It Can't Happen Here
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- The Pet Shop Boys's film of a similar name can be found at It Couldn't Happen Here.
Image:Itcanthappenhere.jpg It Can't Happen Here is a satirical political novel by Sinclair Lewis, published in 1935. It features newspaperman Doremus Jessup struggling against the fascist regime of President Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, who was modeled either on Gerald B. Winrod, an evangelist who held far-right political points of view earning him the nickname "The Jayhawk Nazi", or on Huey Long. It serves as a warning that political movements akin to Fascism or Nazism can come to power in countries such as the United States when people blindly support their leaders. It is thought to have inspired both Philip K. Dick's SF novel The Man in the High Castle and Philip Roth's recent The Plot Against America.
Trivia
Inspired by the book, director–producer Kenneth Johnson wrote an adaptation titled Storm Warnings, in 1982. The script was presented to NBC, for production as a television mini-series, but the NBC executives rejected the initial version, claiming it was too 'cerebral' for the average American viewer. To make the script more marketable, the American fascists were re-cast as anthropophagic extraterrestrials, taking the story into the realm of science fiction. The new, re-cast story was the mini-series V, which premiered on May 3 1983.
External links
- Book review
- It Can't Happen Here from Australian Project Gutenburg
- Public Enemy by Joe Keohane, Boston Globe, December 18, 2005.