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Lots of people sharing the famous quotation from Sinclair Lewis today: "When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and waving the cross."
It's a good quote, but Lewis never said it. Quick thread on attribution:
What Lewis said, in It Can't Happen Here (1935), was that American fascists would be those “who disowned the word ‘fascism’ and preached enslavement to capitalism under the style of constitutional and traditional native American liberty.”
Lewis also says in the novel that American fascism would be “government of the profits, by the profits, for the profits.” Both good quotes, and both pretty apt to the Trump administration. But the wrapped in a flag and waving the cross?
That probably comes from James Waterman Wise, son of a prominent rabbi, who gave lectures in the late 1930s warning of fascism in America. Different quotations from his lectures were given in the papers at the time and circulated widely.
A distinctly American fascism, Wise said in early 1936, would "probably be 'wrapped up in the American flag and heralded as a plea for liberty and preservation of the constitution.'"
Another newspaper reported a different version a few weeks later. "There is an America which needs fascism," James W Wise said in this version. "The America of power and wealth’ depended on ‘enslaving the masses’ to endure. ‘Do not look for them to raise aloft the swastika,"
... "or to employ any of the popular forms of Fascism" from Europe. Fascism. "may appear in the so-called patriotic orders, such as the American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution" or "it may come wrapped in a flag or a Hearst newspaper."
In 1937, Lewis's then-wife, journalist Dorothy Thompson, offered her own version. "When Americans think of dictators they always think of some foreign model," she said, but an American dictator would be "one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American."
And the American people, Thompson added, "will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of 'O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief!'"
(She was talking about Roosevelt, as it happens, but the warning stands.)
In 1938, Professor Harold Luccock at Yale said: “When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled ‘made in Germany’; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, ‘Americanism.’” This, too, circulated widely.
In 1944, vice president Henry Wallace warned that what would make fascism American-style “really dangerous” was a “purposeful coalition” among crony capitalists, “poisoners of public information,” - ie propagandistic media - and “the K.K.K. type of demagoguery.”
The 1944 Hepburn-Tracy film Keeper of the Flame put it like this: “I saw the face of fascism in my own home: hatred, arrogance, cruelty. I saw what German women were facing. Of course, they didn’t call it fascism. They painted it red, white, and blue, & called it Americanism.”
The point, in other words, is not to find the "right" quote. It is to note how many, many Americans living through fascism tried to warn us that fascism could happen here, & what it would look like when it did. They told us American fascism would look American. That is the point.
PS Luccock had more to say in 1938 btw: “The high-sounding phrase ‘the American way’ will be used by interested groups, intent on profit, to cover a multitude of sins against the American and Christian tradition, such sins as
lawless violence, tear gas and shotguns, denial of civil liberties." He added: "Never, probably, has there been a time when there was a more vigorous effort to surround social and international questions with such a fog of distortion and prejudice and hysterical appeal to fear."
I could keep going. Americans warned about this endlessly during the interwar years, and got called “hysterical” and “alarmist” for their efforts.
Thread by @sarahchurchwell: Lots of people sharing the famous quotation from Sinclair Lewis today: "When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and…
It's a good quote, but Lewis never said it. Quick thread on attribution:
What Lewis said, in It Can't Happen Here (1935), was that American fascists would be those “who disowned the word ‘fascism’ and preached enslavement to capitalism under the style of constitutional and traditional native American liberty.”
Lewis also says in the novel that American fascism would be “government of the profits, by the profits, for the profits.” Both good quotes, and both pretty apt to the Trump administration. But the wrapped in a flag and waving the cross?
That probably comes from James Waterman Wise, son of a prominent rabbi, who gave lectures in the late 1930s warning of fascism in America. Different quotations from his lectures were given in the papers at the time and circulated widely.
A distinctly American fascism, Wise said in early 1936, would "probably be 'wrapped up in the American flag and heralded as a plea for liberty and preservation of the constitution.'"
Another newspaper reported a different version a few weeks later. "There is an America which needs fascism," James W Wise said in this version. "The America of power and wealth’ depended on ‘enslaving the masses’ to endure. ‘Do not look for them to raise aloft the swastika,"
... "or to employ any of the popular forms of Fascism" from Europe. Fascism. "may appear in the so-called patriotic orders, such as the American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution" or "it may come wrapped in a flag or a Hearst newspaper."
In 1937, Lewis's then-wife, journalist Dorothy Thompson, offered her own version. "When Americans think of dictators they always think of some foreign model," she said, but an American dictator would be "one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American."
And the American people, Thompson added, "will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of 'O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief!'"
(She was talking about Roosevelt, as it happens, but the warning stands.)
In 1938, Professor Harold Luccock at Yale said: “When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled ‘made in Germany’; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, ‘Americanism.’” This, too, circulated widely.
In 1944, vice president Henry Wallace warned that what would make fascism American-style “really dangerous” was a “purposeful coalition” among crony capitalists, “poisoners of public information,” - ie propagandistic media - and “the K.K.K. type of demagoguery.”
The 1944 Hepburn-Tracy film Keeper of the Flame put it like this: “I saw the face of fascism in my own home: hatred, arrogance, cruelty. I saw what German women were facing. Of course, they didn’t call it fascism. They painted it red, white, and blue, & called it Americanism.”
The point, in other words, is not to find the "right" quote. It is to note how many, many Americans living through fascism tried to warn us that fascism could happen here, & what it would look like when it did. They told us American fascism would look American. That is the point.
PS Luccock had more to say in 1938 btw: “The high-sounding phrase ‘the American way’ will be used by interested groups, intent on profit, to cover a multitude of sins against the American and Christian tradition, such sins as
lawless violence, tear gas and shotguns, denial of civil liberties." He added: "Never, probably, has there been a time when there was a more vigorous effort to surround social and international questions with such a fog of distortion and prejudice and hysterical appeal to fear."
I could keep going. Americans warned about this endlessly during the interwar years, and got called “hysterical” and “alarmist” for their efforts.
Thread by @sarahchurchwell: Lots of people sharing the famous quotation from Sinclair Lewis today: "When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and…
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