It Can't Happen Here is a semi-satirical

Satire

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 political

Politics

Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...

 novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by Sinclair Lewis

Sinclair Lewis

Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of...

 published in 1935 by Doubleday, Doran. It describes the rise of a populist politician who calls his movement "patriotic" and creates his own militia (the Minute Men or "MM", paralleling Hitler's "SS") and takes unconstitutional power after winning election — mirroring what Hitler was doing in Germany at the time of writing. Its plot centers around newspaperman Doremus Jessup's belated realization of what is happening, and his subsequent struggle against the fascist regime of President Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip.

Plot

Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, a charismatic and power-hungry politician, is elected President of the United States

President of the United States

The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....

 on a populist

Populism

Populism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social...

 platform, promising to restore the country to prosperity and greatness, and promising each citizen $5,000 a year (approximately $, adjusted for inflation). Once in power, however, he becomes a dictator

Dictator

A dictator is a ruler who assumes sole and absolute power but without hereditary ascension such as an absolute monarch. When other states call the head of state of a particular state a dictator, that state is called a dictatorship...

: he outlaws dissent, puts his political enemies in concentration camps, and creates a paramilitary

Paramilitary

A paramilitary is a force whose function and organization are similar to those of a professional military, but which is not considered part of a state's formal armed forces....

 force called the Minute Men who terrorize the citizens. One of his first acts as President is to make changes to the Constitution

United States Constitution

The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...

 which give him sole power over the country, rendering Congress

United States Congress

The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....

 obsolete (in real life the President is not part of the Constitutional Amendment process at all). This is met by protest from the Congress as well as outraged citizens, but Windrip declares a state of martial law

Martial law

Martial law is the imposition of military rule by military authorities over designated regions on an emergency basis— only temporary—when the civilian government or civilian authorities fail to function effectively , when there are extensive riots and protests, or when the disobedience of the law...

 and, with the help of his Minute Men, throws the protesters in jail. As Windrip dismantles democracy

Democracy

Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...

, most Americans either support him and his Corpo Regime wholeheartedly or reassure themselves that fascism "can't happen" in America (hence the book's title).

The few who openly oppose Windrip's regime form a secret protest organization called The New Underground, establishing a secret propaganda

Propaganda

Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....

 periodical under the alias The Vermont Vigilance. Journalist Doremus Jessup, Windrip's loudest detractor, becomes a major contributor to these publications, writing editorials decrying the state's abuses of power. Shad Ledue, head of the state police and Jessup's former employee, terrorizes him, eventually putting him in a camp; he also goes after Jessup's family, attempting to seduce Jessup's daughter, Sissy. Eventually, however, Ledue falls out of favor with Windrip, and he is put in the same camp as Jessup, where he is murdered by the angry inmates he sent there. After Jessup's friend bribes a guard, Jessup escapes from the camp, rejoins his family, and goes to Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 to join a resistance movement.
In time, Windrip's hold on power begins to weaken; the economic prosperity he promised has not materialized, and more and more people (including his own Vice-President) are fleeing to Canada to escape his government's brutality. Windrip's lieutenants stage a coup; Windrip's right-hand man, Lee Sarason, becomes President and has his former boss exiled

Exiled

Exiled is a 2006 Hong Kong action crime drama film produced and directed by Johnnie To, and starring Anthony Wong, Roy Cheung, Francis Ng, and Simon Yam. The action takes place in contemporary Macau.-Plot:...

 to France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

. In the ensuing power vacuum, Windrip's lieutenants fight among themselves for control, setting the stage for the regime's self-destruction. After another coup, ousting Sarason in favor of General Haik, the Corpo Regime's power slowly starts seeping away and the government desperately tries to find a way to keep the people content. They decide to stir up patriotic fervor by slandering Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

 in the state-run newspapers, with the idea that an all-out invasion of that country will rally the American people around the government. But the resulting draft

Conscription

Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...

 of 5 million men for the invasion splits the country into factions: those pro-war and loyal to the Corpo government, and those anti-war who now see that they have been manipulated for years. A half-Jewish general, Emmanuel Coon, launches a civil war against the regime. The story ends with Jessup as a guerrilla in Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

, operating under Walt Trowbridge, the leader-in-exile of the opposition movement.

In other media

In 1936, Lewis and John C. Moffitt wrote a stage version, also titled It Can't Happen Here, which is still produced. The stage version premiered on October 27, 1936 in twenty-one U.S. theatres in seventeen states simultaneously, in productions sponsored by the Federal Theater Project.

A 1968 television movie

Television movie

A television film is a feature film that is a television program produced for and originally distributed by a television network, in contrast to...

, Shadow on the Land (alternate title: United States: It Can't Happen Here) was produced by Screen Gems

Screen Gems

Screen Gems is an American movie production company and subsidiary company of Sony Pictures Entertainment's Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group that has served several different purposes for its parent companies over the decades since its incorporation....

 as a pilot

Television pilot

A "television pilot" is a standalone episode of a television series that is used to sell the show to a television network. At the time of its inception, the pilot is meant to be the "testing ground" to see if a series will be possibly desired and successful and therefore a test episode of an...

 for a series loosely based on this book.

Inspired by the book, director–producer Kenneth Johnson wrote an adaptation titled Storm Warnings, in 1982. The script was presented to NBC

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

, for production as a television mini-series, but the 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

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

. The new, re-cast story was the mini-series V, which premiered on May 3, 1983.

Huey Long

Reviewers at the time and literary critics ever since have emphasized the connection with Louisiana politician Huey Long

Huey Long

Huey Pierce Long, Jr. , nicknamed The Kingfish, served as the 40th Governor of Louisiana from 1928–1932 and as a U.S. Senator from 1932 to 1935. A Democrat, he was noted for his radical populist policies. Though a backer of Franklin D...

, who was preparing to run for president in 1936. According to Boulard (1998), "the most chilling and uncanny treatment of Huey by a writer came with Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here." Lewis portrayed a genuine American dictator on the Hitler model. Starting in 1936 the WPA

Works Progress Administration

The Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...

, a New Deal agency, performed the theatre version across the country. Lewis had the goal of hurting Long's chances in the 1936 election. argues that the key weakness of the novel is not that he decks out American politicians with sinister European touches, but that he finally conceives of fascism and totalitarianism in terms of traditional American political models rather than seeing them as introducing a new kind of society and a new kind of regime. Windrip is less a Nazi than a con-man-plus-Rotarian, a manipulator who knows how to appeal to people's desperation, but neither he nor his followers are in the grip of the kind of world-transforming ideology like Hitler's National Socialism.

External links

• Online Text
• Book review
• Public Enemy by Joe Keohane, Boston Globe, December 18, 2005.
• It Can't Happen Here, at wikilivres.info