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
[vii] Watchdog reports record number of anti-Semitic incidents in U.S. last year by Kanishka Singh May 3rd 2020 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-antisemitism/watchdog-reports-record-number-of-anti-semitic-incidents-in-u-s-last-year-idUSKBN22O1LK
[viii] Jordan Klepper Tackled the MAGA Mindset in Comedy Central Special by By Ainsley Andrade https://www.mediavillage.com/article/jordan-klepper-tackled-the-maga-mindset-in-comedy-central-special/
[x] Trump’s false or misleading claims total 30,573 over 4 years By Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly
[xi] Fox News won a court case by 'persuasively' arguing that no 'reasonable viewer' takes Tucker Carlson seriously
Sonam Sheth https://www.businessinsider.com/fox-news-karen-mcdougal-case-tucker-carlson-2020-9
[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
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