all too familiar

 

It Can't Happen Here

     a political novel written by American author Sinclair Lewis, and published in 1935

------------------------ [Wikipedia, excerpt] ---------- The novel was published during the heyday of fascism in Europe, which was reported on by Dorothy Thompson, Sinclair Lewis's wife.  

The novel describes the rise of Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, a demagogue who is elected President of the United States, after fomenting fear and promising drastic economic and social reforms while promoting a return to patriotism and "traditional" values.  

     After his election, Windrip takes complete control of the government and imposes totalitarian rule with the help of a ruthless paramilitary force, in the manner of European fascists such as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.  The novel's plot centers on journalist Doremus Jessup's opposition to the new regime and his subsequent struggle against it as part of a liberal rebellion. ----------------- [end - excerpt]

__________________________________

-------------------- [excerpt from the novel, It Can't Happen Here] ------------------ On the whole, with scandalous exceptions, Democracy's given the ordinary worker more dignity than he ever had.  That may be menaced now by Windrip--all the Windrips.  All right!  Maybe we'll have to fight paternal dictatorship with a little sound patricide--fight machine guns with machine guns.  Wait till Buzz takes charge of us.  A real Fascist dictatorship!"

     "Nonsense!  Nonsense!" snorted Tasbrough.  "That couldn't happen here in America, not possibly!  We're a country of freemen."

     "The answer to that," suggested Doremus Jessup, "if Mr. Falck will forgive me, is 'the hell it can't!'  Why, there's no country in the world that can get more hysterical--yes, or more obsequious!--than America.  Look how Huey Long became absolute monarch over Louisiana, and how the Right Honorable Mr. Senator Berzelius Windrip owns his State.  

Listen to Bishop Prang and Father Coughlin on the radio--divine oracles, to millions.  

Remember how casually most Americans have accepted Tammany grafting and Chicago gangs and the crookedness of so many of President Harding's appointees?  

     Could Hitler's bunch, or Windrip's, be worse?  

     Remember the Kuklux Klan?  

Remember our war hysteria, when we called sauerkraut 'Liberty cabbage' and somebody actually proposed calling German measles 'Liberty measles'?  And wartime censorship of honest papers?  

Bad as Russia!  Remember our kissing the--well, the feet of Billy Sunday, the million-dollar evangelist, and of Aimée McPherson, who swam from the Pacific Ocean clear into the Arizona desert and got away with it?  Remember Voliva and Mother Eddy?

 . . . Remember our Red scares and our Catholic scares, when all well-informed people knew that the O.G.P.U. were hiding out in Oskaloosa, and the Republicans campaigning against Al Smith told the Carolina mountaineers that if Al won the Pope would illegitimatize their children?  

Remember Tom Heflin and Tom Dixon?  

Remember when the hick legislators in certain states, in obedience to William Jennings Bryan, who learned his biology from his pious old grandma, set up shop as scientific experts and made the whole world laugh itself sick by forbidding the teaching of evolution?

. . . Remember the Kentucky night-riders?  Remember how trainloads of people have gone to enjoy lynchings?  Not happen here?  Prohibition--shooting down people just because they might be transporting liquor--no, that couldn't happen in America!  Why, where in all history has there ever been a people so ripe for a dictatorship as ours!... --------------------------- [end of excerpt]

____________________________

{It Can't Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis.  Doubleday, Doran and Co.  1935.}

-30-