Tornado Alley (PROG)

[blackhawks]

In his book, “It Can’t Happen Here” (1935), Sinclair Lewis wrote, “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying the cross.”

Though inaccurate as to both the quote and as an attribution to Sinclair, close enough from Debs.

So it can't come any other way than from the GOP, now can it?

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/07/28/flag/

In 2005 a letter to the editor of a Poughkeepsie, New York newspaper attributed the saying to Sinclair Lewis and incorrectly cited a book that does not contain the expression:

In his book, “It Can’t Happen Here” (1935), Sinclair Lewis wrote, “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying the cross.”

In conclusion, this entry presents a snapshot of current research. In 1917 and 1918 labor leader Eugene V. Debs did speak about oppressors and tyrants who wrapped themselves “in a cloak of patriotism or religion, or both”.

In the 1920s the Ku Klux Klan was depicted as a movement that metaphorically cloaked itself with a flag and employed religious symbols. In the 1930s James Waterman Wise and others stated that fascism would deceptively wrap itself in the American flag. The ascriptions to Sinclair Lewis and Huey Long are unsupported.

In 1917 “The Muncie Sunday Star” of Indiana printed an announcement for a speech that prominent labor activist Eugene V. Debs was planning to deliver. The announcement presented a quotation from Debs which partially matched the saying under examination:

Every robber or oppressor in history has wrapped himself in a cloak of patriotism or religion, or both. I am not a patriot as defined in the lexicon of the house of Morgan. I’d not murder my fellow men of my own accord, and why should I do it at the behest of the master class?

During a speech delivered in 1918 Debs made a similar statement:

No wonder Jackson said that “Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.” He had the Wall Street gentry in mind or their prototypes, at least; for in every age it has been the tyrant, who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both. (Shouts of “Good, good” from the crowd) (applause).