Before the threat of radical Islam, there was the threat of the radical right. Made entirely in America. We think that right wing revolution can’t happen here. But the unimaginable does happen here in three daring counter-factual novels by Jack London, Sinclair Lewis and Philip Roth. The usual suspects, alien ideologues, are nowhere to be seen. Those frightening “others”, who have had different names throughout history, do not make “It” happen.In The "Iron Heel", a proto-fascist Oligarchy precipitates the overthrow of the elected government by throwing a bomb in the House of Representatives in 1913. “It” happens again in 1936 when elected President Buzz Windrip shows his true colors as a fascist in "It Can’t Happen Here" and again in 1940 when Charles Lindbergh, in "The Plot Against America", acting on the same sympathies, defeats FDR. These catastrophes accompany a century of war and economic dislocation that are in the history books and help to make the timing of right wing takeovers plausible. "The Iron Heel" left its imprint on 1984 and has itself been called America’s "1984". "It Can’t Happen Here" was published just before FDR’s second term when the country was in deep depression and Hitler’s rise had barely begun. "The Plot Against America" overlaps with this novel and takes us into the 1940s. All three novels underscore the historical strengths of native right wing movements. Fascism did not happen here, but these novels powerfully evoke its dark potential in American life. Read Less