Recently, a Faithful Reader sent us a copy of “Disappeared to a Foreign Prison” by Sarah Stillman, from the November 24, 2025, issue of The New Yorker. No, this is not a commentary on the New Yorker article, but on a few thoughts that bubbled up as we read the article.
What started this train of thought was recollecting an acquaintance (okay, a good friend) was among those native-born American citizens of Japanese descent who were interned in U.S. concentration camps during World War II. This was finally declared to have been illegal, and the victims offered a small monetary settlement in token reparation.
 |
| Sinclair Lewis |
At least at the time it could be argued that the United States was at war with the Empire of Japan, and the “Yellow Menace” was genuinely feared . . . which still doesn’t excuse it. No such excuse exists today, at least to the best of our knowledge. Not that it matters, as the current political environment in the United States only served to bring rather forcefully to mind Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel, It Can't Happen Here, which now reads like a prediction rather than a warning. Lewis's novel is once again selling like hotcakes, at least according to the blurb on Amazon, where, as of this writing, it ranks among the better-selling books (although you want to avoid the so-called “translation” from Lewis’s original English to dumbed-down asinine English):
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.
 |
| Let's not be subtle |
So, what is all the fuss, and why might it be a good idea to reread — or read — It Can’t Happen Here? Well, according to the AI response we plagiarized and adapted for this blog posting, the plot revolves around a populist demagogue named “Buzz Windrip” who manages to get himself elected president of the United States. His program is to establish and maintain a fascist dictatorship.
That is not, of course, what Windrip tells his working- and middle-class supporters. Buzz bags the balloting by promising to make America great again. He deviously uses anti-elitist rhetoric, anti-immigration sentiment, and anti-labor policies to appeal to the working and middle classes.
Stop me if you’ve heard this.
Firmly ensconced in power, Windrip begins dismantling democratic checks and balances. He creates a paramilitary force, the “Minute Men,” and uses martial law and intimidation to silence opposition, arrest political rivals, and suppress the press.
Buzz Windrip
A Vermont newspaper editor by the name of Doremus Jessup takes a dim view of these proceedings. Although at first inclined to exercise a bit of journalistic objectivity and detachment, Jessup becomes a trifle dismayed, perhaps even moderately disgruntled as he witnesses democracy's gradual erosion. Windrip’s regime is founded solidly on a cult of personality and a sort of “enforced patriotism.” The administration suppresses all forms of dissent as “saving” the nation. Jeeve’s employer Bertie Wooster’s comment about Sir Roderick Spode and his “Saviors of Britain” (the Black Shorts — all the shirt colors were taken) comes to mind — Saving it from what?
Anyway, Jessup sees how a combination of economic hardship, a charismatic leader exploiting fear, and a complacent public is leading to the collapse of democratic institutions and the imposition of a thuggish and brutal regime. Finally having enough, Jessup joins the underground resistance, which — of course — includes other characters who represent different facets of American society, such as African and Jewish Americans, who come in for some rather horrifying treatment . . . all for their own good, of course.
Sir Roderick Spode and the Saviors of Britain
Of course, all of this doesn’t happen overnight, or even in the first chapter. It Can’t Happen Here depicts a slow, seemingly inevitable descent into authoritarianism, rather than any sudden coup or leap into fascism. The novel ends with the resistance fighting to restore democracy, although it is evident the struggle will be long and difficult, possibly even enough material for a sequel . . . (writers must think of such things).
According to the AI analysis, shamelessly plagiarized above, Lewis argues democratic institutions are vulnerable to demagoguery. An engaged and informed citizenry is crucial for their survival. A critical component of an engaged and informed citizenry — according to Lewis — is a free press. A free press is a vital component of democracy. Its suppression is a key step in the consolidation of dictatorial power. Finally, a major cause is the failure of mainstream political and economic elites to recognize the threat of fascism, dismissing warnings until it is too late.
Thus, in the novel, Lewis examined how a homegrown version of fascism could take root in the U.S., fueled by economic despair, nationalism, and the exploitation of fear. Now for the point of today’s posting. You know there had to be one. Lewis neglects to point out that a viable political democracy — consistent with the principles of the Just Third Way — can only be built on a solid foundation of economic democracy.
That is why in virtually every case, the dictators were backed by members of a class of wealth and power (yes, the people backing Stalin controlled immense wealth and power, although officially as communists “owned” nothing) who saw their positions threatened — and which is still the case today. The rich industrialists of Germany strengthened Hitler’s power base immensely after he promised to let them keep their wealth in his nationalist socialist workers’ paradise. They weren’t slow to recognize the danger. They just thought they could avoid it by placating the dictator . . . which so many of today’s Russian oligarchs have realized is an illusory hope as they plunge off balconies or take headers down stairs.
Some saw it, though. In the 1920s and 1930s, as some prescient world leaders such as Pope Pius XI noted, the lack of economic democracy achieved and sustained by widespread capital ownership led in part to the rise of the dictators lamented by Lewis in the 1930s and many people today and were often the real power behind the dictator . . . and were themselves controlled by others. As the pope noted in his 1931 encyclical, Quadragesimo Anno, “On the Restructuring of the Social Order,”
 |
| Pope Pius XI |
105. In the first place, it is obvious that not only is wealth concentrated in our times but an immense power and despotic economic dictatorship is consolidated in the hands of a few, who often are not owners but only the trustees and managing directors of invested funds which they administer according to their own arbitrary will and pleasure.
106. This dictatorship is being most forcibly exercised by those who, since they hold the money and completely control it, control credit also and rule the lending of money. Hence they regulate the flow, so to speak, of the life-blood whereby the entire economic system lives, and have so firmly in their grasp the soul, as it were, of economic life that no one can breathe against their will.
107. This concentration of power and might, the characteristic mark, as it were, of contemporary economic life, is the fruit that the unlimited freedom of struggle among competitors has of its own nature produced, and which lets only the strongest survive; and this is often the same as saying, those who fight the most violently, those who give least heed to their conscience.
108. This accumulation of might and of power generates in turn three kinds of conflict. First, there is the struggle for economic supremacy itself; then there is the bitter fight to gain supremacy over the State in order to use in economic struggles its resources and authority; finally there is conflict between States themselves, not only because countries employ their power and shape their policies to promote every economic advantage of their citizens, but also because they seek to decide political controversies that arise among nations through the use of their economic supremacy and strength.
All of this looks pretty bad. Is there anything that can be done about it? That is what we will look at next week.
#30#
