It Can Happen Here

The Dickensian fizz of George Babbitt's neighbor T. Cholmondeley Frink in the eponymous novel, who becomes "Chum Frink," poet for pay to the masses, works well. Clunky name or not, Jessup is a well-intentioned, well-educated and well-traveled member of the American middle class, New England hence: His character is well enough established, though it took Lewis a while: Babbitt, say or an Elmer Gantry. Not only does Lewis go on too long in this exposition, his mouthpiece Jessup goes on too long when he talks politics.

What Jessup has to say makes perfect sense; his fellow New Englanders usually don't have the time to listen. Yes, but only for a while. Resistance may not be futile, but comparisons are inevitable. View all 10 comments. Jul 26, Nandakishore Varma marked it as deferred. Yesterday I was having a coffee with a friend.

I told him how the recent lynchings in India, the violence against authors and books, and the ghettoisation of Muslims closely parallel 's Nazi Germany. He dismissed my concerns with an airy statement: Nov 04, Nancy Oakes rated it really liked it.

It Can't Happen Here

Given what's going on in American politics right now, this book wins my prize for most frightening read of Sorry if you don't like my use of the "p" word, but it is what it is. To put the novel in its historical perspective, I turn to an article in the New Yorker written by Alexander Nazaryan October 19th of this year that says "Sinclair Lewis published the novel as Adolf Hitler was making Germany great again, violating the Treaty of Versailles by establishing the Wehrmacht.

Benito Mussoli Given what's going on in American politics right now, this book wins my prize for most frightening read of Benito Mussolini invaded Ethopia. Things at home weren't much better: The Times, that November, reported on a meeting of the New Jersey Bankers Association, whose president offered a blunt assessment of the national mood: The people wanted 'safety and conservatism again.

Once in office, he begins to usher in " a fascistic regime of suppression, terror, and totalitarianism -- all draped up in red, white, and blue bunting. Jessup completely gets what's really going on and feels a deep need to channel his outrage into some sort of action. As things continue to get worse, as institutions designed to safeguard American democracy are shut down one by one, well, you get the drift. The novel reveals how it can happen here, but much more interesting to me was watching one character in particular, Shad Ledue, Jessup's very unhappy former handyman, "the kind of vindictive peasant who sets fire to barns.

Considering the huge number of page tabs I stuck in this book, I obviously I found plenty to think about here, and I could easily talk about this novel for hours. I read this book through a day and an entire night -- no way was I going to put this one down before I finished. The knots in my stomach got tighter and tighter -- quite frankly, I had a full-blown, serious case of paralyzing fear reading this book, and when the election came and went, well, it all came back to me again, making things even worse.

Even now, nearly a month after I finished it, it still has that same power. It continues to stay active in the back of my head, making it a book worthy of every second of reading time I put into it. Not many novels can do that, quite frankly. Someone said to me some time before the election that if things went a certain way, reading this book would be "moot," to which I say pish-posh, you're wrong. Lewis wrote this novel as satire, and according to the introduction to this novel, It Can't Happen Here "gave shape" to a number of "anxieties" people faced during the s, so it's very much a novel reflective of its time.

And as I replied to said person, good literature is never moot. If a book written some eighty years ago can weigh so heavily on the mind because of what's happening in America right now, well, that's one hell of a story, and by no means moot. Dec 28, Susan Stuber rated it it was amazing Shelves: I give this five stars, not because it is particularly well-written, but because it is such an important book that really everyone who is concerned about present current world affairs should read.

Apparently, before sitting down to write the book, which he did in less than five months in , Lewis did a lot of intense research on how facism rises and works once it is established. Parts of the book may seem tedious to today's reader, because his fictional political characters are almost all sur I give this five stars, not because it is particularly well-written, but because it is such an important book that really everyone who is concerned about present current world affairs should read.

Parts of the book may seem tedious to today's reader, because his fictional political characters are almost all surrogates of then real politicians, the majority of whom we are no longer familiar with. The main characters are almost caricatures, but in fact when you look at our last election, the candidates do seem like caricatures, too.

There is almost a surreal quality about, in particular, the president elect. What sends ice water through your veins with this book are the parallels you see if you simply substitute the Republican candidate's name with "Trump" and the Democatic's with "Clinton. And yet, if you look at the historical outcome of facistic regimes, then you have to admit, he actually foresaw a lot that was to come.

Lewis does a good job of explaining what facism is and how it can come from the left or the right. He also does a good job of illustrating the ideology of the then American Communist Party and why large swaths of the population became zealous supporters of the authoritarian cum facist leader. Today this book would probably be edited so that it would shrink by about a third; I did do quite a bit of speed-reading through certain parts that were repetitive or getting bogged down, but in general I would say it is a good read with a good story line.

It was set to be made into a movie, but was stopped at the last minute because the producers feared a backlash from countries or politicians who might be irritated by it. Describes our times and predicts a terrifying possibility Feb 22, Ted rated it really liked it Shelves: My guess at Amazon sale positions say a couple years ago: Anyway, we all understand that the book has achieved a new topicality. Currently June 2 '17 on Amazon: Ender's Game sci-fi Random review: Mar 09, Holly Wood rated it really liked it. I had a professor tell me once that this is the distilled version of a middle-class academic's fears of what would happen during an American holocaust.

More so than anything else, they fear the "ignorance" of the working class, bitter from being stepped on for so long they would quickly embrace anyone promising them any sort of redistribution. The lesson is never to fear the poverty that is the source of social problems, but to fear the symptoms. And you know what? I agree with him. No matter how I had a professor tell me once that this is the distilled version of a middle-class academic's fears of what would happen during an American holocaust.

No matter how you cut it, this book is pretty classist.

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However, moving away from that, the book itself is an interesting read. I enjoyed it for the exercise in creativity. You do read the book and wonder what it would be like if it hadn't been FDR and instead, in his place, someone who embraced fascism as a means to cure the Great Depression.

I found myself more than once struck by how applicable some of the commentary was to modern times. Words written over 70 years ago might have easily been heard yesterday on Fox News. In many ways, those passages were actually pretty frightening, to be honest. I really recommend this book. It's thought-provoking and timely.

Mar 29, David Sarkies rated it really liked it Recommends it for: Political Theorists and Historians. The Rise of an American Dictatorship 7 April I discovered this book after reading a collection of interviews by Howard Zinn where he described it as a warning about how the United States could become a fascist dictatorship. Zinn's argument was that the US is already heading down that road, though it has not quite reached that point at the time of the interviews.

When comparing the United States as outlined in this book and what we perceive today I would also suggest that we have not yet arri The Rise of an American Dictatorship 7 April I discovered this book after reading a collection of interviews by Howard Zinn where he described it as a warning about how the United States could become a fascist dictatorship. When comparing the United States as outlined in this book and what we perceive today I would also suggest that we have not yet arrived at that point and would also suggest that we may still have some time to go as well.

In this review I will begin by discussing this book itself and then consider some comparisons with Ancient Rome. This book was written in , a crucial point in 20th century history. The Great Depression was ravishing the western world and millions were unemployed relying on food stamps and whatever job that they could get. One of the things that is mentioned over again is how stockbrokers and accountants have been relegated to jobs that involved digging ditches. In Germany the situation had become so dire that the population had become radicalised and Reichstag consisted of ultra-right Nazis and ultra-left communists.

Hitler had allegedly created a panic by burning down the Reichstag and then used that panic to secure his position of power. Things quickly changed as elections were abolished and the storm troopers were put onto the streets to keep order. Germany had ceased to be a democracy and within a few months had become a dictatorship. By the time It Can't Happen Here had been published, book burnings were sweeping Germany, Hitler had purged all of his enemies and perceived enemies, and the Jews and other undesirables were being rounded up and imprisoned. So, we jump over the Atlantic to the United States.

This would not be the last time this happened as numerous books were being published in the leadup to the election in an effort to prevent Bush from being re-elected. Obviously that did not happen in , but we should continue to hold that period in our mind as this will become important. The reason I say this is because this book was reprinted in , ironically during a time when political polarisation was once again beginning to sweep the United States.

However there is a difference between this book and many of the others. It reminded me of Upton Sinclair 's The Jungle in that it is a political commentary using a prose story as a vehicle. Come and we do not see much literature like this but rather collections of non-fiction books that simply provide a list of case studies as to how Bush is a bad president who cares only for the interests of his corporate backers. Lewis shows us how it is possible for the United States to become a dictatorship and how easily this could happen. Obviously the soil has to be right for such a system to grow, and that soil was more than evident in We were in the midst of one of the greatest economic downturns that the modern world had experienced, capitalism had effectively collapsed, and millions were out of work.

In Germany they wanted a saviour and that saviour was Adolf Hitler. In the United States they wanted a saviour, and that saviour was Roosevelt, however Lewis seems to flag the proposition that Roosevelt, in his four years in office, had done little to relieve the suffering of the population. People are caught up in the hype, Roosevelt is sidelined, and Windthrip is elected president. Windthrip is modelled on Hitler, and the methods that he uses to seize control are more than possible. In one of the chapters Lewis outlines Windthrip's manifesto, and while reading it one questions how Windthrip could conceivably breach the constitution by putting the manifesto in place as one continues to read one can see how this is done.

See a Problem?

Like Germany, Windthrip establishes his own secret police, the Minute-Men. This name harkens back to the rebellion, where a fledging republican army was being created using the name Minute-Men. They were called as such because they could be armed and ready to fight in a minute. By creating the Minute-Men, Windthrip is conjuring up the revolution, and the changes and freedom that it brings. Now the United States constitution allows militias, though one should remember that it refers only to lawfully constituted militias.

The MMs begin their life as a group of people who like to parade in uniform, however upon his election, Windthrip uses his executive powers to make the MMs a lawful militia. He then uses the militia to shut down congress and the supreme court. All who are considered hostile to his regime are arrested and shot, and those that are ambivalent are put in protective custody.

By the time everybody wakes up they discover that the MMs have been elevated above the police and the army and that democracy has died. The book shifts perspectives between what is happening at a federal level and the small town experiences of the newspaper editor named Doremus Jessup. Jessup is watching events unfold from the view of a liberal leaning newspaper editor. This is a bad situation to be in because one of the things that the regime seeks to control is information.

A rogue newspaper editor is a dangerous person, so Jessup finds himself caught in a situation where if he were to continue he would get into a lot of trouble, and if he were to capitulate he would be denying himself. Also we see how the people of Fort Beulah react to the changes.

A number get themselves moved into administrative positions, while other attempt to resist the changes. It is clear that the bullies are using this as an opportunity to promote themselves and their own fortune. We also note how they use fear and spying to maintain control. It is a method that is even used today to maintain control in some groups.

The 1935 novel that predicted the rise of Donald Trump

The impression is given that if one were to 'dob' on somebody else then the dobber will receive a reward, and control is maintained. However the catch is that the 'dobber' is never truly rewarded, but rather given the impression that they are now in the leaders good books. As such it creates distrust amongst the group as nobody knows who is going to tattle on them. Another theme that comes out is how in reality extreme left and right are not necessarily the opposite but rather the same. If you take Nazi Germany and Communist Russia for instance. While ideologically they were the opposite, in reality they were the same.

Both were dictatorships, both maintained order through a system of secret police, and both kept the populations oppressed and marginalised. The difference is that in Russia the means of production were in the hands of the state while in Germany the means of production where in the hands of a small group of oligarchs who were in the pockets of the government.

As such, there was no difference, and as such this is why people are looking back at that period. Lewis uses the term Corpoism, whereas nowdays we call it corporatism. It seems that modern business is run by a handful of oligarchs connected to the government. If a law upsets the oligarchs, the government will not be able to pass it. We have seen that today with the influence of the oil barons, the health insurers, and the fast food magnates, as well as the media enterprises. One of the best ways to attempt to understand the historical forces at play is to compare and contrast these events with past empires and powers.

While there is a contrast between and , there are better comparisons elsewhere, namely with Athens and Rome. With regards to the Bush regime and the Windthrup regime, we see differences with regards to the MMs. Bush did not have his own private army on the streets, and while he did attempt to establish a secret police in the form of the department of homeland security, he never went to the extent of rounding up dissidents. Well, there were arrests arising from the anti-Bush and anti-war protests, but there was no rounding up the anti-war establishment and confining them to concerntration camps.

In the end, if it was not for September 11th, then the Bush Administration would have unlikely moved in the direction that he did. If the US is moving towards a corporate dictatorship, it is a slow move. All that really came out of it was endless rhetoric, ridicule of those who did not agree, and military intervention on foreign shores. In the end, the worst we got was 'if you are not for us, you are for the terrorists' though nobody was ever locked up for waving a placard on the streets of New York City stating 'no blood for oil'. As for further back, let us consider Athens and Rome.

The Athenian democracy probably lasted about two hundred to two hundred and fifty years before it collapsed. Even then, the period of the Thirty Tyrants lasted only a short time before democracy was restored, however this period was what I considered to be the end of the Classical Period, in that supporters of the Thirty Tyrants were rounded up and executed Socrates being amongst them. This act in and of itself signalled the end of Athenian democracy, and the trigger that brought about its collapse was it's imperial ambitions. It wasn't even the Peloponesian War that brought about its end, Athens could have held out for much longer than it did, if not for the disastrous Sicilian Expedition.

As I have indicated elsewhere, the events of the Peloponesian War are uncannily similar to the events of the modern era. The second place we look at is Ancient Rome. The republic lasted much longer than Athens, about years, before it finally collapsed to become a dictatorship. However it wasn't a sudden move, but a gradual shift as the government sought to bring in more and more checks and balances to attempt to restrain the power of any single person. However, with the checks and balances in place, nothing could be done. Rome had not had an easy time as a Republic, and as the government began to grind to a halt as the interests of the plebians and the patricians clashed, people would step up and attempt to bring Rome back on track.

It is noticeable that both pre-imperial dictators Sulla and Ceaser both appealed to the populace against the patricians.

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It was the same with Augustus, who brought himself to power on the backs of the plebians. While one may suggest that compared with Rome, the United States still has a way to run, if we compare it with Athens, it has already entered the end game.

Further, in comparing the United States with Rome, we uncannily find ourselves looking back to Germany of the s, where the totalitarian government as is the case in this book rose to power on the backs of the people. In the end, it is not the corporate cronies that we should be wary of, but rather those who reach out to the people and convince the people that they are out to support their interests. One never realises that a populist government will transform into a dictatorship until it has already happened.

Jan 26, Jose Moa rated it it was amazing Shelves: This novel,with We,,Kallocain and Farenheith set up the great totalitarian distopic novels. In this novel written in it really could happen if Huey Long were not killed,Berzelius Windrip can be considered the alter ego of Huey Long governor of Louisiana Sinclair Lewis make a excelent disection of the fascist totalitarian system with all its features of populism,censorship,racism,chauvinism,xenofobia,mesianism,,promises of make the country great again, search of interior and exter This novel,with We,,Kallocain and Farenheith set up the great totalitarian distopic novels.

In this novel written in it really could happen if Huey Long were not killed,Berzelius Windrip can be considered the alter ego of Huey Long governor of Louisiana Sinclair Lewis make a excelent disection of the fascist totalitarian system with all its features of populism,censorship,racism,chauvinism,xenofobia,mesianism,,promises of make the country great again, search of interior and exterior enemies,burning of books and over all ignorance and brutality. In some ways a prophetic novel. A system suffered by millions people,jews and gipsies between them, in Germany,Italy,other countries and specially Spain where we suffered by 40 years is normal that spaniards of some age are very sensitive with this subject that we hope never happen again.

Of course the Soviet Union and others were, and some are, genocide ,criminal ,brutal totalitarian systems that play in other team. Is alarming that to day in powerful western democracies, in America and Europe , seem that we are walking another time in the wrong direction , with extreme right wing ,racist, chouvinist ,xenofobic,machist parties that promise make great countries again. It is a pity because as the famous quote says: A great ,specially fitted and reccomended book in this uncertain times. I've bumped this to five stars.

I read it nearly 18 months ago and it has really stayed with me. Surely a sign of a five star worthy read. It was so easy to believe how a country can go from to democracy to a dictatorship just a few short days after an inauguration. This novel is about the rise of a racist, sexist demagogue… well that is how it starts.

This novel covers the consequences of ha I've bumped this to five stars. I think what this book teaches is that no-one is safe in such a regime. This is probably not the kind of book that I would have been interested in reading before the current political situation in America happened. But as soon as I saw this book I knew I had to read it and started it the same day I bought it which rarely happens with me as I have a book buying obsession. I highly recommend this book and can honestly say that although this book does cover a scary concept especially when you consider that this was actually written in , it also gives the reader hope that there will always be people that are strong and courageous enough to fight a dictatorial regime no matter what the person risks to themselves.

I enjoyed this enough that I purchased All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren which seems to cover the same sort of idea but starts with a Presidential candidate that has better intentions and I hope to read it very soon. Mar 19, Jason Pettus rated it really liked it.

Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally. Take for example early Modernist Sinclair Lewis, who before opening CCLaP I was barely familiar with at all, but am rapidly growing to admire more and more, the more I learn about him; and although my official selection of his for the CCLaP is the masterpiece Babbitt which I'll be reading later this year , while researching him I also came across a book of his called It Can't Happen Here that I found simply impossible to pass up.

The book is essentially a speculative novel, taking the real events and popular figures of the s to show just how easy it would've been for a fascist takeover of the United States to happen back then, right in the same period where the same thing had already happened in Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Scandinavia, and other places; and although the book has been largely forgotten by now, it actually served as a comeback vehicle of sorts for Lewis at the time of its publication, after having a whole string of hits during the Roaring Twenties but rapidly falling out of favor with the onset of the Great Depression.

In fact, Lewis is widely considered to have written the very first satire of televangelists ever penned, 's Elmer Gantry , which has profoundly influenced every televangelism satire that has come since, although of course such people were technically radio stars in Lewis' day. At the time, such books were eagerly eaten up not just by bitter intellectuals but also the very self-loathing middle-classers he was making fun of, which again like Franzen or Perrotta made him a hit not only academically but among the beach-and-airport crowd; in fact, he famously won the Pulitzer Prize in those years for 's Arrowsmith just to infamously turn it down, using the occasion to express his open contempt for everything the Pulitzers stood for, and later in life became the very first American to ever win the Nobel Prize for literature.

But the audience for witty yet ultimately gentle parodies of the middle class profoundly dried up after the Great Depression hit -- not just because the middle class virtually disappeared, but because they were posthumously blamed for much of the things that had led to the Great Depression in the first place -- with the audience for contemporary novels turning more and more in the s to such progressive social realists as Nelson Algren and Richard Wright.

But of course, Lewis never stopped being bitter and angry through those years, and never stopped writing either; and like many political moderates at the time, he too watched with growing horror as these middle-classers he once made gentle fun of started turning more and more to such dangerous ideologues as politician Huey Long the Sarah Palin of the s and media star Father Coughlin the '30s Glenn Beck , and as more and more business tycoons like Henry Ford and celebrities like Charles Lindbergh started opening singing the praises of Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini, who had of course already successfully taken over their own countries by then, and were manipulating the media into making it seem like everything was going just peachy.

It's easy to forget now, but during the nadir of the Great Depression, when unemployment was at its highest and it hadn't nearly been proven yet that Roosevelt's New Deal was actually going to work, the empty promises and hateful blame-shifting of fascism actually looked like a pretty good idea to a growing amount of Americans -- as the old justification goes, after all, "Hitler may be a mean guy, but at least he's building the highways!

This book, then, was Lewis' angry response to both those groups, using extrapolation of all the real issues at the time to show that, yes, a fascist takeover of the US actually could happen, and by the way, the reality would be so much worse than any of you rah-rah Jew haters could possibly, possibly imagine. Each and every one of the things just mentioned is found in Lewis' book; and that's astounding, given that it was written almost 75 years before September 11th and the rise of Bushism, and even more astounding when you consider that Lewis told his own story through the filter of a charming faux-Democrat coming to power, not a bumbling faux-Republican.

Now, of course, that also brings us to this book's greatest criticism, a pretty fair one in my opinion now that I've read it myself -- that once we actually come to the Presidential win of this charming Huey-Long-type faux-Democrat about halfway through, the book quickly becomes the s equivalent of the cheesy action movie Red Dawn , with for example the construction of public concentration camps, the dissolving of Congress, and the morphing of the former 48 continental state boundaries into nine "administrative districts" all happening before even the first year of this new President's term is finished.

And in fact, speaking of cheesy genre actioners, the original '80s version of the sci-fi series V was itself a modified adaptation of this very book, after a straight adaptation of it by showrunner Kenneth Johnson [originally titled Storm Warnings: And that quite obviously leads us to why It Can't Happen Here is now largely forgotten, and is generally considered by Lewis fans to be one of his minor works, despite it being a fairly massive hit when it first came out even adapted by the WPA into a highly successful stage play, which at one point during the Great Depression was being performed at 35 different theatres across the nation simultaneously ; because once again, just like Franzen or Perrotta, Lewis' early novels are admired so much precisely for the nuanced subtlety he manytimes brings to his points, while here he essentially rants like an angry teenager for nearly pages.

In any case, it's for sure a fascinating book, one that for obvious reasons deserves to be much better known these days by the general population than it currently is; and in fact, like I said, the more I learn just about Lewis in general, the more I believe that we're in store soon for a major cultural reassessment of his oeuvre especially as we approach the th anniversaries of many of his most famous titles , a writer who is more and more these days starting to appear eerily ahead of his times, and who still has a lot to tell us about what motivates all those endless SUV-driving, yellow-ribbon-wearing, Joel-Osteen-following soccer moms out there in the "flyover states.

View all 4 comments. Jul 28, Kenneth Grossman rated it it was amazing. It Can't Happen Here is the story of a fictional fascist government's rise in mids USA, an insecure society deep in socio-economic turmoil. This thoughtful novel is very rich and requires the reader to be attentive. I highly recommend it, especially for somewhat politically-minded readers. If you are just looking for a good read to curl up with at night, another book might be preferable. The twin tsunamis of social unrest and nationalism created new countries and restructured old ones.

In the two decades after the end of World War I, various socialist and Communist movements arose on the Left alongside fascist and Nazi movements on the Right, all of which competed with one another and with liberal democracy for ascendancy in their respective countries. The entire branch was severed.

In America, the prosperity of the s gave way in to the stock market crash and economic collapse. Its importance cannot be overstated. Black Friday reverberated throughout America; distraught people literally leaped out the window to their death. The effects of the stock market crash are still a subject of strident academic discourse and a yardstick of current economic woes.

Times became bad for all of America. Unions tried to organize and companies tried to undo them; communist and socialist ideologies competed for the hearts and minds of the masses. Right-wing movements promised panaceas by strong leaders, and religious movements reached out to galvanize parishioners with their own brand of utopia. Suffice it to say that in the early s, the rise to prominence of Senator George McCarthy -- and what came to be known as the McCarthy Era with its attendant Communist witch hunts -- exhibited the maladies that Sinclair Lewis had presaged twenty years earlier regarding the possibility of fascist government in the USA.

Early on we also meet his immediate social circle: We also meet some of his friends, chiefly his old flame Lorinda Pike, his former schoolmate Frank Tasbrough, now the local industrialist, and others. There are also two household workers -- the gardener Ledue and the loyal family cook. All these persons and others contribute to the story. It is one of the great artistic achievements of Sinclair Lewis that he successfully develops a large cast of characters in an average-length novel, giving them depth and color, so that their familiar personalities naturally merge into and augment the plot that Lewis unfolds.

In addition, Lewis uses real-life personalities in his story to impart credibility. Social and economic dissatisfaction and unrest are also seething in Fort Beulah, Vermont. Now Windrip may be President, but he still is not fully in control. After his election, he cajoles and intimidates Congress into passing laws giving him 'temporary' emergency powers, and he also neutralizes the Supreme Court.

In the regular army, veteran generals are replaced with officers loyal to the new order.

It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis

Unshackled by 'checks and balances', he now introduces a new corporatist system known as the Corpo, which fundamentally reorganizes American society. At home in Vermont, Doremus' gardener, the primitive and uneducated Shad Ledue one wonders if Sinclair thought of 'shady' when he dubbed him Shad , rises to prominence as head of the local Minute Men army. Doremus becomes subservient to his whims and has to stand aside as his daughter is actively pursued by his former gardener, intent on seduction.

There are coups and high-echelon leaders are summarily replaced or murdered. The corpo government considers instigating a patriotic war against Mexico to deflect the social unrest. Doremus' wife and son Philip are more pliable and adapt easily to the new order. In contrast, Doremus becomes an underground anti-corpo publicist and sees friends and family imprisoned and killed. Finally, he himself is imprisoned under terrible conditions but with outside help escapes across the border to Canada.

By this time, however, Doremus has discovered new energies within himself and an avowed purpose. He is no longer the senescent, sedentary editor of a local paper. Revitalized, he crosses back into the United States determined to take significant and dangerous action against the corpo government. Lewis understood the currents reverberating through America and constructed a very plausible scenario for the rise of fascist government in the United States. And, most of all, we must insist that our duly elected leaders tell us the truth and refrain from manipulating the means of power to their own purposes.

View all 7 comments. Mar 02, Faith rated it really liked it Shelves: Written and set in the s, this was brilliant satire, terrifying in its accuracy. During his campaign he would " The government sets up work camps and jails newspaper reporters and anyone else deemed a threat to the regime. There is a plot to start a war with Mexico to distract the masses and provide medals for the soldiers supporting the regime.

I was hoping that the author, who was so prescient in predicting the problem, also had a solution. Unfortunately, getting rid of a dictator is not that easy. I'm also afraid that this book could provide handy hints for those seeking to consolidate their power assuming that they read. I would have found this book much more amusing if I had read it a few years ago. It Can't Happen Here 2 8 Sep 03, Can't Happen Here - Cover 3 3 Oct 20, Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters.

A new stage adaptation by Tony Taccone and Bennett S. Cohen premiered at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in September By early , screenwriter Sidney Howard completed an adaptation , his third of Lewis' novels. Mayer citing costs, indefinitely postponed production, to the publicly announced pleasure of the Nazi regime in Germany. Lewis and Howard countered that financial reason with information pointing to Berlin's and Rome's influence on movies. Hays , responsible for the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code , had notified Mayer of potential problems in the German market.

Joseph Breen , head of the Production Code Administration department under Hays, thought the script was too "anti-fascist" and "so filled with dangerous material". Hubbard rewrote a new climax, "showing a dictatorship in Washington and showing it being kicked out by disgruntled Americans as soon as they realized what had happened. A television movie Shadow on the Land alternate title: Inspired by the book, director—producer Kenneth Johnson wrote an adaptation titled Storm Warnings in The script was presented to NBC for production as a television miniseries , but NBC executives rejected the initial version, claiming it was too cerebral for the average American viewer.

To make the script more marketable, the American fascists were re-cast as man-eating extraterrestrials , taking the story into the realm of science fiction. The revised story became the miniseries V , which premiered May 3, Since its publication, It Can't Happen Here has been seen as a cautionary tale , starting with the presidential election and potential candidate Huey Long. In May , in the middle of Nixon's Watergate scandal , Knight Newspapers published an ad in their own and other publications, headlined "It Can't Happen Here" and emphasizing the importance of free press.

It is not just a fight by reporters and editors to protect their sources. It is a fight to protect the public's right to know It can't happen here as long as the press remains an open conduit through which public information flows. The non-fiction book It Can Happen Here: Several writers have compared the demagogue Buzz Windrip to Donald Trump.

Michael Paulson wrote in The New York Times that the Berkeley Repertory Theatre's rendition of the play aimed to provoke discussion about Trump's presidential candidacy. In , Can It Happen Here? From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Can't Happen Here disambiguation. Retrieved 2 February Retrieved 15 August — via YouTube. The World According to Hollywood, Literature Suppressed on Political Grounds. Retrieved 28 February Retrieved 20 March Shamokin News-Dispatch from Shamokin, Pennsylvania.

Frank Zappa's Understanding America". The New York Times. Some, like Berkeley Rep, explicitly aim to prompt discussion about Donald J. Salon , September 29, Retrieved February 26, Retrieved May 13, Books by Sinclair Lewis. Hike and the Aeroplane Our Mr. Retrieved from " https: Views Read Edit View history. In other projects Wikimedia Commons.