Miscellaneous tax resisters → individual “show me the law” tax protesters → Ghislaine Lanctôt

Ghis, formerly known as Ghislaine Lanctôt, sent me a copy of her new book, Escape in Prison. It’s actually the new English translation of a book that was first published in French a year or so ago (Ghis is a Quebecer).

It tells the story of her two-month imprisonment on charges related to her tax refusal in Canada, and of the process that led her to take her stand.

Ghis is an interesting case: a sort of hybrid of several varieties of tax resister. You don’t have to go much past the pastel-colored pegasus front and center on her web page to see a strong New Age influence on her style, but she’s also been strongly influenced by the evergreen sovereign-citizen and related conspiracy theories that are so big in the United States.

It makes for a curious mix, and one that I’m not used to seeing in the States, where New Agers and sovereign-citizen types tend to come from very different cultures.

Ghis was a doctor who’d soured on the medical establishment, settling instead on some variety of faith healing and insisting that mainstream medical treatments (like radiation or chemotherapy for cancer, or childhood vaccinations) were bogus. She wrote a book, The Medical Mafia, for which the medical mafia drummed her out of the medical establishment.

Around 1993 to 1995, Ghis decided to assert her personal sovereignty (what she calls “personocratia”) and begin shedding the accoutrements of her Canadian citizenship. She started by giving up her state health insurance card, later tossed her driver’s license and stopped paying traffic fines, gave up her claim to a family trust, and eventually let her passport expire. She made a list of various state privileges that she was turning her back on: social security, professional licensing, insurance, legally protected property, certifications, intellectual property rights, the courts, access to banks, and so forth.

She also turned her back on the obligations of citizenship, including taxpaying. She stopped paying taxes in 1995.

Some of this appears to be the result of the same sort of ornery individualist anarchism exhibited by a Henry David Thoreau or an Ammon Hennacy, though in this case heavily decorated with spiritual ornamentation about levels of consciousness and our divine identity and The Mother and such.

But Ghis is also motivated by a belief in a dime store novel conspiracy in which a cartel of bankers, in esoteric and bloodthirsty secret societies loyal to the Knights Templar under the Queen of England, who in turn is under the Pope, have enslaved the mass of people by crafting a shadow world of legal entities that they control and that they attach, shadow-like, to each citizen at birth. The government of Canada, like most other such governments, is just a sort of shell company, wholly controlled by this banker cartel.

At birth, in this mythology, a human being is given a corporate moniker, notable for being in all capital letters, to which a certain amount of debt is automatically attached. The rest of that person’s life, they will be paying taxes in order to pay down the debt of this corporation that was created in their name — the proceeds of which all end up, of course, in the hands of the bankers.

The secret to getting out of this system of involuntary servitude is to sever the connection between the human being and the legal corporation that bears a similar name. To this end, Ghis announced that she would no longer consider herself to be answerable for the debts, obligations, or what-have-you of this corporate entity called GHISLAINE LANCTÔT.

To Ghis’s surprise, this approach didn’t make much headway in the Canadian legal system. What Ghis considers a legal fiction distinct from her person, the legal system just thinks of as a signifier for that person, much the same way that the rest of the world uses names. “Judicial authorities are not used to true sovereign beings,” Ghis complains, “and took my words as a proof of insanity.”

The courts had eventually noticed her refusal to pay taxes (though not until 2006), and sent GHISLAINE LANCTÔT a notice to appear in court and explain herself. Ghis, naturally assuming this to be a case of mistaken identity, ignored the notice. In absentia, she was sentenced to a $1,000 fine for each year of failure to file and ordered to file for those years within 30 days. She ignored this as well.

She was then ordered to appear and explain her noncompliance with the order. On ignoring this, she was eventually arrested and hauled into court. Refusing to sign any papers bearing the name of her capitalized doppelganger, she was imprisoned to await trial, but, almost two months later was released when the Judge realized that even if convicted, she wouldn’t be sentenced to more than the time she’d already served.

The first half of her new book mostly concerns her jail time, the other women she met behind bars, and her successes and struggles in using nonviolent communication strategies in that environment. This section I think would have interest to any woman anticipating doing time who wants to know what to expect, or to anybody who wonders how one might mesh nonviolent principles with interpersonal interactions within the coercive and pathological prison system. The title of Ghis’s book comes from her statement to fellow prisoners that “freedom is inside” — a double-meaning meant to suggest that true freedom is found within the individual and also that it is available to prisoners even while they remain behind bars.

The second half of the book includes most of her perspective on the legal battle, and several appendices that include her declarations of sovereignty, some press releases from the time of her case, and some letters she sent from behind bars.

I can’t say I found Ghis to be terribly sympathetic. Her vague, gauzy spirituality reminds me too much of dozens of other varieties of puerile New Age balderdash, her medical wishful thinking is positively dangerous, and her conspiracy theories strike me as only half a degree less cuckoo than those of David Icke. When your tales of evil at the root of power fail to seem even remotely convincing to someone as cynical about government as I am, maybe it’s time for a reality check.

But at times, Ghis succeeds in painting her vision of a person reclaiming personal responsibility and personal sovereignty and discarding her legal persona like an expired chrysalis. I admire her for taking inventory of both the privileges and burdens of citizenship and for courageously deciding to cast both sets away in favor of something better. Imagine if we all had that determination and willingness to follow through.

Yesterday I made note of people and groups that had deliberately exposed themselves to extraordinary taxes, or had flouted the conditions of tax-exemption, in order to be subject to a tax that they could then resist.

That reminded me of the draft resisters during the Vietnam War who deliberately refused to invoke exemptions from the draft for which they were qualified (such as the draft exemption granted to ministers) so that they could resist in solidarity with draft resisters who did not qualify for any such exemptions.

Some of the examples I mentioned are a variety of tactic that has occasionally accompanied tax resistance campaigns: renouncing of government privileges and titles. Here are some additional examples from this category:

When Gandhi was commander-in-chief of the Indian independence movement, his campaign of non-cooperation included tax resistance and other forms of civil disobedience, but he not only instructed his nonviolent army to resist taxes, wear untaxed domestic cloth, break the British salt monopoly by harvesting salt, and so forth — he also told them to resign their government posts, renounce any government-awarded titles or authority, take their children out of government schools, not ask for protection from the government’s law or courts, and stop voting or running for office. He explained why:

This is the way of non-co-operation, or peaceful severing of relations. That is, that we should neither seek help from the Government nor offer it any help. How can we part company with it? First we should renounce titles. For us now to hold titles is a sin. Next we should give up the courts. The dispensing of justice should lie in our own hands. The courts strengthen the roots of the Government. Lawyers should give up their practice. If it is possible for them they should, after giving up legal practice, serve the country. Even if they cannot serve the country the giving up of legal practice would be by itself sufficient service. They should take up other trades. Parents should withdraw their children from schools and universities. Boys who have reached the age of 16 should be treated as friends and advised to withdraw. They should be told not to continue their studies in these institutions. They should be told to go to school at institutions where they can remain free. We should not go for education to a place where the Government’s flag flies.
The Congress has also said that we should not go into the Councils. The election to the Councils will take place on the 30^th. It is the day when we shall be tested. First we should persuade the candidates to withdraw. If they do not give in, it will be the duty of voters to remain at home and not to cast their votes. We should go on pleading with the candidates till the night of the 29^th. We should fall at their feet and beseech them not to stand for the Councils. If they do not come round but persist in going into the Councils it will be your duty to refuse all help and do no work for them. Again, soldiering is a sin. You should not get recruited as soldiers, but it is your duty to become soldiers of freedom.
…With great humility I ask you: What have you done? Have you withdrawn your boys from schools and colleges? If your boy is grown up have you made him aware of his duty? Have you given him your blessing in this matter? If you have not done this, why are you gathered here? It is the duty of boys to leave schools and to convince their elders. Have you decided not to vote? Have you taken the swadeshi vow? These questions concern everyone. Government recruitment should stop. We should take our litigation to our elders and seek justice. This will put an end to the “prestige” of the Government. The Government will at the same time realize that its hundred thousand whites can no longer rule over three hundred million people. So long the Government has carried on its rule over us by making us quarrel among ourselves, by offering us enticements and by giving and taking help.…

The British occupation government responded by asking its Indian employees, who were normally forbidden to engage with political questions, to explicitly oppose Gandhi’s movement. This instead triggered even more resignations from those who were not active in the independence movement but who felt they could not explicitly oppose it.
During the Bardoli satyagraha, for example, many members of the Bombay Legislative Council resigned in protest, some of the first resigners co-signing a letter in which they wrote that “when a Government forgetful of its own obligations commits grave breaches of law, and ruthlessly attempts to trample under foot such noble and law-abiding people, it is but fair and proper for us, as a protest against the high-handed policy of Government in that taluka [district], to resign our seats on the Bombay Legislative Council, and so we request your Excellency to accept our resignations of the same.” Many local officials also resigned their posts, which meant a great deal of sacrifice for them and their families. Gandhi said of them: “More purifying than this suffering imposed by godless and insolent authority is the suffering which the people are imposing upon themselves.” By resigning, these officials, who were often part of the indigenous elite who had been bought off by the Raj with titles and state-guaranteed privilege, were risking all of that. Resistance spokesman Sailendra Ghose noted that “the government in some provinces has refused to allow village officers to resign, dismissing those who refuse to carry out their duties and thus depriving their heirs of their hereditary rights as village chiefs.”
Quaker Meetings would frequently not only require that members adhere to their peace testimony by refusing to participate in military service or pay war taxes, but also that those members who had been in the military prior to becoming Quakers renounce their claim to military pensions. Here is how the New England Yearly Meeting put it in their “rules of discipline” of 1808:

It is our sense and judgment, that it will not be consistent with our testimony against war, for any of our members to receive pensions from government, for military services performed before they became members, though reduced to necessitous circumstances; but that this necessity should be relieved by monthly and quarterly meetings, and thereby preserve our religious testimony against the anti-christian practice of war, and manifest their sympathy for their brethren, by contributing to their comfortable support.
Ghislaine “Ghis” Lanctôt embarked on a project of absolute individual independence from the governments of the world, something she termed “personocratia,” in the early 1990s. She refused to cooperate with the government in any way, but also took a careful inventory of the benefits and privileges of the citizenship granted her by the government, and was careful to refuse those too. She started by giving up her state health insurance card, later tossed her driver’s license and stopped paying traffic fines, gave up her claim to a family trust, and eventually let her passport expire. She made a list of various state privileges that she was turning her back on: social security, professional licensing, insurance, legally protected property, certifications, intellectual property rights, the courts, access to banks, and so forth.
In Beit Sahour, during the first intifada, one of the ways the Israeli military occupation authorities would retaliate against tax resisters was to seize their identity cards, which would make it difficult for them to travel, get medical care, be employed, avoid arbitrary arrest, or “to pursue anything resembling a normal life under occupation.” But the residents fought back in a creative and daring fashion: Hundreds of them voluntarily turned in their identity cards.
During the French wine-growers tax strike of 1907, the municipal governments of the region resigned en masse.

The Mayor of Narbonne will open the strike. He and the entire Municipal Council will resign to-morrow, after having previously dismissed all municipal employes. Officers of other cities will follow suit in the course of a few days.

Tax strike leader Marcelin Albert claimed that “12,000 cities, towns, boroughs, and villages in the south of France” were left without municipal governments as a result of the resignation.

The quitting of municipal officers is usually attended with much ceremony. Generally a crape streamer is hoisted at the flagstaff, and the Mayor burns his official sash in public.

War tax resisters Beatrice and Cornelis Boeke felt that in order for their tax resistance to be consistent, they must also refuse to use state-run monopolies like the postal service and railways, relinquish their passports, stop contributing to retirement accounts, and renounce any claim to the protection of the police, courts, and military. When the government started providing funding even for private schools, they withdrew and homeschooled their children. They even stopped handling government-issued currency. They took this to the point of abandoning their home rather than calling the police when vagrants moved in.
In Tasmania, in 1874, 26 magistrates resigned their offices rather than try to enforce a widely-resisted tax.

Such an expressive demonstration on the part of gentlemen holding the commission of the peace incited the people to stronger resistance; for it appeared to them that a law which could not be conscientiously administered by the retiring justices was unworthy of obedience.

Remember Ghis, formerly known as Ghislaine Lanctôt, that idiosyncratic, “personocratic” tax resister from Canada? (I reviewed her book Escape in Prison back in 2010).

The book told the story of her two-month imprisonment on charges related to her tax refusal in Canada, and of the process that led her to take her stand. At the time of its publication, her case had still not been resolved (she was released from prison when the Judge decided that the charges she was facing would not warrant a longer imprisonment than she’d already served for refusal to cooperate with the court).

I’ve recently received an update from Ghis that includes the story of what happened next.

Ghis believes in a weird sort of mythology in which we people, with our names, are assigned fictional doppelgangers at birth by a world conspiracy of governments. These doppelgangers share our names, but in all capital letters, and have debts attached to them which our lower-case selves spend the rest of our days working off through taxpaying.

So, when Ghis returned to court, where the trial of GHISLAINE LANCTÔT was taking place, she reiterated her belief that the trial was not about her, but about her doppelganger. The judge was having none of it, so Ghis turned around and walked out. She (or SHE, anyway) was sentenced in absentia to a thousand-dollar fine, which she has no intention of paying. This was back in 2009.

The upshot is that after not paying taxes for 15 years, Ghis has served a couple of months in prison, but hasn’t paid a cent. She’s pretty satisfied with that result.