It Can Happen Here

Editor’s note: The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial of Our Land here.

In 1935, Sinclair Lewis published the novel It Can’t Happen Here, which told the story of fascism triumphing in the United States. The book was a reaction to the rise of Hitler and Mussolini in Europe and the spread of demagogic populism in the United States by Huey Long, the strongman governor of Louisiana, and Father Charles Coughlin, the wildly popular antisemitic radio preacher. In Lewis’ alternative universe, a politician named Buzz Windrip, who champions “traditional” values and who promises to restore America to greatness, defeats FDR in the presidential election of 1936 and then through a self-coup seizes dictatorial powers. He establishes a paramilitary force to do his bidding, curtails the rights of women and minorities, and locks up dissidents and political foes in concentration camps. Eventually, his reign leads to civil war. It’s a grim tale.

The title of his book was the proper use of irony (the expression of an idea through language that normally means the opposite). While many Americans at the time looked at the failure of democracy in Europe and thought that the United States would be immune to such retrograde forces, Lewis, whose wife, journalist Dorothy Thompson, had reported on developments in Germany (and was the first American journalist to be expelled from the Nazi state), believed otherwise.

America did not succumb to the fascist wave. Long was assassinated. Coughlin was forced off the air. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States’ entry into World War II led to the end of the America First movement that might have produced a demagogic alternative to Roosevelt. No Buzz Windrip emerged.

Over eight decades later, the ghost of It Can’t Happen Here haunts American politics. Donald Trump has often been compared to Windrip, and various commentators have harkened back to Lewis’ novel to explain the threat Trumpism poses to American democracy.

Looking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (a.k.a. CPAC), recentl held outside Washington, DC, last week, one can wonder if it is indeed time to once again crack open the Lewis novel. At a panel led by Steve Bannon, the convicted (for contempt of Congress) and indicted (for money laundering) top strategist of the MAGA right, Jack Posobiec, a prominent conspiracy theorist of the alt-right, declared, “Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this right here.” He apparently was referring to the Trumpian vanguard present in the room, and Bannon interjected, “Amen.” Posobiec, an early promoter of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory that led to a dangerous shooting at a Washington, DC, restaurant, added, “All glory is not to government. All glory to God.”

Were they joking? It didn’t sound like it. Other speakers at CPAC demonized those outside the MAGA realm. Gov. Kristi Noem (R-S.D.), who’s angling to be Trump’s veep pick, proclaimed, “There are two kinds of people in this country right now. There are people who love America, and there are those who hate America.” Stephen Moore, a Trump adviser, asserted that “one of the most evil left-wing organizations in America is the AARP.” For his part, Trump, at CPAC, brayed that the United States will fall apart if President Joe Biden is reelected. He painted quite the picture. Medicare, Social Security, and health care will “collapse,” along with public education and the economy. The US will be “starved of energy.” Hamas would run wild in American streets. Guns will be confiscated, and the suburbs will be “destroyed.” The stock market will implode. America will be obliterated in a world war.

Trump and his minions were engaged in an orgy of despisal akin to the “Two Minutes of Hate” Orwell imagined in 1984. And Trump was hardly breaking new ground at CPAC. Months ago, he used the fascistic term “vermin” to lambaste his political foes, and more recently he complained that migrants were “poisoning the blood” of the United States.

These latest outbursts provide even more reason to wonder if Lewis’ worries ought to be updated for the present. After all, Trump did plot to retain power illegally and incited violence to do so—and following that he remained the leader of one of the two national parties, has been supported by tens of millions of Americans, and has a good shot at winning the 2024 presidential election. And now he’s deploying classic fascistic rhetoric and fearmongering, and his fellow cultists in the GOP and conservative movement are enthusiastically cheering him on, depicting those who don’t agree with them as enemies of America, and openly threatening democracy and embracing autocracy.

With all this going on, my colleagues at Mother Jones and I picked a good time to launch a new project we’re calling “It Can Happen Here,” which is producing short video reports on the latest signs of creeping authoritarianism and the danger it poses to the American political system. These videos are designed for posting on various social media sites (Twitter, Threads, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok), where they can serve as bite-size reminders of what’s occurring. Here are the first few we’ve posted:

Here's our latest #ItCanHappenHere video. Please share.pic.twitter.com/kmqgKPhW6y

— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) February 23, 2024

Here's the latest #ItCanHappenHere report. Someone has to keep track of the creeping authoritarianism that threatens American democracy. pic.twitter.com/nO84gWpPjL

— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) February 13, 2024

"The American Experiment” is facing its biggest stress test yet.@DavidCornDC's new series reveals how seemingly unalike events are part of a more significant trend that points to gearing up for an unprecedented takeover of the executive branch.

Because yes, it CAN happen here. pic.twitter.com/lfO1sn6ZDC

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) February 9, 2024

We’re still working out some of the bugs and tweaking the formatting. (The producer of the videos, Sam Van Pykeren, is a wizard.) As you can see, each one includes a caveat: We don’t want to hype the threat, but we don’t want to ignore the warning signs. It’s important to not go overboard and come off as a Chicken Little. But let’s not dismiss the real peril the republic faces: A man who plotted to subvert the constitutional order is in a position to regain power, and his crew has been cooking up plans to implement authoritarian policies and to inject Christian Nationalism into the US government, should Trump manage a comeback.

Would Trump go as far as Windrip? He vows to deport millions of people, which would require massive detention camps. He has consistently pledged he would prosecute and imprison his critics and rivals. He has said (jokingly or not) he would act as a dictator only on his first day in office. He has threatened to use the power of government to crush media outlets he doesn’t favor. This is all Windripish. Moreover, throughout MAGA-land, it’s easy to find Trumpists who denigrate democracy and scheme work-arounds to direct elections. And the Alabama Supreme Court justice who last week handed down an opinion stating that fertilized embryos are people—a ruling that imperils in vitro fertilization treatments—has stated that the Bible dictates that conservative Christians ought to rule over government, as well as business, media, and education.

Those who believe in a demographically diverse, socially and culturally tolerant, and democratic America would be fools to turn a blind eye to this tide. For some, warning of fascism might seem hyperbolic. But it appears that Trump and his team do worry about being portrayed as endangering democracy, for they have resorted to assailing Biden as the real threat to democracy. This projection/rubber-and-glue tactic is as good an indication as any that concerns about the wellbeing of American democracy in a Trump 2.0 era are well-founded.

“When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” This quote is often attributed to Lewis, but there’s no proof that he ever said or wrote that. But the line sounds like it came from Lewis, and it certainly does apply to the present moment. Consequently, I expect we will be busy with our “It Can Happen Here” videos. You’ll be able to see them, if you follow me on Twitter/X (@davidcorndc), Threads (@davidcorn1), Instagram (@davidcorn1), or Facebook. As we say in each video, if we don’t pay close attention to this, it can happen here.

David Corn’s American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy, a New York Times bestseller, has been released in a new and expanded paperback edition.