History Literature / ItCantHappenHere

* EmergencyAuthority: President Windrip declares a state of emergency (or the 1930s equivalent expression) immediately after taking office and dismisses Congress & the Supreme Court and suspends the Constitution, becoming the dictator of the USA. (Needless to say [[IronicEpisodeTitle It Happens Here]].)

* TheMigration: American refugees have been steadily pouring into Canada.

''It Can't Happen Here'' is a speculative fiction novel written by Creator/SinclairLewis and published in 1935. In the novel, the United States succumbs to a totalitarian government headed by Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, a charismatic politician who wins over the voters through populism and empty promises. With his cadre of advisors and a brutal militia of Minute Men (M.M.s), Windrip oversees a new era of poverty, oppression, and fear. Women and minorities are stripped of their rights, dissent is outlawed, and those who displease the government are imprisoned in concentration camps or killed.

* HistoricalDomainCharacter: Several real-life public figures of the '30s (including UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt, UsefulNotes/HueyLong, and Father Coughlin) are mentioned in passing.
** Which is rather interesting, when you consider that characters like Windrip and Bishop Prang are clearly intended as [[NoCelebritiesWereHarmed stand-ins]] for people like Long and Coughlin.

* CrappyHolidays: Christmas under Corpoism is, unsurprisingly, a decidedly non-joyful affair for the Jessup family.

--> ...he denounced all "Fascism" and "Nazi-ism," so that most of the Republicans who were afraid of Democratic Fascism, and all the Democrats who were afraid of Republican Fascism, were ready to vote for him.

* TwistedChristmas: The Yuletide under Corpoism is, unsurprisingly, a decidedly non-joyful affair for the Jessup family.
-->To make the holiday as good an imitation of mirth as possible, they were very noisy, but their holly, their tinsel stars on a tall pine tree, their family devotion in a serene old house in a little town, was no different at heart from despairing drunkenness in the city night. Doremus reflected that it might have been just as well for all of them to get drunk and let themselves go, elbows on slopped café tables, as to toil at this pretense of domestic bliss. He now had another thing for which to hate the Corpos—for stealing the secure affection of Christmas.

* CrappyHolidays: Unsurprisingly, Christmas under Corpoism is a decidedly non-joyful affair for the Jessup family.
-->To make the holiday as good an imitation of mirth as possible, they were very noisy, but their holly, their tinsel stars on a tall pine tree, their family devotion in a serene old house in a little town, was no different at heart from despairing drunkenness in the city night. Doremus reflected that it might have been just as well for all of them to get drunk and let themselves go, elbows on slopped café tables, as to toil at this pretense of domestic bliss. He now had another thing for which to hate the Corpos—for stealing the secure affection of Christmas.

* WickedCultured:

* TheStarscream: Sarason is this to Windup. Haik is later this to Sarason.

* TheStarscream: Sarason is this to Windrip. Haik is later this to Sarason.

* DepravedHomosexual: Lee Sarason and the handsome M.M.s he surrounds himself with are

** Commander Effingham Swan is more of a WickedCultured version.

* FauxAffablyEvil: Buzz Windrip, the folksy, good-humored fascist dictator.

* FauxAffablyEvil: Commander Effingham Swan is this as well as WickedCultured.

* DepravedHomosexual: Lee Sarason and the handsome M.M.s he surrounds himself with.

-->"So, after the first gay eruptions of rioting, the revolt slowed up. Neither the Corpos nor many of their opponents knew enough to formulate a clear, sure theory of self-government, or irresistibly resolve to engage in the sore labor of fitting themselves for freedom ... Even yet, after Windrip, most of the easy-going descendants of the wisecracking Benjamin Franklin had not learned that Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death" meant anything more than a high-school yell or a cigarette slogan."

-->"They were the idealists of Corpoism, and there were plenty of them, along with the bullies and swindlers; they were the men and women who, in 1935 and 1936, had turned to Windrip & Co., not as perfect, but as the most probably saviors of the country from, on one hand, domination by Moscow and, on the other hand, the slack indolence, the lack of decent pride of half the American youth ... They were proud of new Corpo roads, hospitals, television stations, aeroplace lines; they were touched by processions of the Corpo Youth, whose faced were exalted with pride in the myths of Corpo heroism and clean Spartan strength and the semi-divinity of the all-protecting Father, President Windrip."

* ReassignedToAntarctica: When President-Elect Windrip announces his selections for diplomatic posts.

-->"And still Doremus goes on in the red sunrise, for a Doremus Jessup can never die."

* UndergroundRailroad: How many refugees flee to Canada including Doremus.

It inspired the sci-fi series ''Series/{{V|1983}}''. Not to be confused with the [[Film/ItHappenedHere British alternate history film based on a similar premise]].