Do all read the 1935 novel "It can't happen here", by Sinclair Lewis. It is on amazon It was written when dictators were emerging in various parts of the world, but not, that far, in the democratic UK and USA. The blurb on the back of the recently re-issued Penguin edition offers this brief synopsis: ‘A vain, outlandish, anti-immigrant demagogue runs for President of the United States … and wins.’
The campaign of the fictional candidate to win the support of traditionally patriotic citizens while casting an ethnic group as the downful of the great US of A, the backing of various reactionary figures in the church and the military, the wish to return to the "old values" when men were men, and women and n*****s had no vote and kept out of important affairs, the use and expansion of presidential powers to make executive decisions in a manufactured "emergency situation", the casting out of anyone who dare disagree, it is all there, and all achieved in a perfectly legitimate manner.
It starts rather slowly (it was written 82 years ago), so those who like their reading to be short and pithy will lose patience, but I am finding it "verrrrry interesting"
Some people didn't like the book at all, but most did , and
a couple of the reviews said,
"This is a really thought provoking novel about listening to false promises and accepting those attacks on freedom which are taken for granted, until they are no longer there." and
"The promise of $5,000 for every man, scapegoating of Jews & Negros, a return to traditional roles for women, fear and war-mongering as political tools (later war), creation of a private militia which is then empowered by the state upon election, massive expansion of military, rhetoric (and action) against communism and fascism yet the adoption of policies like central control over banking and utilities, slave-like labor camps for the unemployed (hired out to private companies cheap, whom then fired their own employees), concentration camps for political prisoners, detention of Supreme Court and Federal Judges and rendering of Congress as merely advisory etc"
and
"There is actually one parallel between Windrip and Trump which was not inevitable, and does seem coincidental at the least. Windrip is no genius - he is no Hitler or Mussolini or Stalin. Instead, he is a big child, drunk on the attention of crowds with charisma but no patience for actual governance . . . . "
