It Can't Happen Here

Berzelius 'Buzz' Windrip is a folksy, populist senator who wins the 1936 American presidential election on a platform of patriotism, nostalgia, and contempt for elites. Within months he has suspended Congress, established a paramilitary force, and begun rounding up dissidents. Lewis wrote this in 1935 — watching European fascism from across the Atlantic — as a direct warning that American exceptionalism was not a shield. The novel follows Doremus Jessup, a Vermont newspaper editor who starts out skeptical that it's really happening and ends up in a labor camp. Lewis named every mechanism: the complicit press, the accommodating clergy, the neighbors who inform. Published ninety years ago. Feels like it was written last week.