Getting Close to Fascism with Sinclair Lewis’s “It Can’t Happen Here”

“It Can’t Happen Here,” which came out in 1935, was a frightening book written for frightening times. Sinclair Lewis published the novel as Adolf Hitler was making Germany great again, violating the Treaty of Versailles by establishing the Wehrmacht. Benito Mussolini invaded Ethiopia. Things at home weren’t much better: a race riot in Harlem, dust storms in the Midwest. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act, but the promise of the New Deal remained unfulfilled for many. The Times, that November, reported on a meeting of the New Jersey Bankers Association, whose president offered a blunt assessment of the national mood: “America is tired of adventure and anxious,” the man of industry said. The people wanted “safety and conservatism again.”