It Will Be Called Americanism

There is a quote commonly attributed to Sinclair Lewis: “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.” But to my knowledge there’s no citation behind that quote.

What I did find, though, is this New York Times summary of a sermon preached by Methodist minister Howard E. Luccock, at Riverside Church in New York City on 11 September 1938.

DISGUISED FASCISM SEEN AS A MENACE

Prof. Luccock Warns That It Will Bear the Misleading Label ‘Americanism’

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,” Professor Halford E. Luccock of the Divinity School of Yale University said yesterday morning n a sermon at the Riverside Church, Riverside Drive and 122d Street.

“The high-sounding phrase ‘the American way’ will be used by interested groups, intent on profit, to cover a multitude of sins against the American and Christian tradition, such sins as lawless violence, tear gas and shotguns, denial of civil liberties,” he said. “There is an obligation resting on us all to dedicate our minds to the hard task of thinking in terms of Christian objectives and values, so that we may be saved from confusion.

“For never, probably, has there been a time when there was a more vigorous effort to surround social and international questions with such a fog of distortion and prejudice and hysterical appeal to fear. We have touched a new low in a Congressional investigation this Summer, used by some participating in it to whip up fear and prejudice against many causes of human welfare, such as a concern for peace and the rights of labor to bargain collectively.”

Professor Luccock, who preached on the theme “Keeping Life Out of Confusion,” continued:

“The old prayer in the Psalms, ‘Let me never be put to confusion,’ seems a strange one in a day when there seems to be little else but confusion in a puzzled world. We ought to recognize that uncertainty of mind is not all a bad thing. It s a sign that our mind is still alive, still sensitive. If you are not at all confused in this day you are dead mentally and spiritually.

“There is, of course, the peace of the cemetery. If you want that, you can have it. But you will pay for such complacent serenity with blind eyes which do not see the world’s fear and agony; with deaf ears, into which the still sad music of humanity never comes; with deadened nerves and unsensitized conscience.

“We will never be brought to confusion, even in such a baffling and muddled world as ours, if we have a faith in a God of love as the ultimate power in the universe. The words ‘God is love’ have this deep meaning: That everything that is against love is ultimately doomed and damned.”

Just to verify that citation: nytimes.com/1938/09/12/archives/disguised-fascism-seen-as-a-menace-prof-luccock-warns-that-it-will.html

Cf.: wikipedia.org/wiki/Halford_E._Luccock

And maybe it’s interesting that from the ideological opposite pole, the same observation was made by a prominent Communist in the Soviet Union:

“It is a peculiarity of the development of American fascism that at the present stage it comes forward principally in the guise of an opposition to fascism, which it accuses of being an ‘un-American’ trend imported from abroad. In contradistinction to German fascism, which acts under anti-constitutional slogans, American fascism tries to portray itself as the custodian of the Constitution and ‘American democracy.’ It does not as yet represent a directly menacing force… Fascism in America will attempt to advance under the banner of Americanism and anti-Fascism.”
– Georgi Dimitrov (1882-1949). Seventh Congress of the Comintern, Moscow, August 2, 1935