The Creepy Trend That Sparked a Highway Standoff With a Black Militia

R&I NV — Days after a bizarre armed highway standoff in Massachusetts involving a group called Rise Of The Moors, prosecutors face an unusual problem: at least two of the 11 defendants in the case refuse to identify themselves.

“I am a free Moor, a national, a free, living man,” one unidentified defendant told a judge during his arraignment on Tuesday.

The testimony was faux-legal nonsense. But in some seemingly widening circles, this jargon verges on religion. Over the past year, from Massachusetts to Washington, a growing slate of court officials and bystanders have found themselves muddling through conspiratorial legalese from people who claim to be “Moors.” The feuds range from takeovers of homes, which self-proclaimed Moors incorrectly claim to own, to the tense nine-hour standoff on a highway.

Preaching an alt-history based on a fictitious treaty between the U.S. and Morocco, adherents to the Moorish Sovereign ideology claim that they and other Black Americans are governed by their own set of laws. But more reliably, after the standoffs end and the requisitioned houses are returned to their rightful owners, members of the Moorish movement have found themselves facing prison time.

RandyMarsh

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