In its survey of 1,000 likely voters, conducted in mid-September, a whopping 72% agreed with the statement "America is becoming a police state."
For its survey, Rasmussen defined that as "a tyrannical government that engages in mass surveillance, censorship, ideological indoctrination, and targeting of political opponents."
“Seventy-two percent of Americans is low,” observes Seton Motley, president of Less Government. “The remaining Americans need to pay as much attention to government as government is paying attention to them.”
If asked to name names, many Americans who are paying attention would likely say the U.S. Department of Justice, and the FBI in particular, mirror the rampant spying, the crushing of dissent, and the show trials of the former Soviet Union.
Facebook, not FBI, knows about 'Jane's Revenge'
Three years into the Biden administration, the modern-day examples are numerous. Many who are paying attention have witnessed the FBI fail to arrest numerous domestic terrorists who have attacked pro-life pregnancy centers and churches since the Dobbs abortion ruling. Those 150-plus attacks using Molotov cocktails and threatening graffiti are classified as domestic terrorism because they are meant to intimidate and frighten the victims.
Many of the attackers claim they are part of a shadowy group, Jane’s Revenge, which Facebook designated a "terrorist organization" immediately after the Dobbs ruling. The social media site blocked Jane's access because of its self-proclaimed attacks on pregnancy centers and churches.
At this point, 16 months after the Dobbs ruling, the FBI likely knows by now if that really is an organized group of violent abortion supporters or a made-up name invented by abortion supporters. No one in the group has been arrested.
In testimony last year before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Merrick Garland told Republican senators he was unaware of Jane’s Revenge and its claims. Frustrated senators informed Garland there were 81 documented attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers and 130 attacks of churches, most of them Catholic. Jane's Revenge took credit for many of those attacks, the frustrated senators pointed out.
In a fiery online post by the Catholic League, the group said only two pro-abortion people had been arrested for those attacks last summer but the Department of Justice had arrested and charged 32 non-violent pro-life protesters.
“This is purely a function of politics. There is no other rational explanation for such a glowing disparity,” Bill Donohue, the Catholic League president, fumed in the online story.
One of those pro-life activists is Mark Houck, a prominent Catholic leader who is on video pushing a cursing abortion clinic escort. Thanks to the video footage, which exonerated him, a federal jury acquitted Houck of violating the FACE Act but only after an FBI SWAT team swarmed his home to arrest him after he was indicted for a shove.
FBI 'aghast' over anti-Catholic memo
Back when Houck was on trial, and facing 10 years in prison, the public did not know at the time the Department of Justice was circulating a memo that described traditional Catholics as potential domestic terrorists. The memo was a collaboration among FBI offices in Portland, Oregon; Los Angeles, California; and Richmond, Virginia. It originated in the Richmond office, according to The New York Post.
The memo was entitled “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities.”
Once the memo leaked to the public, FBI Director Christopher Wray said he was “aghast” after learning about its allegations. In testimony in front of Congress, Attorney General Garland said he was insulted when Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ) asked him if he believes traditional Catholics are violent extremists.
“The idea that someone with my family background would discriminate against any religion is so outrageous, so absurd,” Garland replied, referring to his Jewish family’s experience during the Holocaust.
“Mr. Attorney General,” Van Drew countered, “it was your FBI that did this.”
Meanwhile, FBI whistleblowers alleged a 13 months ago they were told to exaggerate the numbers of domestic violent extremists, or DVEs, so top officials at the DOJ could use that data against their right-wing enemies.
School board memo and 'domestic terrorists'
The public has also learned about the now-infamous school board memo that seemingly begged the federal government to help keep school board members safe from angry parents who were described as “domestic terrorists" by the National School Boards Association. Months after the FBI formed a “task force” with three separate FBI divisions to investigate parents, the public learned the U.S. Department of Education was aware of the memo because it had collaborated on its content for weeks.
That collaboration was only uncovered by a Freedom of Information request from the group Parents Defending Education, much like the “Twitter Files” released by Elon Musk showed similar conversations. Those secretive discussions revealed backdoor collaboration between the White House and compliant social media companies that agreed to censor comments and punish users at the request of the Biden administration.
Meanwhile, four months before the Dobbs ruling, in March 2022, the Department of Homeland Security announced it was concerned about “false or misleading narratives” that “sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions.”
Gary Bauer, who leads Campaign for Working Families, tells AFN he pleased at the poll results.
“I must admit even I was surprised to see that a significant percentage of the American people are now saying that they're afraid that we are sinking into – or may already be in – a police state,” he says.
In a statement to AFN, Jenny Beth Martin of Tea Party Patriots Action said the poll “crystalizes” how the Biden administration is making the American public lose confidence about “our foundational principles, including freedom of speech and equal protection of the law, while putting us at legitimate risk of devolving into a left-wing dictatorship.”
Martin, a pioneer in the tea party movement, is well aware of what a “weaponized” federal government is willing to do. Years after that grassroots movement sought to organize, she learned the Obama administration had used the IRS to target tea party groups and bombard them with bureaucratic requests to slow down their organizing, outreach, and fundraising.
Much like the current DOJ claiming ignorance and feigning outrage, President Obama famously blamed the IRS scandal on “rogue agents” in an Ohio office.
“It's disheartening but understandable,” Martin told AFN, “that seventy-two percent of Americans fear that America is becoming a 'police state.'”
Citing the Rasmussen poll, Bauer tells AFN he is hopeful the American public finally understands the danger it is facing from its own government.
“It’s coming from the neo-Marxist left in this country and its obvious war on our Constitution,” he warns. “They are at war with our First Amendment, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of assembly. They're at war with our Second Amendment right to protect ourselves. They're at war using Big Tech and an unholy alliance that censors the information you can get access to."
