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Chapter 15
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 Zero Hour, Buzz Windrip writes that he doesn’t really want to be the president—just to serve the people. The chapter begins with a description of Buck Titus’s small, bare, but well-kept farmhouse in the woods, which Doremus Jessup visits periodically to talk politics. In the Informer, Jessup writes that Windrip’s hysterical dictatorship won’t last. He’s afraid of being arrested, but he still thinks that “it can’t happen here.” With his “earthy American sense of humor,” Windrip is very different from European fascists—but Jessup doesn’t know whether this is a good or bad sign. After the inauguration, Lorinda Pike also starts visiting Titus’s house—she often argues passionately with him about literature.
Windrip’s epigraph again shows how, by blurring the line between the public interest and his own private interest, he fools the American people into thinking that his selfish actions are actually for their own benefit. This shows why critical thinking is essential for a healthy democracy: people like Doremus Jessup can help alert the public to dishonest political tactics by showing how leaders’ promises don’t line up with their actions. Nevertheless, despite his education, knowledge, and experience, Jessup still struggles to make sense of the dictatorship. Of course, Lewis thinks that his readers will share this difficulty: they will struggle to identify fascism when it takes on distinctly American cultural traits, like an “earthy American sense of humor.”
Themes
By the end of February, Windrip is still in power. The Minute Men have violently repressed strikes and protests all around the country, half the Supreme Court has been replaced, and many congressmen are still in jail. Windrip’s allies are winning enormous government contracts, and there are no more U.S. states—just eight huge provinces (which are divided into districts and countries). Thus, Doremus Jessup now lives in “Northeastern Province, District Three, County B, township of Beulah.” Many Americans are frustrated to lose their states—but forget that they’ve never received their promised $5,000 a year.
Windrip consolidates power both through violence and by changing the structure of the government. Pro-democracy activists clearly are resisting Windrip, but he’s winning the battle against them. This is largely because Windrip can control the Minute Men nationwide, while the activists and dissenters aren’t unified and don’t have clear political goals. By reorganizing the U.S. into provinces and districts, Windrip replaces the old federal system with a unitary system in which everyone answers directly to him. In other words, he gives himself even more power by taking away the states’ autonomy.
Themes
Colonel Dewey Haik becomes commissioner of the Northeastern Province, while the slick ex-governor John Sullivan Reek becomes the commissioner of District Three. Reek orders all of the district’s journalists to meet him at the district headquarters, the former Dartmouth College campus in Hanover. Before Doremus Jessup leaves to attend, Sissy, Julian Falck, Buck Titus, and Lorinda Pike write him a rhyming poem about how dreadful Haik and Reek are. On his drive over, Jessup sees hundreds of Windrip propaganda billboards, all sponsored by major corporations. When he arrives, several old men tell him that the Minute Men took their jobs, and the Minute Men are guarding the whole campus.
The fate of Dartmouth’s campus is a metaphor for how fascism replaces free thought and critical inquiry (the university) with repression and propaganda (the government offices). Of course, this metaphor foreshadows the future of Jessup’s career as a journalist—after all, he’s going to Hanover to learn about the government censors’ plans for his newspaper. The propaganda billboards he sees on the way strongly suggest that he will no longer be able to publish his critical, independent editorials.
Themes
At the conference, Commissioner Reek announces that all journalists should contact the government directly for all news, rather than asking its dishonest, unreliable opponents. Then, Reek introduces District Three’s four county commissioners: an elderly lawyer, a spirited clergyman, a shy laborer, and for Doremus Jessup’s county, Minute Men battalion leader Shad Ledue. Ledue calls Jessup a fool who doesn’t understand economics, but promises not to give Jessup any trouble if “he behaves himself!”
In addition to losing his independence as a writer and editor, Jessup learns that Shad Ledue, his petty nemesis, will now have practically absolute power over his life and work. The reader already knows that from Jessup’s perspective, Ledue is rude, foolish, and vindictive. By showing the administration give Ledue so much power, then, Lewis both creates a conflict for his protagonist and highlights how authoritarian governments create perverse incentives and promote corrupt governance at every level of society.
Themes
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