The Australian police killings by a ‘sovereign citizen’ show what happens when people believe they can rewrite reality. KPop Demon Hunters holds up a mirror to this tragic situation.
Welcome to Pop Culture PR: Of Demon Hunters and SovCits
In KPop Demon Hunters, the villains fight with claws and fire, but their true gift is the ability to twist reality. Demons whisper illusions, rewrite the rules, and convince people that the world runs on a different set of rules. That it runs according to whatever terms best suit their self-serving agenda.
That’s the same playbook used by the Sovereign Citizen movement, a fringe belief system making headlines because of the tragic Australian police killings. The killer, who identifies as a SovCit, rejected the authority of law and the rules that govern his country, and rapidly turned his ideology into deadly violence.
Many of my friends will have heared me cackling and saying, “check out this idiot who believed the internet”. Not this time. Admittedly, I usually, gleefully, love watching reality come crashing down on SovCits one bodycam video at a time. It’s a guilty pleasure of mine, but this time was horrifically different – and entirely predictable.
For Public Relations professionals, why this happened is obvious, chilling and clear. When fringe narratives go unchallenged, they escalate from confusion to issue to crisis. Like the demons in KPDH, misinformation gains power the longer it’s allowed to spread unchecked.
The hunters in the film fight back with truth, solidarity, and discipline. In comms, our weapons are facts, transparency, and consistency. Those of us in comms can’t fight every wild idea head-on, but we can use our PR-powers for good.
For those of you in government comms, keep fighting the good fight and make sure your audiences know which voices are credible, and which are illusions designed to sow chaos.
PR Pro Tip:
In crisis comms, the information vacuums and echo chambers are your enemy alike. If you don’t fight or fill them with clarity and trust, the demons, SovCits, conspiracy theories, or misinformation, will.
P.S. Apologies that many of us in PR have gallows humour, but most of you wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum that raised us.