Dinesh D’Souza’s frightening ‘Police State’ needs to be seen

Promoting his latest release, Dinesh D’Souza said, “‘Police State’ is a movie that I never wanted to make, because I never wanted America to get to a point where a movie like this needed to be made.”

“Our police state is in camouflage,” the writer-director elaborated during a recent appearance on "The Glenn Beck Program." “It’s not open about its motives. It marches behind the banner of saving democracy.”

Released in cinemas early this week and online this weekend, “Police State” is a film of high production values worth seeing on the big screen. More importantly, it is a film that should be seen by more than just the right-wing choir. Most of us already know the lyrics to that songbook, but maybe this film will motivate us to sing more loudly.

Police State Trailer | New Dinesh D'Souza Moviewww.youtube.com

“Police State” isn’t a conspiracy theory-laden warning of what is to come but rather a clarion call to wake up and recognize what’s already happening in America.

Moving from dramatic re-enactments of FBI operations and SWAT raids to documentary interviews of members of Congress, authors, journalists, and federal agency whistleblowers, the film opens with actor Nick Searcy (best known for portraying Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Art Mullen on FX’s “Justified”)as a supervisory FBI field agent instructing his agents about an upcoming raid. The accuracy of this and other scenes led by Searcy comes from language scripted by real-life FBI whistleblowers Kyle Seraphin and Stephen Friend.

Narrated by D’Souza, “Police State” depicts the reality of government censorship, the targeting of political opponents, and unconstitutional spying by federal agencies on everyday Americans.

Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent turned political commentator who served as one of the film’s executive producers, says we’re already in the “slow death version” of a police state. We “just get used to the evaporating civil liberties.” And so Americans accept, consciously or not, “Oh, this is normal, being banned in the new public sphere.”

There are also the all-too-obvious comparisons between our government ignoring the crimes and subversive activities of those who advance progressive values and narratives but exercising tyranny on those deemed political enemies. These are shown through examples of our justice system overlooking and dismissing criminal cases against those who burned down neighborhoods in the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020 but aggressively pursuing and punishing those who engaged in the most placid act of accidental tourism through the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.

From the spark of federal law enforcement agencies’ overreactions at Ruby Ridge and Waco 30 years ago, the film then asserts that our nation’s “flip” from a constitutional republic to a police state found its accelerant with the passage of the Patriot Act in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. “After 9/11, all of the barriers that were constructed between counterintelligence and criminal investigation were removed,” attorney John O’Connor says in the film.

From big tech’s COVID-narrative censorship — in cooperation with federal policing agencies — to the Department of Justice’s targeting of those who attend Latin mass and protest at school board meetings, few examples of our government’s overreach into average citizens' lives escape notice in “Police State.”

Then there is the border crisis and the horrifying specter of what’s happened to 85,000 missing children in only two years. An immigration system designed for “speed over safety” has facilitated the processing of thousands of innocents into the world of child labor and sex trafficking.

“Police State” also presents interviews with North Korean defector Yeonmi Park, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Troy Nehls (R-Texas), Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), investigative journalists Julie Kelly and Darren Beattie, and many others.

D’Souza himself says this is the “scariest” movie he’s ever made, but it is a film that needs to be seen by as many Americans as possible. Tickets and further information about how to share this with friends, family, and neighbors can be found at PoliceStateFilm.net.