Sinclair Lewis wrote It Can’t Happen Here in 1935 in the midst of the Great Depression and the rise of fascism in Europe. I’m not really going to review this book. It Can’t Happen Here is competently written, Lewis won a Nobel prize for literature, but here he is not blazing new narrative territory or trying to dazzle with something that’s never been done before. He’s writing a warning, he’s writing an urgent story for people to read and understand. It Can’t Happen Here is Lewis shouting ‘look, god dammit, America, are playing with fire, courting fascism and if people don’t stand up and shout ‘no’ at the top of their lungs it’s going to end badly.’
Sadly the book is, as it was in 1935, urgent.
The basic plot is the rise to power of a populist-cum-fascist regime in the US. Complete with stand-ins for Hitler, Gobels, and many other Nazi leaders (the book was banned in Germany, and Italy); uniformed para military “Minute Men” standing in for the Nazi Brown Shirts; a child brainwashing program akin to the Hitler Youth, and so on and so forth. It’s not subtle, though in the depths of the depression maybe many people in America were not really paying attention to what was happening in Europe.
It Can’t Happen Here is eerily reminiscent of current American politics and the rise of Donald Trump, and MAGA. And of the way Trump has acted as President, implementing the Christo-fascist Project 2025 agenda, in the, still early, days of his second term.
So, I’m going to let the book speak for itself.
The Oligarchy
“I tell you, my friends, the trouble with this whole country is that so many are selfish! Here’s a hundred and twenty million people, with 95 per cent of ‘em only thinking of self, instead of turning to and helping the responsible business men to bring back prosperity! All these corrupt and self-seeking labor unions! Money grubbers! Thinking only of how much wages they can extort out of their unfortunate employer, with all the responsibilities he has to bear!
Think of the poor billionaires, the Musks, the Zuckerberg, and the Bezos’. Think how much less money they would have if they were forced to pay a living wage! The American oligarchy’s embrace of Trump foreshadowed.
It’s interesting that Sinclair made the populist-cum-fascist of It Can’t Happen Here, Democrats. The Republicans have been the party of big business for longer than I’ve been alive, but the rise of a left wing, Silicon Valley rich gave some hope to balancing that for a while. No more. If power is the great corrupter, money breaths over its shoulder vying for the top spot. Apparently even in 1935 people questions that. In the afterwords to my edition quotes Lewis as saying:
“The Republican represents the old school of honesty and integrity. It takes that kind of leadership to defeat fascism.”
Which both makes me laugh historically while crying like a baby. Though Lewis is still living in a world where the Republicans were the party of Lincoln, not the modern incarnation of the Republican Party, and MAGA, with their embrace of conspiracy theories, fake news, and alternative facts, and their total capitulation to a man with the integrity of wet toilet paper.
government of the profits, by the profits, for the profits.
I should point out that there is a lot of anti-rich rhetoric in the populist rise in the book, they crib a lot of sound-bytes from the anti-wealth rhetoric of their swarm enmities the Communists. And after gaining power it becomes more about corruption than oligarchy.
$5000
Lewis protagonist includes a promise, base on the real world populist promise of Huey Long to give “American” a $5000 a year handout:
Far from opposing […] proposals of the late Hon. Huey Long to assure every family $5000 a year, […], a Commission shall immediately be appointed by the New Administration to study, reconcile, and recommend for immediate adoption the best features in these several plans for Social Security,
Eerily reminiscent of Trumps promise to give $5000 (one time) to everyone based on Musk’s DOGE slash and burn of the government. And like Windrip’s never fulfilled promise, it seems DOGE didn’t find enough money and that idea was abandoned.
Supreme Executive Power
In the lead up to the election, in It Can’t Happen Here, one of Windrip’s supporters, later to become Secretary of State, opines like something straight out of Project 2025:
The Executive has got to have a freer hand and be able to move quick in an emergency, and not be tied down by a lot of dumb shyster-lawyer congressmen taking months to shoot off their mouths in debates.
Foreshadowing Trumps everything-as-an-emergency so I can issue executive orders to do as I will method of governing.
And as with Trump today, there are many common people who see this as a necessary approach to fixing problems. This sentiment is expressed in a much darker form by one of the protagonists friends who is caught up in the allure of populism:
Why are you so afraid of the word ‘Fascism,’ Doremus? Just a word—just a word! And might not be so bad, with all the lazy bums we got panhandling relief nowadays, and living on my income tax and yours—not so worse to have a real Strong Man, like Hitler or Mussolini—like Napoleon or Bismarck in the good old days—and have ‘em really run the country and make it efficient and prosperous again.
The Press
Much has been written about how right wing media drove the radicalization of people into MAGA. The exaggerations, the lies, the blame game, the self-righteous anger and naked racism. And the politicalization of media, the echo chamber, the left-wing media vs the right wing media.
Well, Lewis imagined the same method of radicalization in an age radio and newspapers. He describes on talk radio personality thus:
he shouted more; he agonized more; he reviled more enemies by name, and rather scandalously; he told more funny stories, and ever so many more tragic stories about the repentant deathbeds of bankers, atheists, and Communists.
Sounds a lot like Info Wars.
And there is even a Fox News stand in, in the form of the newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst, with unabashed political leaning:
I sound almost like a Hearst editorial on how some college has got to kick out a Dangerous Red instructor in order to preserve our Democracy for the ideals of Jefferson and Washington!
Self-Sufficiency
While the populists of It Can’t Happen Here don’t talk about tariffs like Trump does, they are obsessed with protectionism and making everything in America:
I shall not be content till this country can produce every single thing we need, even coffee, cocoa, and rubber, and so keep all our dollars at home.
he was in favor of the United States so arming itself, so preparing to produce its own coffee, sugar, perfumes, tweeds, and nickel instead of importing them, that it could defy the World.
Coffee? Cocoa? Rubber? These don’t grow in the US. A while back there was a meme about Trumps plan for self-sufficiency, to make everything in America and someone asked how to make avocados and coffee in the US? Seeing as these are plants that don’t grow in the US climate (until Climate Change has its way with us). I guess the MAGA answer would be to take over Central America. Well, Sinclair covered this impulse too:
Expansionism
No mention of Canada or Greenland, but Lewis includes talk of invading Mexico:
this Southwestern Province was also to be permitted to claim “all portions of Mexico which the United States may from time to time find it necessary to take over, as a protection against the notorious treachery of Mexico and the Jewish plots there hatched.”
And the books fascist expansionism doesn’t stop at Mexico:
Why, what we ought to do is to grab all of Mexico, and maybe Central America, and a good big slice of China.
And later:
after eighteen months of Presidency he was angry that Mexico and Canada and South America (obviously his own property, by manifest destiny) should curtly answer his curt diplomatic notes and show no helpfulness about becoming part of his inevitable empire.
The War on Free Speech
Fascist, like all dictators can’t stand free thought, and though they can’t ban though they can ban speech.
He’ll put a damn quick stop to all this radicalism—all this free speech and libel of our most fundamental institutions——”
Just change radicalism to “woke” or “DEI”.
Purging the Universities
The fascist in It Can’t Happen Here go after universities, admittedly in a more have handed way than Trump defunding them. But Lewis correctly points to to higher education being something that fascist can’t stand because the educated tend to be more liberal:
he was in New York, finding quantities of “subversive elements” in Columbia University—
The Road to Fascism
Sinclair even comments on how it is a character of many Americans that leads to fascism. It’s through populism and appealing to the grievances of the common man, providing simplistic, sound byte answers that fascist come to power:
“it becomes clear that the installation of a fascist government will not be a revolution or coup d’état; rather, the groundwork for fascism has already been constructed in the ideological worldviews of the majority of Americans.
Telegraphing Your Fascism
As with Trump’s second term and Project 2025, the fascist in It Can’t Happen Here have a plan and they don’t hide it. The published platform of the populist, Windrip, is filled with what should have been alarming anti-democratic plans. Including:
Crushing or emasculating Unions:
determine which Labor Unions are qualified to represent the Workers; and report to the Executive, for legal action, all pretended labor organizations, whether “Company Unions,” or “Red Unions,” controlled by Communists and the so-called “Third International.”
Systemizing racism:
[black people] shall be prohibited from voting, holding public office, practicing law, medicine, or teaching in any class above the grade of grammar school, and they shall be taxed 100 per cent of all sums in excess of $10,000 per family per year which they may earn or in any other manner receive.
Making the President a king:
Congress shall, immediately upon our inauguration, initiate amendments to the Constitution providing (a), that the President shall have the authority to institute and execute all necessary measures for the conduct of the government during this critical epoch; (b), that Congress shall serve only in an advisory capacity, calling to the attention of the President and his aides and Cabinet any needed legislation, but not acting upon same until authorized by the President so to act; and (c), that the Supreme Court shall immediately have removed from its jurisdiction the power to negate, by ruling them to be unconstitutional or by any other judicial action, any or all acts of the President, his duly appointed aides, or Congress.
And so on and so on and so much more…
What did it get wrong?
Not everything in It Can’t Happen Here is prophetic, Lewis got things wrong.bringing all Most obviously the anti-semitism. The fascist in the book are, like most of the world until after the Holocaust, rabid anti-semites. I won’t quote them, but the book is filled with the standard conspiracy and stereotyping of Jewish people by supported of the fascist regime.
Under MAGA this has been flipped, and it’s Islamophobia not anti-semitism. But it’s the same othering of a people. Of course there is not just one group, as in It Can’t Happen Here, MAGA is racist against anyone not white enough for them.
A Little Fun
This is a dark post. So, let’s have a bit of fun before we end.
There are several names in It Can’t Happen Here that are pure satire. The protagonist is named Doremus Jessup, as in Dormouse, a meek little creature. But the best one is Effingham Swan. Effing ham, fucking pig. Love it.
As a side note, while we are on names, It Can’t Happen Here, is filled with names of people who would have been well known to readers in the thirties but you will need to have Wikipedia handy.
The second funny thing brings us back to reality a bit. While I was compiling this post, I saw on social media a post about Pam Bondi saying “It’s illegal to call yourself the boss if you’re not in charge of the entire country”. This comes after Trump’s attack on Bruce Springsteen for speaking his mind about Trump. It’s fake mind you —the Pam Bondi quote, not Trump attacking Bruce Springsteen— read about it on Snoops [snoops.com]). It is extra funny, in a tragic-comical way, after having read It Can’t Happen Here, because the fascist dictator, Windrip, is called “the Boss” by all his sycophantic followers.
Conclusion
The core theme in It Can’t Happen Here, is that reasonable people don’t speak up and act up in defense of democracy soon enough. As the protagonist of he novel, Doremus Jessup says to himself:
The tyranny of this dictatorship isn’t primarily the fault of Big Business, nor of the demagogues who do their dirty work. It’s the fault of Doremus Jessup! Of all the conscientious, respectable, lazy-minded Doremus Jessups who have let the demagogues wriggle in, without fierce enough protest.
So the point is “get out there and oppose the would be dictators and the fascist early and often. Don’t let them win by default, through inaction and hopping that “this too shall pass”. Complacency is the enemy. If you can’t protest or directly oppose them, then consider giving to those who risk the wrath of Trump and his MAGA fanatics. As someone said recently we are a few lines in to “First They Came” [wikipedia.org] and it’s not a long poem…
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
