It Can´t Happen Here at Deutsches Theater

No sooner was Donald Trump voted president of the United States than sales of three books rocketed: George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, and the almost forgotten political novel by the Nobel Prize winner Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here. Written in 1935 in the wake of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, Lewis’s seemingly far-fetched story depicts the ascent of an American political outsider and populist to president of the United States. His name is Buzz Windrip, and many campaign slogans like “America First” and “Make America Great Again!” are exactly the same as the ones used in Trump’s campaign.
In the story, Windrip wins the 1936 election against Roosevelt and, within a short space of time, transforms the USA into a dictatorship with the support of the “League of Forgotten Men”. As well as infiltrating the justice system, the freedom of the press also falls victim to the new regime, as portrayed through the character of the newspaper publisher Doremus Jessup, who suffers under the repressive measures, first on paper, then physically ...