Greg Palast’s New Film, Vigilantes Inc.: America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen, Sounds the Alarm: Voting Rights Under Siege—Prepare Like It’s 1968
Greg Palast’s film, Vigilantes Inc.: America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen, exposes a coordinated, racially targeted assault on the fundamental right to vote—one that reshaped the 2024 election landscape and continues to threaten American democracy. Narrated by Rosario Dawson and executive produced by Martin Sheen and George DiCaprio, the documentary reveals how vigilante voter challenges—filed by private citizens rather than election officials—were weaponized to block, delay, or discard ballots at unprecedented scale.
What began as a small operation in Georgia expanded into a nationwide infrastructure of voter challenges, involving more than 40,000 self-appointed “vote fraud hunters” in 43 states. By mid-2024, over 851,000 voters had been challenged—patterns that continue to shape voting access today, with young voters and voters of color disproportionately targeted.
At the heart of the film is the case of Maj. Gamaliel Turner, a Black career military officer whose vote was challenged and blocked because he was temporarily stationed outside Georgia. His experience underscores the film’s central warning: these challenges are not about election integrity—they are about exclusion.
Vigilantes Inc. places today’s voter suppression within a long civil-rights continuum, tracing a direct line from slavery and Jim Crow to modern laws that enable mass voter purges and private challenges. Georgia serves as the epicenter of the investigation, where legislation such as SB 202 empowers vigilantes to challenge unlimited numbers of voters, shifts the burden of proof onto citizens, curtails early voting, criminalizes aid to voters waiting in hours-long lines, and disproportionately harms Black communities.
Through meticulous research, on-the-ground reporting, and historical analysis, Palast demonstrates how contemporary voter suppression mirrors earlier systems of racial control—what the film names “Jim Crow 2.0.” The documentary also dismantles disinformation campaigns, including debunked claims popularized in films like 2000 Mules, showing how false narratives of voter fraud are used to justify mass disenfranchisement.
Produced by Academy Award winner Maria Florio, Vigilantes Inc. is a call to action. It warns that unless these vigilante tactics are confronted—legally, politically, and publicly—the right to vote for Black, Brown, Indigenous, and young Americans will be decided not at the ballot box, but by private actors operating in the shadows.
The film makes one truth unmistakable: voting rights are civil rights—and democracy cannot survive when vigilantes are allowed to decide who counts.