Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here was written to show that it can happen here — the "it" being a fascist takeover of the American government. Published in 1935, the book merits credit for its warning against complacency about Nazism at a time when many Americans cast admiring glances across the Atlantic. The book's hero, a Vermont newspaper editor, comes squarely down in the old category of Liberal: He is skeptical of big business and big labor, a firm defender of free expression, yet not convinced that Soviet communism has anything to offer. His "third way" is trampled by radicals left and right, but especially from the right as a three-way presidential election in 1936 ends in the defeat of Roosevelt and the Republican candidate and the election of a glib huckster who promises every American $5,000 and who vows to rebuild the country's power against foreigners attacking it from without and within.
A year ago, the elevation of such a character in the American political scene would have been less believable than it is now. And while the mechanism of the takeover in Lewis's novel is not entirely credible, there is enough to it to give a reader pause 80 years after publication.
A year ago, the elevation of such a character in the American political scene would have been less believable than it is now. And while the mechanism of the takeover in Lewis's novel is not entirely credible, there is enough to it to give a reader pause 80 years after publication.
