KGB. Gestapo. Stasi. DGI. We all know the names. Every totalitarian regime has its enforcement arm, its dreaded police apparatus. These evil entities exist to strike terror into the hearts of citizens and make them comply with the regime’s dictates. Americans have been uniquely blessed not to have a national police force that could be bent in that despotic direction. In establishing our Constitution, the Founders wisely placed police powers in the hands of state and local governments. But that has changed.
The FBI, which generations of Americans once trusted and respected, has morphed into a completely politicized tool of oppression. Millions of Americans have awakened to the fact that our country is rapidly descending into madness and chaos. Simultaneously, the forces that have brought us the growing social anarchy are the same forces that are busily hemming us into their new prison state, which grows more totalitarian with each passing day. Still, many people shake their heads in disbelief, unable to grasp the full import of the harsh truth revealed in the unmistakable evidence that is staring them in the face. As the events of the past two-plus years since Joe Biden entered the White House have amply proved, America is already far along on its way to being a full-blown police state.
Police State, the new documentary from award-winning filmmaker and author Dinesh D’Souza and popular radio host Dan Bongino, has arrived at a crucial moment to bring an urgent warning that we are headed down a fatal path, that we must put on the brakes and reverse course — before it’s too late. The film is hard hitting and fast paced, packing real footage and dramatizations together with interviews of elected officials, federal whistleblowers, and police-state victims into a powerful one-hour, fifty-minute package.
Individuals interviewed in Police State include Sen. Rand Paul, Rep. Jim Jordan, FBI whistleblowers Kyle Seraphin and Steve Friend, Health and Human Services (HHS) whistleblower Tara Lee Rodas, former federal prosecutor and presidential advisor Kash Patel, and journalists Julie Kelly, Peter Schweizer, and Darren Beattie. D’Souza has also included powerful interviews with victims whose lives were turned upside down after they were falsely targeted as “domestic extremists” by the Biden DOJ/FBI. Especially gut wrenching is the interview with 71-year-old Joseph Bolanos, who was arrested in an FBI smash-and-grab raid at the Manhattan apartment of his 94-year-old mother, whom he was caring for. His crime? Bolanos had gone to Washington, D.C, for the January 6 rally with President Trump. He did not go inside the Capitol. In fact he was with friends at the JW Marriott, a 30-minute walk away, when the Capitol breach occurred; by the time they reached the Capitol grounds they didn’t like the look of things and decided to go no farther.
“Joseph Bolanos was a pillar of his community,” Miranda Devine wrote in the New York Post in June 2021. “President of his Upper West Side block association for the past 23 years, he looked out for his neighbors during the pandemic. He dropped off masks and kept extra heaters in his rent-controlled apartment for seniors. He raised morale with a weekly street dance to show his support for essential workers. A Red Cross volunteer after the 9/11 attacks, the 69-year-old security consultant once received a police commendation for heroism after saving a woman from being mugged.”
In short, Joseph Bolanos has been a model citizen. He’s no terrorist or violent extremist. Ironically, he’s a lifelong registered Democrat who liked many of Trump’s policies, but was not a “Trump fanatic.” But Joe Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and FBI Director Christopher Wray were (and still are) on a J6 witch hunt, and any “MAGA Republican” will do as a target toward their end of “proving” that America is awash in violent “insurrectionists.”
Witches must be found, so Bolanos was fated to join thousands of other law-abiding Americans who would be violently rousted out of their homes, shackled, and publicly humiliated in made-for-TV-news “perp walks.” NBC had been tipped off and had a camera crew there to film his shame and to record statements of neighborhood residents regarding their shock that Bolanos was “that kind” of dangerous person to participate in the J6 “insurrection.” After being held for hours in an FBI vehicle, he suffered a stroke and had to be taken by ambulance to a hospital. He is now stroke-disabled and walks with difficulty, using a cane. He has been branded an “enemy of the state,” his good reputation is ruined, and neighbors shun him as an untouchable.
The Bolanos segment is augmented in Police State with footage of the FBI raid taken from a camera that the Feds didn’t notice. At the beginning of the raid, the lead FBI agent can be seen putting tape over the Ring camera on Bolanos’ door, obviously thinking that would prevent recording of their deeds. However, a second camera captured dramatic footage of their raid. They ransacked the apartment, overturning everything, and leaving it in shambles. Bolanos has left it that way and the film shows it in that shambolic state, a fitting metaphor for the violent upending of the rule of law and due process that the Biden police state is visiting upon us.
Mark Houck, the pro-life father of seven whose family was terrorized in an early morning, no-warrant, SWAT-style raid, is another interviewee. The FBI assault squad arrived in a convoy of more than a dozen vehicles with a platoon of agents all armored up in battle gear like Marines storming Baghdad in search of Saddam Hussein. They pointed their weapons at Mrs. Houck and the horrified children as they dragged Mr. Houck away in shackles and trashed the Houck family home, ostensibly in search of “evidence.” Incidentally, a jury subsequently acquitted Mark Houck of all the trumped-up charges brought by the Garland-led DOJ.
We are living in unprecedented times for America. The Deep State Biden administration not only is brazenly weaponizing the Justice Department to go after Biden’s top opponent in the upcoming 2024 election, but also is going full scorched-earth against all of its “enemies,” from President Trump, Roger Stone, and Peter Navarro to moms who speak out at school-board meetings against LGBTQ indoctrination of their children and Catholics who attend the traditional Latin Mass. They are using the iron fist of government to crush all opposition and terrorize all potential opposition into quivering submission.
“Police State is a movie that I never wanted to make,” Dinesh D’Souza says on the movie’s website, “because I never wanted America to get to a point where a movie like this needed to be made. I feel like the animal that alerts the herd to approaching danger, so we can take precautionary steps before it’s too late.”
Longtime readers of The New American know that this magazine has been sounding the warning on this fundamental issue for decades. Our 1994 special issue “Toward A Police State,” produced during the Clinton regime, and our 2002 special issue “The Rising Police State,” published during the Bush II regime, are but two of the many detailed reports we have produced itemizing the ominous measures being put into place under the guise of the “war on terrorism,” the “war on drugs,” and the “war on extremism.”
D’Souza reminds us that the police state we are now facing was built with bipartisan hands. Senator Rand Paul points out that his father, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), was one of the most outspoken opponents of the misnamed USA Patriot Act, by which Republican President George W. Bush and Republicans in Congress put in place the weaponized structures that the Deep State Bidenistas are now using against us. To his credit, D’Souza admits that, following 9/11, he fell for Patriot Act bait, believing it was needed to protect us against terrorism. Back then, those of us who could clearly see the long-term dangers inherent in empowering the federal government with these vast new unconstitutional, omnipotent powers were denounced as “anti-government,” “extremist,” “far right,” “fascist” — all the usual smear descriptors. Decades later, the police state chickens have come home to roost.
But, what is a “police state?” In essence, it is lawlessness enshrined in law, with the outlaws in charge. D’Souza lists the characteristics of all police states: mass surveillance of their citizens, systematic censorship, ruthless suppression of opposition parties, mass political and ideological indoctrination, holding of political prisoners, persecution of religion, and absence of judicial due process. The United States of America is already far down that checklist. In Police State D’Souza has connected the dots, showing how we got to our present predicament.
Police State opened in limited theatrical release at hundreds of cinemas nationwide on Monday, October 23, and Wednesday, October 25, and will be followed by online streaming release on Friday, October 27. Tickets for the cinema showings or the virtual showing are available only at https://policestatefilm.net/
This is a must-see film for everyone. Don’t think that you can evade the emerging police state by running and hiding, or by adopting a “non-controversial” persona. As the poetic warning reminds us: “No one is safe when freedom fails; the best men rot in filthy jails. And those who cried ‘Appease, Appease’ are hanged by those they tried to please.”
