Trump in the High Castle:
Philip K. Dick’s Classic novel of Post-truth America by David Agranoff
In 1961 Philip K. Dick didn’t
set out to write an award-winning novel that explored complex social and
political issues he just wanted to get out of polishing jewelry for his third
wife Anne’s business. Without a plan, he started writing. More than half
a century later his daughter Isa Dick-Hackett was a producer on a TV series
based on the novel and facing a strange reality. In the Trump years, that novel
The Man in the High Castle[i]
was more relevant than ever.
It was something she discussed
with Indie-Wire before the second season in 2017. “I just think about the
fact that the novel is an anti-fascist tale. It’s about freedom and democracy,
and it’s about how people, at least in that world, were defeated and they start
to accept things and normalize things. In our world now, those same things
worry me. I worry about certain kinds of rhetoric. I worry about the ‘them vs.
us’ dividing people.” [ii]
In the years following the
Trump presidency and attempted insurrection there is an argument that Dick’s
novel The Man in the High Castle is just as predictive as SF novels that
predicted space travel and the internet. Alternate history is science fiction
not built on the future but the inherit what if is based on the idea of
the path not chosen. It is tempting to cast Dick’s novel as an exercise in
simply looking at how frightening an Axis victory would have been. Obviously,
that didn’t happen but if we look at the novel with a deeper lens we see not
only the theme of insidious acceptance of fascism but the complete breakdown of
truth under authoritarianism. It is in that sense that the way it depicts the
current political climate is all too scary.
Prediction is not the job of
science fiction, however, using genre as a form of warning to the dangers on
the horizon is the responsibility of justice-minded authors. TMITHC is not the
only respected novel to use the What if to explore an American style of
fascism. Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here[iii]
went from speculative fiction when it was published (before SF was coined
term for marketing) to becoming alternate history in retrospect. It briefly
returned to the bestseller status 82 years after being published when a series
of articles pointed out how familiar the novel felt in the Trump years.
University
of Connecticut Professor Chris Vials wrote about this in his 2013 paper “What Can Happen Here?
Philip Roth, Sinclair Lewis, and the Lessons of Fascism in the American Liberal
Imagination: “On the most basic level, “It Can’t Happen Here” is a phrase that
calls into question the presumed foreignness of fascism. Since 1935, it has
served as an instantly recognizable, ironic rebuke to the assumption that
fascism is fundamentally alien to “the American Way.” As such, Lewis’s
narrative underscores a fundamental component of dissonant antifascism that has
been consistent since the 1930s. That is, fascism is not seen as something
located merely in Europe or Asia, nor is it something fully incompatible with
American political life”[iv]
Indeed, Philip Roth’s 2004
novel The Plot Against America[v]
also challenged the idea that America was immune to fascism. It was
deliberately adapted for TV on HBO by producer David Simon in the lead-up to
the 2020 election. Simon was clear when he spoke with NPR. “I think I'm
fairly convinced not only that it can happen here, but that we are right now on
a road that it will happen here, that unless there's a sufficient level of
awareness of how vulnerable we are and how fragile democracy actually is.”[vi]
In 2004 when Philip Roth
released The Plot Against America it was written as a very personal
alt-history that looked at his actual life in this other world. There were no
Science fictional explanations or reasons given for this other world but that
is hardly different from Dick’s alt-history. The mechanics of Axis
strength are different but the results are the same an America that grows to
accept fascism. While not as stark as the Nazi occupation of Dick’s Novel, Plot
was also influenced by the specter of Nazism.
Vials said “Plot portrays an
alternate past in which FDR loses the election of 1940 to the isolationist,
Nazi-sympathizer Charles Lindbergh. Emerging this time out of the Republican
Party, Lindbergh’s America is more subtly fascist than that of Windrip: it does
not abolish political parties nor erect concentration camps on US soil. Rather,
it allows Axis victories overseas to continue unchecked while maintaining
cordial relations with Nazi Germany. At home, it embarks on a campaign to
assimilate the Jews that ultimately leaves them exposed to antisemitic mob
violence.”
The parallels to the Trump
years are impossible to deny. Trump often talked of his good relationships with
strongman dictators and when white supremacists marched chanting “Jews will not
replace us” the sitting president told the press that there were good people on
both sides. It was no shock that in 2019 there was a 12% rise in antisemitic
crimes and it was the highest level since 1994.[vii]
Considering the role the 2020
presidential election played in our timeline, it is no surprise that all three
classics about American fascism hinge on the results of presidential
elections.
It Can’t Happen Here –
Trump-like fictional politician, “Buzz” Windrip modeled after Louisiana
Governor Huey Long defeats FDR. Windrip sets up concentration camps and
abolishes political parties.
The Plot Against America -
FDR loses to Charles Lindbergh who is an isolationist and Nazi
Sympathizer. The U.S. never enters the War.
The Man in the High Castle –
FDR is killed by Giuseppe "Joe" Zangara and Republican Governor of
Ohio John W. Bricker becomes President. He is unable to pull the U.S. out of
the depression and is an isolationist leading to the quick defeat by the Axis
powers.
The Roth and Lewis novels are
more respected as literature and never forced into the SF ghetto but it is Man
in the High Castle that addresses the post-truth world of Donald Trump best of
the three novels.
High Castle and
Post-Truth
One of the key moments of
Philip K. Dick’s novel happens when Japanese trade minister Tagomi buys a piece
of jewelry he is told is a genuine piece of Americana. For reasons never
explained he briefly travels to another San Francisco and is surprised by the
freeways and the amount of trash. These are the first subtle signs that he has
ended up in an America that the Japanese never colonized. He pays a young boy
to run looking for a rickshaw and just like that he is back in his universe.
Comedian Jordan Keppler
probably felt like Tagomi crossing into another reality every time he covered a
Donald Trump political rally for the Daily Show as a correspondent. There
is no finer example of two groups of people who seem to inhabit the same world
but exist in separate realities. When Keppler returned to his first Trump rally
in Iowa after the 2020 election despite overwhelming evidence his supporters
believe firmly the election was stolen. Some of the most hilarious observations
include “Trump is a "rock-star superhero president" and "a
man for all the people." The one that actually seemed to break Keppler
was one Trump fan saying “Trump has a thick skin - about as thick as it
gets." [viii] Anyone paying attention
knows that Trump responded to almost every critical statement with insults like
“Sleepy Joe” or “Pocahontas.” The New York Times published a
list of 598 people the President insulted on Twitter alone. [ix]
It is clear that supporters of
Trump are fine accepting whatever he tells them to believe regardless of what
can be proven as objective fact. This is so dangerous because Trump is
compulsive about mistruths. According to the Washington Post Trump had
accumulated 30,573 untruths during his presidency averaging about 21 misleading
claims a day. On Nov. 2nd, 2020, the day before the 2020 election,
Trump made 503 false or misleading claims as he campaigned.[x]
It should not be surprising
that one of the most popular figures on the right who fashions himself a
journalist is Tucker Carlson. Despite Fox News successfully defending
themselves in court by proving that Carlson’s show is not to be believed. Fox
News lawyers argued that Carlson "cannot be understood to have been
stating facts, but instead that he was delivering an opinion using hyperbole
for effect…" The ruling by the court also said. "This
'general tenor' of the show should then inform a viewer that he is not 'stating
actual facts about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in
'exaggeration' and 'non-literal commentary.’”[xi]
Tucker Carlson is legally
defined as a bullshit artist who airs on a network with the title news. But
post-truth is an essential ingredient of the authoritarian which Carlson is on
record as supporting. This was most visible when he took his show on the road
to support the strongarm autocratic leader of Hungry Viktor Orban or when
suggested the idea that the U.S. should be on Russia’s side during the invasion
of Ukraine. His continued attempts to minimize the events on January 6th also show that Carlson supports the idea of American-style
fascism and Post-Truth is his tool.
Leadership defines the people
that follow them, Trump has left an America that is drowning in post-truth with
a good portion of the country willing to live in a separate reality defined by
a pathological liar who refuses to accept that he lost an election. Of all the
novels to explore the alternate rise of fascism in America, it is the one by
the science fiction writer that spent his life publishing in the genre ghetto
that appears to capture the mood and reality of this era most
directly.
In the article The Man in
The High Castle: An Awry Reality Through Post-Truth by Timuçin Buğra Edman,
Davut Peaci, and Hacer Gözen they make the point that post-truth is at the
heart of the novel and “reality is transformed into simulation, and then
simulation presents reality as an alternative reality. It is precisely this
fact that makes such an approach post-truth.”[xii]
The Man in the High Castle does this on a metatextual and subtextual
level, in this sense, Philip K. Dick was commenting on our times in style
superior to his alt-history contemporaries. In the world of the novel,
the Allies lost World War Two to The Axis power that has divided America into
two occupied countries with a neutral zone in the Rockies. Set in 1962 main
character is Juliana Crane who is obsessed with a popular novel The
Grasshopper Lies Heavy that envisions a world where the Allies won the war.
It is important to note that
the world of Grasshopper is not our world, the events that lead to
allied victory are different from our world. In the TMIHC world,
Roosevelt is assassinated, The U.S. never makes it out of the depression and an
isolationist president John Bricker is elected. In that Grasshopper
world Roosevelt survives but is replaced on the ticket by Rexwell Tugwell and
the U.S. enters the war in 1940, In our world, FDR survives is still President
and the U.S. enters the war in December 1941. The importance of the three
realities to Dick’s narrative is important to the idea of questioning reality.
There is no real history in the novel, not our world. Not their world. Dick
plays with subtext in the form of a cast of characters who all struggle with
what is real and what is truth? Robert Childan for example is an antique dealer
who sells pieces of Americana history to Japanese occupiers who have become
interested in the history of the land they conquered. Childan knows he is
selling fake items.
It was Nazi propagandist Joseph
Goebbels that was famous for saying “Repeat a lie often enough and it
becomes the truth.” It is hilarious that this statement of Post-Truth
gospel which has also been attributed Vladmir Lenin. The ultimate irony is the
statement has a much older origin in the book The Crown of a Life (1869)
by Isa Blagden. [xiii]
“If a lie is only printed often enough, it becomes a quasi-truth, and if
such a truth is repeated often enough, it becomes an article of belief, a
dogma, and men will die for it. We, who are of neither extreme in politics,
neither pure red not pure black …”
In our world, we have lived in
a global experiment to prove Isa Blagden correct, and many have not survived
having a pathological liar as the most powerful in the world. How different could
this reality have been if the mob found Mike Pence? We know the crowd had
constructed a gallow with a noose. So far Trump has remained safe
unindicted, and free to lie at will.
In the article The Man in
The High Castle: An Awry Reality Through Post-Truth the authors point out “…In
the post-truth era, doers are safe at home, as in the “action law of inertia”.
The “mass craze” is the target audience of post-truth leaders. They gather the
ones who enjoy fiction and fictional heroic actions. They become the army of
post-truth presenters to enlarge their own force. The masses transform into
robotic armies who get the order to fire, take action without reasoning.
Enjoying a chivalrous experience at home in bed is joyful for them. They can
herd others into gas chambers or ovens. Dick presents the notion, “Listen, I’m
not an intellectual—Fascism has no need of that. What is wanted is the deed.
Theory derives from action. What our corporate state demands from us is a
comprehension of the social forces—of history. You see?”
It is too bad that we don’t
have Philip K. Dick still with us to comment on this post-truth world. It was a
subject he touched on in novels like Flow My Tears the Policeman Said [xiv]and The Penultimate
Truth[xv].
The genre will be writing about the post-truth experience we collectively lived
through for decades but the real question is will we avoid the authoritarianism
that Dick was worried about. Will we passively learn to accept it? The
first step to defending freedom as we know is to recognize Post-Truth for what
it is and demand our leader live in the same reality with us.
[i]
Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick 1961 Putnam
[ii]
Indiewire ‘The Man in The High Castle’: What It’s Like to Make A Show About
Fascism in The Age of Trump” by Liz Shannon Miller
[iii]
It Can’t Happen here by Sinclair Lewis Published 1935
[iv] “What
Can Happen Here? Philip Roth, Sinclair Lewis, and the Lessons of Fascism in the
American Liberal Imagination by Chris Vials University of Connecticut 2013
[v]
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth Published 2004 Houghton Mifflin
[vi] In
'Plot Against America,' David Simon Finds Present Day In An Imagined Past NPR
Moring Edition interview by David Greene. March 13 2020
[xii] The
Man in The High Castle: An Awry Reality Through Post-Truth by Timuçin Buğra
Edman, Davut Peaci, and Hacer Gözen 2020, Interactions
[xiii]
The Crown of a Life by Isa Blagden Published in 1969
[xiv]
Flow My Tears the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick Published in 1974
[xv]
The Penultimate Truth by Philip K. Dick published 1964
