Shadows of Tyranny

People are surprised to learn that Mark Carney recently speculated about an American invasion. But as I write in Shadows of Tyranny, Philip Roth anticipated Carney by more than two decades. In 2004, during the presidency of George W. Bush, Roth published The Plot Against America, an alternate history in which American aviator Charles Lindbergh, an unapologetic anti-Semite, runs for the presidency in 1940—and wins. But I quote from Shadows. . .

The story focuses on how Lindbergh’s victory impacts American Jews, and particularly one Newark-based Jewish family. That family is Roth’s own, which comprises his parents, his older brother, and himself, all fictionalized but bearing their real names, and with young Philip serving as the point-of-view character.

In the novel, the real-life Walter Winchell, an outspoken newspaper columnist, broadcaster, and himself a Jew, becomes Lindbergh’s chief antagonist and ends up paying a heavy price. As the newly elected, Nazi-sympathizing president inspires increasingly violent anti-Semitic attacks, eventually Winchell gets assassinated. Against this backdrop, Canada steps to the fore. Philip’s cousin goes north to Montreal, joins the Canadian armed forces, and travels overseas to fight the Nazis.

In Detroit, meanwhile, attacks on synagogues and Jewish-owned shops escalate into a large-scale pogrom modelled on Kristallnacht. Several hundred of the city’s 30,000 Jews flee across the border and take refuge in Windsor, Ontario. As the fictional Philip turns nine years old, his father repeatedly rejects his wife’s pleas to join the exodus to Canada. He is an American. He won’t be driven out of the land of his birth. By the time he agrees to flee, the Lindbergh government has closed the northern border.

Roth creates a riveting scene in which young Philip asks his mother why the school is closed. Why can’t he go to school? The answer: because America may be going to war with Canada. What? When? Nobody knows. But it’s best to stay home until people know more. But why? Why are we going to war with Canada? Please, Philip. The mother runs out of patience. She can’t take much more tonight. She has told him everything she knows. We just have to wait and see.

Young Philip thinks it through. The reason is that Canada is at war with Nazi Germany . . . and Lindbergh’s America might be entering that same war, but not on the side of Britain and the Commonwealth, as everyone expected when Roosevelt was president. This new America would enter on the side of Adolf Hitler. America would line up alongside the Nazis. . . .

In a chapter called “America At War With Canada?” Shadows goes on to explore how Roth’s book inspired a six-part television series.

Today, we get a reality-TV show. Plus ca change.