ABSTRACT
Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here, published in 1935, is his most peculiar novel. It describes the rise to power of an American fascist named Buzz Windrip, who arrives on the political scene to rescue America from a plague of labor unions, welfare cheats, godless atheists, and gun-grabbing Jews. In fact, this very possibility was raised by one of the significant American fascist "intellectuals" of the 1930s. His name was Lawrence Dennis, and in 1936 - the year after Lewis's novel appeared - he wrote an ideological blueprint titled The Coming American Fascism. No fascist salute, but mass recitations of the pledge of allegiance. These symbols contain no whiff of fascism in themselves, of course, but an American fascism would transform them into obligatory litmus tests for detecting the internal enemy. Robert Paxton makes clear that fascism not only can take root in America but that if it does so it will take a peculiarly American shape.
