Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here: A Study of Authoritarianism

In 1935, as fascism consolidated power across Europe, Sinclair Lewis published It Can’t Happen Here, a chilling novel about how a folksy, populist demagogue named Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip rises to the American presidency on promises to restore greatness, then systematically dismantles democracy.

The Seduction of the Strongman

Buzz Windrip doesn’t campaign as a tyrant. He campaigns as a savior. A charismatic senator who understands media spectacle, Windrip blends folksy charm with vague promises of economic prosperity. He rails against elites while being bankrolled by wealthy industrialists. He attacks the press as dishonest while using it masterfully to amplify his message. He promises to restore American greatness after years of humiliation and decline.

Lewis captured how authoritarian movements gain traction not through explicit calls for dictatorship but through emotional appeals to wounded pride and economic anxiety. Windrip’s followers don’t think they’re voting for fascism; they believe they are voting for jobs, security, and national restoration.

The Danger of Complacency

The novel’s title embodies its central warning: the most dangerous thing Americans can believe is that their democracy is somehow immune to authoritarianism. Throughout the book, reasonable people such as journalists, professors, and politicians convince themselves that American institutions are too strong, that checks and balances will hold, and that surely things won’t get that bad.

The Press as Savior and Scapegoat

One of the novel’s most prescient elements is its focus on journalism. Protagonist Doremus Jessup, a small-town newspaper editor, represents the crucial role of independent media in democracy. As Windrip’s regime consolidates power, attacking the press becomes central to the authoritarian project. Journalists are labeled “enemies of the people,” their reporting dismissed.

Yet Lewis also understood journalism’s vulnerabilities. Some newspapers in his novel collaborate with authoritarianism, either out of ideological sympathy or out of business calculation. Others practice “both-sides” journalism, treating authoritarian lies and democratic truths as equally valid perspectives. Still others prioritize access and profit over democratic accountability.

Economic Anxiety and Scapegoating

Windrip rises to power during economic hardship. He promises prosperity but delivers only to his cronies and corporate backers. To distract from broken promises, he needs scapegoats—immigrants, intellectuals, Jews, socialists, anyone coded as “other” or “elite.”

Immigrants become the reason for economic struggles, not corporate exploitation. Cultural elites become the enemy, not the economic elites extracting wealth. This misdirection is intentional and effective. Lewis shows how Windrip’s corporate backers use his populist rhetoric while implementing policies that harm working people—tax cuts for the wealthy, union suppression, and environmental deregulation.

Respectable Conservatives

Perhaps Lewis’s most uncomfortable insight concerns how “respectable” conservatives enable authoritarianism. In the novel, traditional Republicans and business leaders initially view Windrip as vulgar and dangerous. But they ultimately support him, calculating that they can control him, that he’s preferable to liberals, that at least he’ll cut their taxes and suppress labor movements.

They’re wrong. Windrip uses them, then discards them when convenient. But by then, the democratic guardrails they helped dismantle are gone.

Lewis understood that authoritarianism rarely succeeds without the collaboration of traditional elites who convince themselves they’re being strategic. These enablers tell themselves they’re pragmatists, that they’re preventing something worse, that they’re working from within to moderate extremism. History rarely judges them kindly.

Violence as a Political Tool

In It Can’t Happen Here, Windrip creates a paramilitary force, the Minute Men, who terrorize opponents under the guise of patriotic activism. Political violence becomes normalized, framed as a justified response to existential threats. Opponents aren’t merely wrong; they’re traitors who must be eliminated.

Lewis understood that once violence becomes an acceptable political tool, democratic discourse becomes impossible. You cannot debate someone who threatens to kill you. You cannot compromise with movements that view opposition as treason. Once violence enters politics, democracy ends not immediately, but inevitably.

The Illusion of Normalcy

One of the novel’s most chilling elements is how life continues to seem normal even as tyranny takes hold. People still go to work, eat dinner, and complain about traffic. The trains run on time. Most citizens aren’t directly affected, at least not at first. This creates an illusion that things aren’t really that bad, that critics are hysterical, that life goes on.

But for targeted populations, such as journalists, intellectuals, minorities, political opponents, life transforms into a nightmare. The novel depicts concentration camps on American soil, political prisoners, and state-sanctioned murder. Yet for many Americans, these horrors remain abstractions, things happening to other people in other places.

The Resistance

Yet It Can’t Happen Here isn’t ultimately a story of despair. It’s a story about resistance. Doremus Jessup transforms from complacent editor to active resister, eventually joining an underground movement. Lewis shows that resistance begins with individuals refusing to normalize tyranny, speaking truth when silence is safer, and choosing principle over comfort.

The novel suggests that authoritarianism, for all its power, remains fragile. It depends on compliance, on people following orders, on citizens accepting that resistance is futile. When enough people refuse, even when journalists keep reporting, when bureaucrats resist illegal orders, when ordinary citizens choose courage over convenience, authoritarian power can crack.

Lewis titled his novel as a question Americans were asking in 1935, watching Europe descend into fascism. The implied answer “No, of course not, we’re America” was precisely the complacency he wanted to challenge.

Lewis’s answer is clear: Yes. It absolutely can. But Lewis also suggests that “it” doesn’t have to happen. Democracy isn’t destiny, nor is its preservation, nor is its collapse. The future depends on choices made by ordinary people: journalists, politicians, voters, and citizens.

Seeing Clearly

Perhaps It Can’t Happen Here’s greatest gift is its insistence that we see clearly—not through partisan lenses or wishful thinking—but with unflinching honesty about authoritarian patterns and democratic fragility.

The novel refuses the comfort of American exceptionalism—the belief that our history, Constitution, or character immunizes us against authoritarianism. It challenges the assumption that fascism announces itself with obvious symbols and explicit ideology. It rejects the notion that authoritarianism only happens to other countries, in different times, to other people.

Instead, Lewis shows authoritarianism as it actually operates: incrementally, opportunistically, wrapped in familiar symbols and appealing to genuine grievances. It comes with flags and platitudes, promising restoration and security. It exploits democratic processes to destroy democracy. It turns citizens against one another, normalizes the unthinkable, and transforms the inconceivable into the inevitable unless people choose to resist.