‘It Can’t Happen Here’, Sinclair Lewis, 1935

"Why are you so afraid of the word ‘Fascism,’ Just a word! And might not be so bad, with all the lazy bums we got panhandling relief nowadays, and living on my income tax and yours—not so worse to have a real Strong Man, like Hitler or Mussolini, and have ‘em really run the country and make America efficient and prosperous again."

Written in 1935 – before WW2, before the Holocaust, before academic study of Fascism, and during a time when America was then divided over which side of the European war it would favour – Sinclair Lewis deftly outlines the easy path the American spirit might follow into Fascism.

"The one thing that most perplexed him was that there could be a dictator seemingly so different from the fervent Hitlers and gesticulating Fascists and the Caesars…"

"He HAS got a few faults, but he's on the side of the side of the plain people, and against all the tight old political machines…"

The Fascism espoused by Windrip is not so much the "Capitalism in Desperation" we better know now, but a very literal National Socialism, where finance and industry are strictly co-opted, not for the broad public benefit, but for the ruling interest.

"This country has gone so flabby that any gang daring enough and unscrupulous enough, and smart enough not to SEEM illegal, can grab hold of the entire government…"

There are nuances – such as deliberate devaluation of the US economy in order that rich financiers can buy up property, or the formation of a specifically funded non-Army militia to be sent into problem areas – which are shockly prescient almost 100 years ahead of time.

"The [economy] suffered because […] importers of American products found it impossible to deal in so skittish a market. Larger industrialists came through with perhaps double the wealth, in real values…"

However, a book written in 1935 was fresh with the Chicago general strikes and a politically charged public; Sinclair predicted strikes and riots across the country within weeks of election. Instead, a slow erosion of understanding of political progress have rendered protestors against Trump as limpid, striving so hard to demonstrate how they are "peaceful protestors", a term which, when applied against Fascism, is only going to be so effective, until someone has to back down.

"A few months ago I thought the slaughter of the Civil War, or the violent agitation of the Abolitionists to be evil. But possibly they HAD to be violent, because easy-going citizens like me couldn't be stirred otherwise."

Echoing the public distribution of Project 2025, Windrip's 15 point plan is outlined openly after he secures the nomination but before winning the election. Among those points are the disenfrancisement of voters (Blacks, Jews, Atheists), the neutering of Congress and the Supreme Court (establishing rule by Executive Order), and the oversight of the central bank by the Presidency.

"He saw in America the struggle was befogged by the fact that the worst Fascist were those who disowned the word "Fascism" and preached enslavement to Capitalism under the style of Constitutional and Traditional Native American Liberty."

If there is a criticism, a differing between prediction and reality, it's that Windrip's dictatorship sheds too quickly too much of the superficial veneer of status quo. Dissolving the 50 states into 8 districts is all very Hunger Games, but it goes against the "Boiled Frogs" logic of slow power-creep and behind the scenes replacement of power structures. Almost halfway into the novel, it pulls the prediction starkly out of the uncanny and into the fantasy.

"He tried to be proud of being a political prisoner. He couldn't. Jail was jail."

So, how does it end? It ends when the charasmatic, bumbling, egotistical, figurehead is deposed in favour of the ruthless, emotionless architect behind the scenes. And Trump is very, very old.