What I’m Reading: "American Midnight"

Nobel Prize winning author Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) is best known for his novels Main Street (1920), Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), Elmer Gantry (1927), Dodsworth (1929)—and It Can't Happen Here (1935). 

Sinclair Lewis with his wife,
Dorothy Thompson (1893-1961).  

Thompson was known as the

"First Lady of American Journalism"

 and in 1939 was recognized by Time 

as equal in influence to Eleanor Roosvelt.  

In 1934 following her depiction

of Adolf Hitler in her book I Saw Hitler

she became the first American journalist

expelled from Nazi Germany.  

In a Harper's Magazine article in

December 1934 she described Hitler:  

"He is formless, almost faceless, a man 

whose countenance is a caricature, a man

whose framework seems cartilaginous,

without bones.  He is inconsequent

and voluble, ill poised and insecure.  

He is the very prototype of the little man."

In It Can’t Happen Here, a crass, bombastic, and narcissistic conman named Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip defeats incumbent President Franklin Roosevelt for the Democratic presidential nomination and defeats the Republican candidate through a populist campaign, promising to restore American greatness and prosperity while portraying himself as the champion of "the forgotten man" and of "traditional American values.”  Windrip outlaws dissent, incarcerates political enemies, and encourages vigilante and militia groups to act on his behalf.  Windrip's administration curtails minority and women's rights.  He eliminates individual states by subdividing the country into administrative sectors managed by prominent, wealthy businessmen or leaders of vigilante groups.

Writing in 1935, Lewis was obviously aware of the rise of the fascist dictatorships in Europe—and of the growing popularity of fascism and the Nazi Party in the United States at the time.  An affinity for autocracy among Americans, however, did not suddenly appear out of nowhere in the 1930s.  Adam Hochschild’s American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis chronicles the darkness that descended upon American democracy during World War I and the years immediately after.

At President Woodrow Wilson’s request, the U.S, Congress declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917.  Hochschild contends that the Wilson administration and the Congress believed that the war needed to be fought not only abroad but domestically, resulting in a blatant disregard for the rule of law and democratic norms and flagrant violations of the U.S. Constitution. 

• Legislation allowed the government to censor the publication of “objectional content” in the cause of national security.  Reporting on the war and the 1918–1920 flu pandemic was strictly controlled.  Hundreds of newspapers, periodical and newsletters were driven out of business for being too pacifist, pro-German, pro-Socialist, pro-immigrant, pro-Jewish, or pro-Black.  Book banning increased dramatically.      
• An intelligence gathering network was created to spy on American citizens while vigilante and militia groups were given quasi-official status with the power to round up anyone suspected of disloyalty.  These groups conducted raids and used violence with impunity.  Attacks on those not considered American enough—Jews, Blacks, immigrants, labor unions, and others—were commonplace.   
• Thousands of U.S. citizens were arrested (and often abused and tortured in prison) for voicing “objectional opinions”—some for speaking in public, some for speaking only in their own homes; some for expressing their religious beliefs (think Quaker pacifists); some for simply speaking in their native German without their accusers actually knowing what they were saying.    
• Legislation was introduced to end birthright citizenship—along with legislation to deport ALL immigrants, even those who had become U.S. citizens.   State and local legislation prohibited speaking in any language other than “American” at any meeting, public or private, and banned teaching any modern foreign language in public schools.
• The economic gains that women had made by filling the void created by sending 2 million men to Europe were reversed as the government promoted a return “traditional gender roles” and encouraged employers to push women out of the workforce.

It can’t happen here?  It has happened here during what Hochschild calls “democracy's forgotten crisis.”  In 1930, Sinclair Lewis became the first writer from the United States to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.  In his acceptance speech, Lewis lamented that “… in America most of us—not readers alone, but even writers—are still afraid of any literature which is not a glorification of everything American …”   We erase history by not teaching it, by not writing about it, by not reading about it.  By forgetting it.