereign citizen activist and promoter of views on race issues that were popular in his childhood – he is, in many ways, the unapologetically Christian nationalist and white supremacist version of his spawn Ammon Bundy.

 

Cliven Bundy’s fame rests on his decade-long legal dispute with the federal government over unpaid grazing fees of cattle on government-owned land which ultimately culminated in an armed standoff in 2014, whereupon he became a hero to frighteningly large groups on the lunatic fringe. Bundy himself attributed the outcome to divine intervention – indeed, Bundy repeatedly cast himself as a divinely inspired prophet, with remarkably accurate prophecies, given that he tended to report them after the facts.

 

In general, Bundy has adopted the main points of the sovereign citizen ideology, claiming that the US government does not have a right to control the land on which he grazes his cows, arguing that: “[...] at the moment of Statehood land inside the new State is no longer U.S. Territory, and no longer does U.S. Congress or any of the federal agencies have authority to dispose of the land or make any rules or regulations respecting to it.” Bundy himself is a “citizen of Nevada and not a citizen of a territory of the United States.” (Of course, he doesn’t want to obey Nevada laws either.) His and his family’s protests are largely based on not quite grasping the concept of public property.

 

His 2016 court case gives a telling summary of his views (his legal counsel is profiled here), including a plethora of conspiracy theories, incoherent freeman-of-the-land ranting (the kind that provides color to local talks shows) and describing the judge as a “latino activist”. He promptly sued Judge Navarro, Senator Harry Reid & son (Reid & son were ostensibly conspiring to steal his land and sell it to “communist Chinese”), and then-President Barack Obama – the point being that by serving the judge with the lawsuit, she would have to recuse herself from the proceedings because she was now involved in a legal conflict with Bundy. The courts were not impressed.

 

The militia loons participating in his standoff represented a cornucopia of (what has later become) Qanon bullshit, conspiracy theorists and racism (Black people were better off under slavery) – you’ll find nonsense about the UN, Satan, microchips, hippies, birtherism (Obama is a Muslim, too) and whatnot.

 

Diagnosis: No, we can’t be bothered too much with this one either. But note that the link from Bundy’s views, followers and actions to the Qanon movement is pretty direct.