Tag Archives: It Can't Happen Here

Revisiting “It Can’t Happen Here”

By Robin Bates | Published: February 27, 2024

Mother Jones columnist David Corn finds increasing relevance in Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel “It Can’t Happen Here.”

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“Citizen Kane” Foretells Trump

By Robin Bates | Published: November 22, 2020

“Citizen Kane” is Trump’s favorite movie. It matches up only too well with his presidency.

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Novels That Predicted a Trump

By Robin Bates | Published: August 30, 2020

Lewis’s “It Can’t Happen Here” and Roth’s “Plot against America” do a very good job of predicting a Donald Trump.

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Did Western Liberalism Give Us Trump?

By Robin Bates | Published: December 26, 2016

Conservative columnist Ross Douthat suggests that, to understand Trump’s rise, we look not to novels like Sinclair’s “It Can Happen Here” and Roth’s “Plot against America” and instead turn to works by French novelist Michel Houellebecq. These helps us understand the crisis of Western liberalism, which Douthat sees as the major culprit.

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How Trump Is Changing the Discourse

By Robin Bates | Published: May 12, 2016

Adam Gopnik of “New Yorker” and Andrew Sullivan of “New York” are very, very frightened by the rise of Trump. As they explain why, they quote Tom Stoppard, Sinclair Lewis, Mark Twain, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Plato.

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Could Fascism Happen Here?

By Robin Bates | Published: February 2, 2016

Sinclair Lewis’s “It Can’t Happen Here,” about the election of a fascist in a 1930s presidential election, seems suddenly relevant again. The novel turns 80-years-old this year.

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