"When Fascism Comes To America, It Will Come Wrapped In The Flag And Waving A Cross"

Halford E. Luccock, a professor at the Divinity School of Yale University, in his sermon "Keep Life Out Of Confusion", delivered at Riverside Church, in New York City, on Sunday, September 11, 1938:

When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled "made in Germany"; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, "Americanism". ...

The high-sounding phrase "the American way" will be used by interested groups, intent on profit, to cover a multitude of sins against the American and Christian tradition, such sins as lawless violence, tear gas and shotguns, denial of civil liberties. There is an obligation resting on us all to dedicate our minds to the hard task of thinking in terms of Christian objectives and values, so that we may be saved from moral confusion.

For never, probably, has there been a time when there was a more vigorous effort to surround social and international questions with such a fog of distortion and prejudice and hysterical appeal to fear. ...

The old prayer in the Psalms, "Let me never be put into confusion" seems a strange one in a day when there seems to be little else but confusion in a puzzled world. We ought to recognize that uncertainty of mind is not all a bad thing. It is a sign that your mind is still alive, still sensitive. If you are not at all confused in this day you are dead mentally and spiritually.

This is, of course, the peace of the cemetery. If you want that, you can have it. But you will pay for such complacent serenity with blind eyes which do not see the world's fear and agony; with deaf earns, into which the still sad music of humanity never comes; with deadened nerves and unsensitized conscience.

Luccock's sermon may be the origin of the famous quote "When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and waving a cross". The statement is usually attributed to either author Sinclair Lewis or Huey Long, a Southern politician. However, there's no evidence either men said or wrote it.

The Sinclair Lewis Society cites two similar passages, written by Lewis:

It Can't Happen Here (1935):

But he saw too that in America the struggle was befogged by the fact that the worst Fascists were they who disowned the word 'Fascism' and preached enslavement to Capitalism under the style of Constitutional and Traditional Native American Liberty.

Gideon Planish (1943):

I just wish people wouldn't quote Lincoln or the Bible, or hang out the flag or the cross, to cover up something that belongs more to the bank-book and the three golden balls.

Long (may or may not have) made a similar comment: "When fascism comes to America, it will be called anti-fascism!"

Several journalists and publications in the 1930s and 1940s attributed that line to Long after his death in 1935. In February 1944, Malcolm Cowley of The New Republic reported that Long uttered the line in an interview with novelist Robert Cantwell back in 1933.

However, when historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. spoke to Cantwell in June 1951, Cantwell stated: "It is not what Long said in his talk with me; but it is not basically opposed to what he said."

There have been other similar statements:

Georgi Dimitrov, in a report to the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International in 1935:

It is a peculiarity of the development of American fascism that at the present stage it comes forward principally in the guise of an opposition to fascism, which it accuses of being an 'un-American' trend imported from abroad.

Lawrence Dennis, The Coming American Fascism (1936):

Nothing could be more logical or in the best political tradition than for a type of fascism to be ushered into this country by leaders who are now vigorously denouncing fascism and repudiating all that it is understood to stand for.

The Christian Century, February 5, 1936:

James Waterman Wise, Jr., in a recent address here before the liberal John Reed club said that Hearst and Coughlin are the two chief exponents of fascism in America. If fascism comes, he added, it will not be identified with any "shirt" movement, nor with an "insignia," but it will probably be "wrapped up in the American flag and heralded as a plea for liberty and preservation of the constitution."

The Daily Herald (Provo, Utah), June 22, 1937:

Bruce Bliven, editor of the New Republic, sagely remarked not long ago that if or when Fascism ever makes any headway in America, it will probably be known as "Anti-Fascism."

H.L. Mencken, Baltimore Sun, November 6, 1938:

My own belief, more than once set afloat from this spot, is that it will take us, soon or late, into the stormy waters of Fascism. To be sure, that Fascism is not likely to be identical with the kinds on tap in Germany, Italy and Russia; indeed, it is very apt to come in under the name of anti-Fascism. And its first Duce, whether the Hon. Mr. Roosevelt or another, will not call himself a dictator, but a scotcher of dictators.

John Thomas Flynn's As We Go Marching (1944):

But when fascism comes it will not be in the form of an anti-American movement or pro-Hitler bund, practicing disloyalty. Nor will it come in the form of a crusade against war. It will appear rather in the luminous robes of flaming patriotism; it will take some genuinely indigenous shape and color, and it will spread only because its leaders, who are not yet visible, will know how to locate the great springs of public opinion and desire and the streams of thought that flow from them and will know how to attract to their banners leaders who can command the support of the controlling minorities in American public life. The danger lies not so much in the would-be Fuhrers who may arise, but in the presence in our midst of certainly deeply running currents of hope and appetite and opinion. The war upon fascism must be begun there.