In The Man in the High Castle (1962), author Philip K Dick imagines an alternative history where the Axis powers win the Second World War, and the US is divided between Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. In the TV adaptation of the novel, there’s a shocking scene depicting a conquered New York bedecked with Nazi imagery, including swastikas in Times Square. It is still quite a chilling possibility—if you substituted China for Germany and Xi for Hitler.
The story follows a San Francisco woman who stumbles into the resistance after her sister is killed for possessing mysterious newsreels—films showing an alternative reality where the Allies won. These reels, created by the elusive ‘Man in the High Castle’, hint at other worlds, shaking the regime’s grip. She teams up with a double agent torn between Nazi loyalty and doubt, and a Japanese trade minister wrestling with his empire’s brutality.
In The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), Samuel Huntington writes that post-Cold War conflicts won’t primarily stem from ideology (capitalism vs communism) or economics but from cultural and civilisational differences. Huntington divides the world into major civilisations—Western (US, Europe), Islamic, Sinic (China), Hindu (India), Orthodox (Russia), Japanese, Latin American, and African—arguing that their values, histories, and identities are fundamentally at odds. The West, led by America, would face growing friction with others, especially the Islamic world and China, as global power decentralises. He predicts “fault-line conflicts” (say, Islam vs West) and “core state” rivalries (US vs China), with alliances forming along civilisational lines. The West’s push for universal values—democracy, individualism—would provoke retaliation from places like China. Civilisations don’t meld; they collide like continental plates.
An alternative history unfolds in Philip Roth’s novel, The Plot Against America (2004). Charles Lindbergh, a famed aviator with known isolationist and sympathetic views toward Nazi Germany, defeats Franklin D Roosevelt in 1940. Lindbergh’s presidency leads to an ‘America First’ agenda that aligns the US with Nazi Germany, implementing anti-semitic policies and fostering a fascistic state.
Roth’s novel doesn’t depict a full Nazi takeover in the style of, say, a military occupation, but rather a creeping authoritarianism and cultural shift that mirrors aspects of Nazi ideology—anti-semitism, isolationism and suppression of dissent—adapted to an American context.
It’s a comically chilling, character-driven exploration of how democratic ideals can erode under populist demagoguery. All you need to do is replace Lindbergh with Donald Trump, and you will have a rough idea of where we, or they, are headed.
In Submission (2015), Michel Houellebecq thinks up a situation in which a Muslim party upholding Islamist and patriarchal values can win the 2022 French presidential election with the support of the Socialist Party. The novel was released on the day of the Charlie Hebdo shooting.
All these works, in one way or another, anticipate our present world. A world in which things are changing so fast that it is almost stupid to react to any one incident. The pace encourages witnessing, not participation.
What is happening in the US just now is The Plot Against America thickening from within. As a result, America is no longer the global police of democracy. Last fortnight, US Vice President J D Vance, whose wife is of Indian origin, said in Munich at an international securities conference that mass immigration championed by the left parties should stop as it weakens the Western values of secularism and free speech in all of Europe. The whites will lose their identity soon, he implied, notwithstanding his own children. Never mind the irony of a conservative leader raising his hand for free speech and related democratic values.
After his humiliating visit to the US, where both Vance and Trump hectored Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy to bend his knees before Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the Ukrainian president called for Europe to form a common force to defend the continent’s democratic and liberal values. In this context, recall Trump’s desire to appropriate Greenland and Canada. It’s a kind of Hitlerian Anschluss he is talking about.
Time again to read the doomsayers and their damned books. Before they are burnt. Race and religion, contrary to the woke model, present themselves as great, defining factors in politics. India is a case in point. Even more than Narendra Modi’s developmental politics, religion and race are the reasons why the BJP is in power for the third consecutive term. And may hold good for a fourth. The trouble with the Left is the liberal ideology divides people into smaller and smaller identity groupings. LGBTQ, for example. As it happens, it is divisive.
The Right is looking at large groupings. The former encourages denominational politics. The latter strives to consolidate people into large militant groups. In large groups, individuating features are not of priority. The uniform is: khakis for RSS, red caps for MAGA.
Since the Second World War, the US has had hundreds of foreign military bases. But Trump’s America is a critique of post-war politics, culture and economy. It is, of course, possible that the Third World War is already underway. It is just that we don’t know the form it has taken. Time again to read the doomsayers and their damned books. Before they are burnt.
(Views are personal)
(cpsurendran@gmail.com)
C P Surendran | Poet, novelist, and screenplay writer. His latest novel is One Love and the Many Lives of Osip B