Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in It Can’t Happen Here, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
American Fascism
Liberalism and Tolerance
Morality and Resistance
Political Communication and Mass Media
Summary
Analysis
In an epigraph from Zero Hour, Buzz Windrip writes that inflation is a myth because the U.S. has so many natural resources. The chapter begins by listing Windrip’s supporters. They include the farmers, professionals, and unemployed people suffering in the Depression. There are also veterans, preachers, the KKK, union leaders, dishonest lawyers, pious prohibitionists, and anti-bank millionaires, all looking for political favors. Many foolish intellectuals, like Upton Sinclair, even think that Windrip will save the U.S. economy from the Depression. Major newspapers like The New York Times oppose Windrip, but religious publications have taken up his cause. So have several European political and military leaders, and of course, Mrs. Adelaide Tarr Gimmitch.
With the exception of the idealistic intellectuals like Sinclair and Gimmitch, Windrip’s motley crew of supporters share no common political ideology or economic interests. In fact, they don’t seem to have any underlying principles at all. Instead, all that unites them is greed: they only care about whether they will personally benefit from Windrip’s regime (and not about their fellow Americans or their country’s overall trajectory). This is one example of how Lewis believed that fascism could easily adapt to the U.S.’s individualistic culture. It also foreshadows how society starts breaking down later in the novel, as most Americans look out for nobody but themselves.
Themes
Buzz Windrip and his team—Bishop Prang, Senator Porkwood, and Colonel Osceola Luthorne—give constant radio addresses and take a 40-day campaign trip around the country on a luxury train. Windrip gives hundreds of speeches and meets about two million people. Lee Sarason oversees Windrip’s public relations team, an army of young, attractive women who answer calls and letters.
Lewis emphasizes how the mechanics of Windrip’s campaign fundamentally contradict his persona. While he acts like a spontaneous common man, in reality, he lives in opulence and carefully plans all of his appearances. Everyone he meets feels like he’s putting on a special performance just for them, but in reality, he’s repeating the same act over and over—to the point of mass-producing it.
Themes
Colonel Haik travels around the country, making surprise appearances in random places like a copper mine and a Massachusetts fishing village. Haik grew up in a privileged Tennessee family, then spent his career practicing law in the rural west and dabbling in military training. Finally, Dr. Hector Macgoblin speaks to educators, professional associations, and cultural groups. At a town in Alabama, when Macgoblin proudly declares that Black people are culturally inferior to white people, a mob of Black veterans runs him out of town. Doremus Jessup sees Windrip’s campaign as “Revolution in terms of Rotary.”
Like Windrip, Haik works hard to appear spontaneous and in touch with common working people—but it’s all a carefully manufactured illusion. Meanwhile, Macgoblin’s racist speech shows how much of Windrip’s appeal to working-class white voters depends on helping them feel superior to other groups. Thus, rather than actually helping his supporters, Windrip can merely repress minority groups to make these supporters feel powerful and maintain their support.
Themes
