The best fiction about insurrection and threat to democracy

This is a highly relevant book for our time.

Conceived in 1948, Orwell reversed numbers to envision a dystopic world in 1984. I remember how it was in 1984, when I felt some sense of relief that the world “wasn’t as bad” as Orwell had predicted. But, in today’s politics? This novel told of a political party with the slogan “Ignorance is strength”. How far is that from silencing the history of racism in this country and trying to keep people from waking up (“woke”) to the injustices of the world?

The “Big Lie,” first practiced by Adolph Hitler, was standard fare in 1984, and has deeply infected our politics today. I take the warnings of this book seriously. 

The religious motivation for political oppression, so prominent in this book, is what I also sought to portray in my novel, The Bridles of Armageddon.

In The Handmaid’s Tale a very conservative religious perspective has taken over the country via insurrection (my own novel concerns an attempt to do the same thing). Atwood’s novel focuses on how fundamentalist Christians seek to deny both birth control and abortion access, and at the same time force women into strictly baby-making roles. Christian faith has been an important part of who I am throughout my life.

I personally cringe at how a faith that Jesus wanted to free people and bring them together, is used, both in this book and in our world today, to oppress and dominate. 

Recent authoritarian trends and attempts to re-establish white supremacy are not new in America.

In this novel, Philip Roth envisions an alternate history where Charles Lindbergh has defeated Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1940 Presidential election. He then proceeds to collude with Adolph Hitler and seeks to establish anti-Semitism throughout the country.

The novel is based on the actual attitudes which Lindbergh had toward Jews and other minorities. Of course, this is not truly an insurrection. Still, it is a portrayal of how extreme right-wing attitudes can seek to rob people of our hard-won democracy.

I was raised with a deep respect for freedom for all people in this country. My family had several Jewish friends and we loved and learned from them.

Written for young adults, this is a modern classic.

In the book, what used to be North America has become “Panem”, a country where an authoritarian government keeps itself in power by turning regions of the country against each other through “hunger games”, where young people must hunt and kill each other to survive.

I believe the future hope for our country is for people getting back together and learning to care for each other again. Rather than “us against them,” a healthy democracy should be “all of us against oppression.” 

I became interested in this book after watching the television series by the same name. (First season really good, next season a real disappointment!)

Written four years before the January 6th insurrection, this book envisions something very similar, only with the insurrection more successful. The damage to the Capital Building is much more extensive, and the plot is almost successful.

I was fascinated by the book because it serves as a fictional warning of what almost did happen.