17 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Fast Company
The British conspiracy guru building a sovereign micronation in Appalachia
Matthew Williams has slept very little since he learned about Sacha Stone's plan to build a 'sovereign' micronation on 60 acres of land near his home in rural Tennessee. What began as a quick Google search in April quickly became hours of research and then days, then weeks. 'It was between working on this and then stressing about working on this,' he says. Within a month, 'between me and my wife, we watched over 30 hours of his videos.'
With his long hair and often bare chest, intense patter, and hundreds of thousands of online followers, the 59-year-old British 'peace activist' looks like the archetype of a globetrotting, spiritual guru. In late June, Stone arrived in Surgoinsville, a sleepy hamlet 90 minutes northeast of Knoxville, to lead dozens of supporters in a 'consecration' ceremony at the site, dedicating what he calls the NewEarth Tanasi Micronation 'as a template for the emergent Rainbow Warrior Tribe.'
But beyond the peace and rainbows, Williams had seen something much darker in Stone's 'sovereign' movement: a mix of extreme far-right ideas, an alliance of influential fringe figures like Michael Flynn and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and a revenge-minded rhetorical war against a parade of bogeymen, from governments to 'globalists.'
The battles have also become a brisk business, with speaking tours, retreats, health products and memberships, which Stone promotes to his hundreds of thousands of followers. For a 'donation' of $10,000, Stone has said, members of the NewEarth micronation will be able to exist 'tax-free' in a futuristic-looking 'residential enclave,' with access to an on-site healing center specializing in 'advanced microbiology' and 'cures.'
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