The Sovereign Citizen Movement is making a mockery of our American values.

Everything about the murder of Dallas police officer Darron Burks should send shivers down your spine. That he was a good man who was targeted simply because he was a cop. That he was shot for no reason. That his blood was spilled, of all places, in the parking lot of a nonprofit that serves as a haven for families and young people in Oak Cliff.

What should scare you most is that this unspeakable violence could happen again because of the growing anti-government fever that is gripping our fellow Americans.

Dallas shooter Corey Cobb-Bey left a trail that suggests he was following a branch of the growing sovereign citizen movement. Adherents of this extremist ideology refuse to obey American laws because they believe that American government institutions—courts, police, regulators—are illegitimate. After being pulled over for a traffic stop in 2017, Cobb-Bey told a police officer that he had no insurance or driver’s license and refused to provide his date of birth. He filed court papers claiming to be a citizen of the Mauritanian nation, according to our colleagues on the newsroom.

The newspaper also found that Cobb-Bey referred to himself in social media posts as a “Moorish National American,” an apparent reference to a religious sect known as the Moorish Science Temple of America. According to its teachings, black Americans are descendants of ancient Muslim Moors. While some sovereign citizens identify with the faith, the national Moorish Science Temple of America rejects the sovereign citizen movement on its website.

Many of us associate extreme and sometimes violent rejection of government authority with far-right causes. The sovereign citizen movement traces its roots to the white supremacists of the 1970s. That movement is alive and well, but the ideology has found new traction in the 21st century through online forums and social media platforms. Anti-government fervor has transcended other types of extremism and has expanded under a variety of religious and identity banners.

The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that at least several thousand people are involved in the so-called Mauritanian sovereign citizen movement, based on social media activity.

In case you haven’t noticed, Moorish sovereign citizens are all over the news. Dallas is just the latest headline.

In April, a man described as a sovereign citizen of Moors was killed in a confrontation with law enforcement after he shot and killed two sheriff’s deputies in Florida. The man refused to leave the park after it closed.

And in June, two men who are members of the group Rise of the Moors were convicted of participating in an eight-hour standoff with police on a Massachusetts turnpike three years ago. Police found weapons the men did not have permits to possess.

Sovereign citizens also practice what extremism researchers call “paper terrorism.” They create false documents and file flimsy lawsuits to take ownership of other people’s homes and challenge evictions and foreclosures for unpaid bills.

We worry about the growing brands of extremism that have found fertile ground in our divided and distrustful politics to take root. The idea that the law will not apply to us simply because we say so shows a disconnect from reality that most of us cannot fathom.

We should remember this: A Dallas man named Darron Burks retired in his early 40s to become a police officer and serve more of his fellow citizens. He did so to maintain the social order, codified in the laws of this land, that lifts people up and protects them from harm.

This is the nation we should believe in.

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