In recent weeks, I have seen several references to this phrase, attributed to Sinclair Lewis: “When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” I thought it might have come from either It Can’t Happen Here or Elmer Gantry. Not being sure, and not having a photographic memory of books I read half a century ago, I googled the phrase. I discovered the Sinclair Lewis Society in Illinois, and its website says this:
Here’s our most asked question:
Q: Did Sinclair Lewis say, “When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross”?
A: This quote sounds like something Sinclair Lewis might have said or written, but we’ve never been able to find this exact quote. Here are passages from two novels Lewis wrote that are similar to the quote attributed to him.
From It Can’t Happen Here: “But he saw too that in America the struggle was befogged by the fact that the worst Fascists were they who disowned the word ‘Fascism’ and preached enslavement to Capitalism under the style of Constitutional and Traditional Native American Liberty.”
From Gideon Planish: “I just wish people wouldn’t quote Lincoln or the Bible, or hang out the flag or the cross, to cover up something that belongs more to the bank-book and the three golden balls.”
There was also a play called Strangers in the late 1970s which had a similar quote, but no one, including one of Lewis’s biographers, Richard Lingeman, has ever been able to locate the original citation.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s close enough. Not an exact quote, but a paraphrasing that means the same thing
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We can’t be lazy about things like this because they an set off an unintended chain of rhetorical dominoes.
For example, Lincoln didn’t begin the Gettysburg Address with “Eighty seven years ago…” Words matter. Correct citations matter.
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“When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”
It’s a great quote, no matter who said it. And so true.
Capitalism is the true American religion. Which I am fine with, it works for the most part. But full blown Libertarian capitalism, unregulated, the wild wild west, privatized everything, no thanks, I’ll pass on that.
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In this sentiment, please read the comments of the Imam Hussan Guillet at the memorial of the victims of the recent shooting at the mosque in Quebec: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/in-his-own-words-imam-hassan-guillet-s-address-at-quebec-city-funeral-for-3-mosque-victims-1.3966917
And here is a short video clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1ux4qNbiKk
Once again our Canadian friend and neighbors demonstrate a moral clarity we, in the U.S., seem unable to achieve.
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We have a very dangerous and erratic demagogue with authoritarian tendencies as “our” president. Not good. Truth and facts are being spat upon and decimated. We have a far right wing movement (the GOP) salivating at the prospect of returning the US to 1929, with robber barons, deregulation, no regulations, bank failures and marginalized unions. We had hundreds of bank failures in the wake of the great recession of 2008.
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Diane: It rightly matters: WHO said WHAT, to people who are keeping track of such quotes and biographies. However, WHAT is said is still highly significant to us in-the-now and as we go forward. Further, we can say, whether the writer knew it or not, that the writer was encouraging a reasonable skepticism issuing in further thought about such statements and catch-quotes.
That being said, the same applies to the quote from “It Can’t Happen Here:” “But he saw too that in America the struggle was befogged by the fact that the worst Fascists were they who disowned the word ‘Fascism’ and preached enslavement to Capitalism under the style of Constitutional and Traditional Native American Liberty.”
Further, to these quotes I say: now THERE’S a false set of choices if I ever saw one. For instance, I don’t “preach” but certainly DO call into question anyone’s “enslavement to Capitalism” (or religious ideology) especially when it erases or bypasses an allegiance to the Rule of Law and Separation of Powers and, not the style, but the substance of a Constitutional Democracy (we’re back to public education here). This is so even and especially in the name of some religious ideology whose proponents (DeVos for example), in their arrogance and hubris, desire to step beyond their moral-political borders where they live (however gated or siloed) with the rest of us to take the place and assume the voice of God.
And BTW, “Traditional American Liberty” is about human liberty (ALL human liberty), as is neatly expressed in its general form in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (as experimental). But that Liberty is not merely “native” to our geography or that same political national mythology understood wrongly as just another “national” or “patriotic” tribe trying to wipe out other tribes who harbor their own patriots.
Here are two more quotes to ponder: “Intelligence is invisible to those who have none;” and I would add in today’s climate, to those who have self-blinded by turning away from their own. The quote is by Arthur Schopenhauer who also said: “Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the universe.”
In my view, that last quote should be burned into the cross-post of every schoolroom door in the world–because: it’s a singular wedge against closed-mindedness where any of us MIGHT consider that others MAY BE speaking from a different horizon of thought; it’s a wedge against running away from the discomfort of immediately-felt “cognitive dissonance;” and it’s a wedge against any kind of anti-other, especially when these are the singular criteria used for ending open discourse.
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Frank Zappa (who I’ve recently have been listening to excessively just to stay grounded) addressed this very matter with an exquisite little ditty called “When The Lie’s So Big.”
It first appeared on 1988’s Broadway The Hard way, then again on last year’s Frank Zappa for President.
The opening lines are…
“They got lies so big
They don’t make a noise
They tell ’em so well
Like a secret disease
That makes you go numb
With a big ol’ lie
And a flag and a pie
And a mom and a bible
Most folks are just liable
To buy any line
Any place, any time
When the lie’s so big
As in Robertson’s case,
(that sinister face
Behind all the Jesus hurrah)
Could result in the end
To a worrisome trend
In which every American
Not ‘born again’
Could be punished in cruel and unusual ways
By this treacherous cretin
Who tells everyone
That he’s Jesus’ best friend”
One can only imagine how Frank would be gleaning material from the so-called president.
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dezerov,
Maybe you could mail a copy of the lyrics to Kellyanne Conway.
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I’d use snail mail rather than e-mail! ;{)>
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I’ve often thought that the following quote from “Inherit the Wind” echoes the same idea:
Henry Drummond: Can’t you understand? That if you take a law like evolution and you make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools? And tomorrow you may make it a crime to read about it. And soon you may ban books and newspapers. And then you may turn Catholic against Protestant, and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the mind of man. If you can do one, you can do the other. Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, your Honor, with banners flying and with drums beating we’ll be marching backward, BACKWARD, through the glorious ages of that Sixteenth Century when bigots burned the man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind!
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formercheesehead: A needed distinction: We need not ban, but we CAN and do bracket: that is, teach under adequate headings: For instance, we can teach ABOUT fascism and democracy in a history class or political philosophy, and ABOUT Islam and/or Christianity (et al) in a comparative religions class, or ABOUT creationism and its conflict with the sciences. What is rightly banned in the secular academy is to isolate all teaching under the rubric: THIS is the only true or best political-religious way to live and worship.” Many secular academies, however, do foster study and organization groups under specific political and religious formal orders, just like they do music or art or techno-groups.
On the other hand, in a specifically-religious school, they do teach to their own faith and ideology. Whether THEY omit or ban the more general “bracketing” treatment of issues that are close to their hearts is another question altogether.
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I’ve watched with some interest the surge in sales of “1984,” but I think Sinclair Lewis’s book “It Can’t Happen Here” is a much more accurate portrayal–sans the the paramilitaries, which I have no doubt Steve Bannon fantasizes about. And I think Philip Roth’s “The Plot Against America” probably ought to see a similar surge in sales if people want a better portrait of fascism in the United States.
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In the 1920’s, Mussolini’s corporately controlled fascists state in Italy was very popular among a lot of American’s, especially the industrialists, including Senator Prescott Bush, George W Bush’s grandfather. They saw it as a more efficient form of government and thought that it should be copied here. The same group of industrialists tied to overthrow President Roosevelt in 1933 with a coup, and helped Hitler financially until America entered WW2.
With ALEC, that is what we have today, a corporately controlled state, Mussolini’s original fascism. It took the industrialist nearly a century to succeed. But slowly over time. they have finally achieved it.
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A history i was familiar with in the vaguest of manners, Actually passed down from my father In the 1960s and one that I did not know the details of till the 1990’s . Says a lot about the way American
history is not taught or shall we say what is allowed to be taught of the power structure of the nation.
Now we have a slightly different crisis, economic circumstance has allowed the election of a fascist. . One who has shown a compulsion
to not follow any democratic norms. Are there any Republican senators who will do what Butler did for the nation?
Resist while we still can. Call your senators and demand impeachment the first time he commits an impeachable offense. In fact don’t wait call tomorrow. So far he has been careful to not step over the line. But with his unstable personality he will issue a tweet that encourages a government employee to violate a judges order and it doesn’t take much. Andrew Johnson was impeached for improperly firing the Secretary of war .
Corporate America in this case may actually wind up on the right side of history. Not for nothing you don’t think Boeing or Ford or Apple like kissing Trumps ass. The pressure will be on on those senators to end this abhorrent aberration.
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I didn’t discover the real story until I moved out of the country and got the real edition of history. I heard a lot about Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, but nothing about America’s industrialists financing Hitler into power. That and Butler are two big events to conveniently leave out of America’s history books, it’s very curious.
Since the industrialists weren’t able to defeat Roosevelt’s regulatory state and social programs politically, in the 50’s they started sponsoring pastors around the country to preach a message that would undermine them religiously. Their ultimate goal was to turn America into a corporately controlled theocracy.
http://www.npr.org/2015/03/30/396365659/how-one-nation-didnt-become-under-god-until-the-50s-religious-revival
The corporate world joined forces with the religious world to defeat the democratic world. Now the corporate and religious worlds are struggling for control.
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I always thought the source of the fascism/Americanism quote was Huey Long, and cited it from time to time, but there is the problem that no one can find a source for Long saying it. I did find this reference. “When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled ‘made in Germany’; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, ‘Americanism’” – An uncredited New York Times reporter covering Halford E. Luccock in an article published September 12, 1938. Luccock was a Methodist minister and Yale professor, and apparently also wrote the quote in one or two of his books. So he seems to be the source.
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Thanks, Jay.
Whatever the source, we see the new demagoguery wrapped in the flag and the cross.
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Sinclair Lewis did describe the current president quite accurately in It Can’t Happen Here, and I quote:
“The Senator was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his “ideas” almost idiotic, while his celebrated piety was that of a traveling salesman for church furniture, and his yet more celebrated humor the sly cynicism of a country store.”
He also nails the current edition of the Republican Party’s message to their white, working class voters (quoting from the same work):
“Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.”
Sadly, these days I am feeling much like Lewis’ protagonist, Carol Kennicott:
“She was snatched back from a dream of far countries, and found herself on Main Street.”
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You seem to be as much of a Lewis junky as me. I tell people not to get obsessed by “It Can’t Happen Here” (which, to me, has a great premise, but a weak ending/follow through). Do you have any thoughts about “Kingsblood Royal,” which is much more relevant to me today?
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GregB, yes I am a Lewis junky. I wish Babbitt was required reading in all our schools but I’m not holding my breath. I agree with you about Kingsblood Royal which is amazing for its time and would have a great impact today on race relations if it could somehow get into the hands of our young people but, again, I’m not hopeful that political correctness will allow that. Lewis’ life, and his alcoholism, was sad and I agree that It Cant Happen Here ultimately flails around to reach its ending but the message for today and how fascism comes to America is spot on. And I always find his writing to be so funny. I particularly enjoy Dodsworth and wish that was better known today. We are living in the 1920s all over again.
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You gave yourself away with the reference to Carol Kennicott. Let’s hope all the hoopla around “It Can’t…” will lead to a Lewis revival. Completely with you on Babbitt and Dodsworth. I also recommend Arrowsmith to very doc and researcher I meet. My Library of America volumes are well worn. Also been digging around for Dorothy Thompson stories. She’s more relevant with every passing day.
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Perhaps the question could be rephrased as “When did it first appear in print?”
That might be as close as we can get.
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