La conjura contra America (The Plot Against America) Book

Israel didn't exist yet, six million European Jews hadn't yet ceased to exist, and the local relevance of distant Palestine (under British mandate since the 1918 dissolution by the victorious Allies of the last far-flung provinces of the defunct Ottoman Empire) was a mystery to me…I pledged allegiance to the flag of our homeland every morning at school. I sang of its marvels with my classmates at assembly programs. I eagerly observed its national holidays, and without giving second thought to my affinity for Fourth of July fireworks or the Thanksgiving turkey or the Decoration Day double-header. Our Homeland was America.
Then the Republicans nominated Lindbergh and everything changed. The three most important things in real estate may be location, location, and location, but when it comes to book reviewing, an argument can certainly be made that the three most important things are timing, timing and timing. A review of this book written in 2004, when the book was published, would have been a lot different from a review written in May, 2017, when Philip Roth's frightening description of the arrival of fascism in the USA seems to be coming to fruition before our eyes.


Philip Roth - image from Salon.com

Since the election of one Donald J Trump, there has been a booming business in books about fascism, with a particular interest in what it might look like here in the USA. There are plenty out there that deal with post apocalypse landscapes, and there is certainly the possibility that those might offer a glimpse into our future. But until Swamp Thing opts to launch, there are somewhat lesser scenarios to be considered. Orwell's 1984 saw a huge boost in sales after the election. Sinclair Lewis's ironically titled satire, It Can't Happen Here, also found a new generation of readers. A more recent addition to the group is Philip Roth's The Plot Against America. This 2004 tale has a lot of creepy resonance with extant conditions in the USA of 2017. Substitute an Islamic family today for the Jewish one in Roth's alt-world to make it really vibrate.


John Turturro as Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf - image from IMDB

Roth was inspired to write the book when he read in Arthur Schlesinger's autobiography that the more lunatic fringe of the Republican Party had wanted Lindbergh to run. The Plot Against America is an alternate reality scenario in which the GOP does indeed nominate the wildly popular Charles Lindbergh to run against FDR in Roosevelt's 1940 attempt to gain a third term. Flogging a simplistic isolationist policy (Vote for Lindbergh or Vote for War), Lucky Lindy is elected. [One could argue that Hilary was running for Obama's third term, so there is a bit of match-up there. And you can't get much more isolationist than promising to build a wall, so a larger matchup in that.]

As with the real Lindbergh, the fictional one has a soft spot for the new regime in Germany. [See Trumpian affection for Putin] President Lindbergh does all he can to back the USA away from involvement in the European War, refusing to provide aid to Britain in its existential struggle. [See Trump withdrawing Republican support for protecting Ukrainian independence in return for help with getting elected] Lindy promotes the America First slogan as part of his isolationist inclinations. [Swamp Thing, tone deaf to the fascistic DNA of the expression, repurposed it to a less focused general feel-good chant, encompassing, ironically, military expansion and intervention, and a rash of trade policies.] Lindbergh even sees that laws are passed to encourage non-Christians to relocate from their urban concentrations to locations where they would again be in decided minorities. [We're not there yet. But give it time. Trump is still trying to get past the courts to install a Muslim ban. But the notion of setting up camps is definitely on his mind.] This is not a wonderful thing for the Roth family of Newark, living in a largely Jewish community.


Azhy Robertson as young Philip Levin (renamed from the Roths)

Our narrator is a fictionalized young Philip, commenting on the goings on from a family perspective. How do the changes affect his father, his friends, his relations, his brother, Sandy, his aunt, Evelyn, neighbors and others? Dad is a die-hard American patriot, who happens to be Jewish. (See the introductory quote at top) He insists that the madness of the new regime is a passing thing, and that the more sober leaders of state will rein in the new demagogic leader. [I expect there are many who believed that DJT would be calmly managed by the more establishment sorts in Washington, as there were many in Germany who believed young Adolph might be managed. How's that workin' out for ya?]

One thing Roth's view of the 1940s has that we do not is a central media voice calling out the beast. Walter Winchell is the spoil to Lindy's autocracy. While there are many voices rising up against Trump in the media, no one has gained the sort of center-stage of opposition that Winchell does here. [Trump tries his best to lump them all together as Fake Media, and they, particularly the Washington Post and NY Times are having a field day exposing DJT's innumerable screwups and crimes.]

People talk about the possibility of leaving the country for Canada. [Ok, show of hands. How many have given at least some thought to the possible appeal of our great northern neighbor, particularly residents of possible nuke-strike targets, like, say NYC, LA, San Diego, Honolulu? Ok, not so many as I expected, but still a fair number. Brings back warm memories of being subject to the draft during those good old Viet Nam War days.] Some in the story manage to get out.

Roth the author uses the Roth family as his window into various aspects of the national tip rightward. A young relation leaves for Canada, not to flee, but to join up and fight Hitler, to the delight of the Jewish community. Mom's sister becomes involved with a power-hungry rabbi, a sort of megachurch media-savvy cleric, who aligns with Lindy and allows himself to be used as a shield for the dictator against claims of anti-Semitism. This is, as one might expect, not received warmly in the Roth household. Philip's older brother, Sandy. is selected by the notorious aunt to participate in a program that places urban (Jewish) youth in distant (Kentucky) farms to give them more of a feel for real America. This was likely inspired by the Nazi Landjahr program in which teens were brought to country camps for a bracing experience of the outdoors, and heavy doses of propaganda. Our friends in Mao's China did something similar, forcing intellectuals to work on farms as a way of encouraging them to become closer to manual laborers. Sandy comes back tanned and muscled and is made into a poster boy for the program, again, to the family's dismay. [Maybe the Donald's version will send kids to R/E developers to learn how to stiff contractors and refuse to house minorities?] We also see many of the elements of fascism that have graced the world's past; people being kicked out of their jobs for being Jewish; access to services like hotels being denied for the same reason; mindless adoration of the vaunted leader [see any Trump rally, or persistent support from his base in the face of relentless exposure of his traitorous dealings with Russia, and incredibly dishonest dealings with pretty much everyone.] At least Lindbergh had done something worthwhile in his pre-presidential life. It is easier to comprehend the election of an imaginary President like Charles Lindbergh than an actual President like Donald Trump. Lindbergh, despite his Nazi sympathies and racist proclivities, was a great aviation hero who had displayed tremendous physical courage and aeronautical genius in crossing the Atlantic in 1927. He had character and he had substance and, along with Henry Ford, was, worldwide, the most famous American of his day. Trump is just a con artist. The relevant book about Trump's American forebear is Herman Melville's 'The Confidence-Man,' the darkly pessimistic, daringly inventive novel'Melville's last'that could just as well have been called 'The Art of the Scam.' " - Philip Roth from the New Yorker article But back to the story itself. It is a novel and if we are not engaged, all the parallels in the world will not matter. So, will it grab you and hold on? Would I tell you it did if it did not? Ok, answering a question with a question. Who does that? Who doesn't? Fine, whatever. Young Phil is an appealing sort, although not without his self-serving, even criminal flaws, indulging as he does in some decidedly reprehensible behavior. Despite Phil's shortcomings, Sandy's cooptation, and Evelyn's collaboration, the family is shown as decent people, real, relatable, struggling to cope with the creeping horrors of fascism on top of the usual struggles of working class people. Another great strength of the novel is the rich portrait Roth paints of the community in Newark in which the family lives, the neighborhood people, merchants, and plenty of colorful characters. A powerful central image of the story was Phil's stamp collection, an example of a pure appreciation of something beautiful, that is subjected in his dreams to unspeakable treatment.

My only gripe with the book is that I found the wind-down at the end disappointing, as if, having accomplished what he had set out to do, show what fascism might look like here in the USA and how a Jewish family in America might be affected, there was no need to spend excess energy on plot. But then, he did accomplish what he set out to do, so I guess that counts as a quibble.

Bottom line is that The Plot Against America is a very engaging novel for its characters and plot. But the political resonance with America today gives it a particular zing. And if you still think it can't happen here, consider that the current president of the USA has systematically fired the US Attorney who was looking into his business dealings, the Acting Attorney General who delivered to him damning intel about his National Security Advisor, and the head of the FBI, the man in charge of investigating DJT's involvement with Russian hacking of the 2016 presidential election. At some point he will probably fire Robert Mueller, special counsel newly appointed to take over the Russia-gate investigation from former FBI head Comey. And who knows how many more heads will roll before it is all done? If you think it can't happen here, consider the very real question of whether there is any action he can take that will force GOP members of the House of Representatives to vote to impeach Trump. NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman, for one, believes that such a line does not exist, that today's GOP members have grown so calloused in their partisanship, in their preference for party over country, that they will go along with whatever DJT wants, whatever the cost to our democratic institutions and values. The fascists in Roth's tale are more ethnically-driven than today's version, who worship at the altar of business, see tax cuts as a form of Eucharist, and use ethnic hatred and fear of the other as a cynical tool to rev up support for their medieval inclinations. It bloody well can happen here, and it will take national effort and involvement by the American people to keep Philip Roth's dark vision from becoming reality. Sadly, it has already part-way arrived.


Review posted - 5/19/17

Published - 10/5/2004

The HBO series is to be released 3/16/20

5/23/2018 - Philip Roth passed away today, at 85. Here is his obit in the New York Times

=============================EXTRA STUFF

Roth on "Has it Happened Here?" in a January 2017 article in The New Yorker - Philip Roth E-Mails on Trump - by Judith Thurman

Roth on how his love of American literature and America shaped him as a writer - I Have Fallen in Love with American Names

How does Donald Trump stack up against American literature's fictional dictators? Pretty well, actually.
- By Carlos Lozada

First It's the Muslims: An Evolution to Dictatorship - by David Crane

The Bund was a German organization in America that supported Hitler. They staged a huge rally in Madison Square Garden and ran Nazi youth camps that were like the LandJahr program being run in Germany

Here is wiki on Landjahr - it is in German but Google translates it nicely to English

Madeline Albright's book, Fascism: A Warning, is definitely worth a look

-----October 15, 2018 - A nice short video that puts the current danger into historical context - If You're Not Scared About Fascism in the U.S., You Should Be

-----February 24, 2019 - NY Times - Putin's One Weapon: The 'Intelligence State' - by John Sipher - a former CIA station chief points out the long history of political interference in the West by Moscow