A 1930s Novel Reminds Us That Dictatorship Often Comes Dressed as Democracy

In 1936, Senator Berzelius ‘Buzz’ Windrip was elected the president of the US by defeating Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In the run-up to the elections, Windrip came across as a folksy politician, with a cheery disposition and offering a very people-friendly face: he talked about patriotism and traditional family values, economic and social reforms and said he would give each citizen $5,000 a year.

Windrip’s admirers included businessmen, common folk and sections of the media. One of his big endorsers was Bishop Prang, whose weekly talks on radio, full of not fire and brimstone against all kinds of imagined enemies, including Jews, were followed by millions of listeners. Prang’s followers transferred their vote to Windrip, who defeated Roosevelt in the Democratic convention and then won against his Republican rival, Senator Walt Trowbridge in the November election.

Soon after taking over, Windrip outlawed dissent, threw politicians into concentration camps and created an armed paramilitary force called the Minute Men, whose job was to act as his enforcers against citizens. Congress was made ineffective and minority rights were taken away. It was also a corporate-friendly administration, which allowed businessmen to run the country.

For those wondering why they hadn’t read about this before—these events did not actually happen. It is the plot of the 1935 novel, It Can’t Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis, which shows how democracies can turn into dictatorships swiftly.

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As the US votes, in possibly the most polarised elections in recent memory, it is a good time to read the book. Even otherwise, the book helps us make sense of what is happening around the world, as democratically elected nations turn proto-authoritarian.

Lewis was a well-known writer of his time and the first American winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. He wrote satirical novels, “portraying what he regarded as the mediocrity, materializing, corruption and hypocrisy of middle-class life in the United States,” wrote Michael Meyer in his introduction to a 2005 edition of the book. Lewis saw emerging signs of fascism in Europe and the support Hitler and Mussolini were getting in the US. His wife, Dorothy Thomson, was the first journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany and had written and broadcast extensively about life under Hitler.

Fascism was also being discussed in the American media. In 1934, The Modern Monthly invited well-known writers like Theodore Dreiser and Charles A. Beard to discuss the question, “Will Fascism Come to America.” In 1935, The Nation published pieces on “forerunners of American Fascism”, Meyer writes.

The novel opens with the Ladies Night Dinner at the Fort Beulah Rotary Club, where a woman speaker thunders, “What this country needs is Discipline…We don’t want all this highbrow intellectuality, all this book-learning.” She is followed by an army general who talks about “college professors, newspapermen and notorious authors secretly promulgating seditious attacks on the Constitution.”

At a dinner following the meeting, the local businessmen of the sleepy town of Fort Beulah, Vermont, discuss politics and rail against unions and communists and Jews. The sole skeptic there is Doremus Jessup, a newspaper editor and somewhat of a liberal, who has in the past supported the unions in their battle against the host of the evening. Jessup is still liked by them, even if they find him a bit odd, perhaps even a leftist and an intellectual, not the least because he wears a beard.

He pours cold water on their enthusiasm for Windrip, pointing out the dangers of the politician coming to power. “People will think they’re electing him to create more economic security. Then watch the Terror!” When one of the guests protests that “it can’t happen here,” Jessup cuts loose: “The hell it can’t! Why there’s no country in the world that can get more hysterical – yes, and more obsequious! – than America.”

“Why are you so afraid of the word ‘Fascism’, Doremus? Just a word-just a word! And might not be so bad, with all the lazy bums we got panhandling relief nowadays, and living on my income tax,” responds another businessman, expressing a wish for “real Strong Men like Hitler or Mussolini.”

They get their wishes fulfilled soon enough and Windrip, as Jessup has predicted, turns authoritarian as soon as he is elected. A few people resist – the defeated candidate Senator Trowbridge starts a movement called the New Underground and Jessup is recruited to it. Jessup had never thought of himself as an activist, but just a woolly liberal standing up for the small man. But he feels he has to participate and eventually pays a heavy price. Readers will find many echoes in the novel of the world we live in today.

Fascism in today’s context

Fascism in a word much thrown about today, often in a casual manner. But more and more debates are being held on those lines, as democracies are seeing the rise of strong men who are subverting the law, controlling the media and institutions and clamping down on dissent. A recent essay in the New Statesman discusses the “legacy of violent nationalism” that is reflected in the US in the age of Donald Trump.

This is not true only of the US – the same discussions are going in many European nations. The spectre of the 1930s variety fascism in Europe has not entirely gone away—every European country now has a small, ultra-right-wing party that shows fascist tendencies, centring around issues like immigration. And all of them are fully participating in the democratic process, knowing that it will give them legitimacy and help them control parliament; indeed, Hitler and Mussolini were elected too.

Trump or Erdogan or Duterte and, as we can see, Narendra Modi – all of them elected leaders – also have a large support base, not just among the masses but also, most importantly, influential businessmen and opinion-makers. They couch their support in different ways, but essentially are facilitators of Modi and what he stands for. It is important to remember that many so-called dissenters today had rooted for Modi in 2014. A handful may have seen the light, but the prime minister personally and his party and all that it stands for, still remain popular with vast numbers of Indians, many of them who believe that “Indians need a dose of discipline.”

In India, the word ‘fascism’ has no immediate historical resonance, but many commentators have pointed out similarities between the RSS and European fascists. Certainly, the BJP government has shown authoritarian tendencies and one of the party’s leading lights, Yogi Adityanath, uncaring of democratic niceties or even the law, has come down heavily on dissidence and the minorities.

Also Read: BJP’s Illiberalism Resembles a Ruling Party in an Autocracy: Study

Can India become a fascist state? That is not an easy question to answer. But seeing how our democratic institutions are being manipulated and mangled, how intolerance is growing and how minorities are being crushed, it is clear that some aspects of a fascist state are already visible. And these repressive measures are being cheered by the elite, by the upper middle-classes and by the sold-out media. By all accounts, it is going to get worse before it gets better. Yes, on balance therefore, it can happen here, but with Indian characteristics.