Did a novel predict a fascist Homeland Security?

July 19, 2020 3:52 PM

I have a memory of being really unsettled in 2001 when Bush announced the creation of the Department of Homeland Security because I'd just read a synopsis of an older book (or maybe movie?) set in a dystopian America where people were being disappeared by agents of a Department of Homeland Security, or something very close in name.

I feel like this book (or maybe movie? I could've been reading the synopsis from the case of a videotape, I think) had a 1970s spy/political thriller vibe to it, but it could have been a decade in either direction.

Does this ring a bell for anyone?

posted by Jon_Evil to Law & Government (3 answers total)

Not 1970s, but could it have been It Can't Happen Here?
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 4:36 PM on July 19, 2020

Could it be the book U.S.S.A? It's a 1980s novel about a dystopian version of the US in which an overnight coup turns the country into a police state.
posted by Roger Pittman at 4:49 PM on July 19, 2020

The Exit Room was a short film set in 2021 war-torn America, where a journalist faces execution by anonymous soldiers.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 3:31 AM on July 20, 2020