It Can't Happen Here

It Can’t Happen Here” by Sinclair Lewis has become very popular as of late. Chronicling the election of a crude, fast-talking populist President of the United States who leads the United States into a fascist dictatorship and the growing resistance of citizens to his rule, the book has become very popular in the wake of Donald Trump’s election as US President. It stands as one of the great American novels of the 1930s and is a brilliant dystopic satire of American society. I want to examine the novel in three aspects: as a work of literature, as an embodiment of its time, and as an exploration into the American character.

From the outset, I would say that I mostly enjoyed reading the book. The satire is biting, and I found myself laughing in many places in the beginning. It has one of the best creations in American literature: Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip, a corrupt Senator who rises to the presidency through his hatred of foreigners, his crudeness, and his promise of $5,000 to every citizen. He is a master actor and manipulator who uses the press he so violently criticizes, along with the best of modern advertising, to whip the people into a frenzy. The novel focuses on Doremus Jessup, a small-town, Liberal newspaper editor in Vermont. Over the course of the novel, Jessup realizes the role that liberals like him had in allowing the rise of Windrip and that the center of resistance would come from people like him. The author’s decision to center the majority of the action on Jessup’s small town of Fort Belluah is a double-edged sword. On one hand, you can see how Fascism could transform American society at the smallest level. On the other hand, the broader changes in the country, the movement from Point A to Point C, gets lost with this quotidian focus. I would have liked more details about the larger macro changes to American society and the establishment of a Fascist state. By the end, when Windrip is overthrow and his successor is killed in coup, it feels simply like Lewis wants to get them out of the way to get to more interesting matters.

Overall, as a work of literature, I would say that its ideas and passion are excellent but better than the overall writing and characterization. Only a handful of the characters feel like three-dimensional figures. And there are times that the writing feels too on the nose. A possibility for these features is that they were intentional, and that Lewis’ primary point was to get his broader message of liberal complacency and the ease in which Fascism could come to the United States. Another possibility comes from the time in which it was written. Published in 1935, the book was written quite quickly. The Great Depression still was raging and, for all the relief efforts put forward by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the situation had not improved greatly. There were figures like Father Coughlin, a Catholic radio preacher who pushed radical solutions and virulent anti-Semitism to his listeners, and movements like the America First Committee that would eventually take on the trappings of Nazi or Fascist ideology. But the figure that looms large over the novel is that of Huey Long, a senator from Louisiana. Known as “the Kingfish” or “the Dictator of Louisiana,” Long is the direct inspiration for Windrip, from his rough mannerisms to his disdain for the wealthy (and secret collaboration with them), and his promise of “A Chicken in Every Pot” and “Every Man a King.” He planned on challenging Roosevelt for the Presidency on his “Share the Wealth” platform. The best allusion to Long in comes from the middle of the novel, when Lewis writes, “Every man is a king when he has someone to look down upon.” Lewis was terrified of Lewis and wrote this book in response to his potential candidacy, which was ended by Long’s assassination in 1935.

Though the main antagonist Lewis attacked was no longer a threat, the novel’s larger point – that “it” most certainly “could happen here” still resonates. The novel is strongest is in the way in which Lewis shows how Fascism in the United States would come in a different guise than in other countries. It would come through the folksy smile of the snake-oil salesman who can dupe a gullible population. Windrip is an American Fascist dictator who could use the weaknesses, divisions, and proclivities of the American psyche to his advantage. One excellent example is the creation of the Minute Men, a violent militia under the personal command of the President and his followers. Modeled after the SA in Germany, their uniforms are direct copies of those from the US Calvary in the 1870s and 1880s, invoking an earlier, more “wholesome” period of American strength. Lewis shows how the seeds of Fascism and violence are already present in American society. But the more brilliant move on Lewis’ part is to show not only that the takeover would be unique to America but also that it would eventually morph into the violence of every dictatorship, with censorship, concentration camps, and a rapid buildup of the military for future global conquests. Lewis, in so many of his novels, sought to burst the bubble of American exceptionalism and this book is successful in showing the way in which American society could be morphed through violence.I

Like others, I read this novel of Fascism coming to America to see whether it had any insight to offer into Donald Trump's election. The world of the novel is sufficiently different from the world today that it doesn't offer a useful guide to 21st century politics, but it's still interesting in other ways.

The book was written in 1935, when Mussolini had invaded Ethiopia, after the election of Adolf Hitler, and after decades of Soviet rule in Russia, but before World War II. It's interesting to see how attitudes, and our perception of history, have changed: to Lewis, the worst thing imaginable is the butchery of the Great War; he has no idea of the horrors of World War II. In the book, the guards in concentration camps are brutal and sadistic, and yet not as brutal or sadistic as what actually happened in the decade after the book was written.

One big difference between 1935 and today is that in the book — and in the real Soviet Union and other countries — the American totalitarian regime helps maintain itself by confiscating and controlling printing presses, paper, and ink, to prevent the resistance from disseminating propaganda. Today, when we all have a dozen social apps on our phones, this isn't feasible.

At times, the modern reader will struggle because Lewis refers to forgotten celebrities. My advice in these cases is simply to plow through; it'll get better after a page or two.