[RCL]

The novel that foreshadowed Donald Trump’s authoritarian appeal."—Salon

It Can’t Happen Here is the only one of Sinclair Lewis’s later novels to match the power of Main Street, Babbitt, and Arrowsmith. A cautionary tale about the fragility of democracy, it is an alarming, eerily timeless look at how fascism could take hold in America. Written during the Great Depression, when the country was largely oblivious to Hitler’s aggression, it juxtaposes sharp political satire with the chillingly realistic rise of a president who becomes a dictator to save the nation from welfare cheats, sex, crime, and a liberal press. Called “a message to thinking Americans” by the Springfield Republican when it was published in 1935, It Can’t Happen Here is a shockingly prescient novel that remains as fresh and contemporary as today’s news.

With an Introduction by Michael Meyer
and a New Afterword

[Douglas G. Brown]

Ralph,

Did Classics Illustrated Comics ever do an issue based on It Can’t Happen Here?

Perhaps The Donald read in his youth, and we are now seeing the result.

[Matt Q]

From philosopher Richard Rorty's Achieving our Country published back in 1997 ...

Many writers on socioeconomic policy have warned that the old industrialized democracies are heading into a Weimar-like period, one in which populist movements are likely to overturn constitutional governments. Edward Luttwak, for example, has suggested that fascism may be the American future. The point of his book The Endangered American Dream is that members of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers—themselves desperately afraid of being downsized—are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.

At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for—someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots. A scenario like that of Sinclair Lewis’ novel It Can’t Happen Here may then be played out. For once a strongman takes office, nobody can predict what will happen. In 1932, most of the predictions made about what would happen if Hindenburg named Hitler chancellor were wildly overoptimistic.

One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. The words “nigger” and “kike” will once again be heard in the workplace. All the sadism which the academic Left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back. All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.

I found another quote which follows on from this. I'd like to have the surrounding context for, but the gist seems to be that Rorty considers this "strongman" to be unlikely to actually upset the economic status quo:

"After my imagined strongman takes charge, he will quickly make his peace with the international superrich."

[Ann Drysdale]

Matt, I am both grateful you showed me that and desperate to unsee it.

[John Whitworth]

In the 1930s Joseph Kennedy was a fascist, was he not? Or have I got that wrong? The least fasciost country in the Western world was, and remains, Britain. All we had was e-Labourite Moseley and he was never up to much. All we have now is Nigel Farage, and if you think he is a fascist you are quite barking.

Orwell's 1984 and Anial Farm are about the rise of fascism, aren't they? Which he sees as coming from the left via Lenin and Stalin. And via Robespierre much earler, come to that. Read Thomas Carlyle if you can stand the bastard-Germanic style.

[Don Jones]

Anial Farm?

Hmm, better watch them buggers!

[John Whitworth]

Deary me, Don.

[Charlie Southerland]

It's a classic, John. Ahem.

[Jim Moonan]

A cautionary tale for sure...
But I think the gains made of women, minorities, homosexuals, etc. will not be undone. They may suffer from short-term reactionary misguided populist movements, but time is on the side of the young and a genuine respect for diversity seems to be ingrained in them. A good thing. Here in the U.S. money is king. A welfare state we are not, though it may seem like we're headed there at times. A movement like Bernie Sanders has started would be the true populist movement.

As for Donald, he's the classic Madman of capitalism. So 1950's.

[Nigel Mace]

Barking? Woof, woof, John.

Farage is, if not a fuly-fledged fascist, undoubtedly one in the making. He is a seven times rejected parliamentary candidate - in short a political nobody - who has been smarmed over as though politically important by our right-wing tabloids whose standards of English, if not of political judgement, I feel sure even you would not endorse. The 'success' of his 'Leave' campaign was built on falsehoods manufactured and retailed on an industrial scale and his respect for the real balance of opinion in the country - even in provincial England - is invisible. He is a creature of a perpetually biased and manipulative Press who have been unblushing in their sponsorship of a wave of xenophobia of whose bloody consequences we have seen only the first repellent fruits.

If this is the UK of which Mr Trump is enamoured, then the USA should get used to holding its nose. There will be worse stenches yet to come.