As a general rule, I tend to assume that most people who disagree with me aren’t idiots, lackeys of imperialism or fascists, though I do make an exception for admirers of noodly jazz. Rather unfashionably my assumption is that everything I don’t like isn’t necessarily fascist.

So, when Ash Sarkar says “gender critical feminists are not a million miles away from Rudolf Hess” my assumption is that her real life experience of either real fascists or that sort of feminist is limited. She is a controversialist with rent to pay and a book to sell who wants a bit of publicity. Though maybe she also believes that everything she doesn’t like is inherently Nazi.

Where Sarkar differs from the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is that she doesn’t claim to be, if I remember Tony Cliff’s aphorism correctly, the collective memory of the working class. That is what makes this poster in the photo so nonsensically stupid.

Of course, the SWP has never knowingly understated the nature of the opposition. Anyone who is familiar with it will appreciate that its method of operation is to create a constant sense that the next big thing is the thing that they have latched onto. There is a discussion to be had about the nature of the AfD. I am inclined to agree with this judgement in the Weekly Worker:

 “While there are a fair number of eccentrics and right-wing nut jobs in the AfD, it is not a “fascist party”. There are no fascist gangs roaming the streets. The AfD does not organise hit squads to break up meetings of trade unionists or communists.”

It is a very unpleasant far right party, but Ian Paisley worked with loyalist murder gangs and I don’t think the Hitler comparison even stands for him. If, as I assume, we are being invited to believe, Nigel Farage is the most likely candidate to be a British Fuhrer it is obviously a nonsense comparison. With the active help of the Labour right, he has successfully built a large reactionary party by channelling the not terribly latent racism in British society, but a more realistic comparison is to Meloni, Le Pen or the Democratic Unionist Party. They are all formations on the far right of parliamentary politics who sound dog whistles to those who would make up fascist gangs. The way Farage distances himself from Tommy Robinson while saying just enough to get the vote of his supporters is proof of that.

Trumpism is a closer approximation to fascism than Reform or anything else in Britain. It already has groups of armed supporters which will be put onto the streets when mass opposition breaks out, especially in Black urban areas. They will almost certainly collaborate with local police forces. British fascism’s fighting squads are likely to be coked up football hooligans with beer guts.

Maybe these points will be made in Thursday’s meeting but there is something on TV that night and I won’t be able to go. But while plastering the streets with big scary swastikas implying that we are all going to be sent off to camps on the Isle of Wight might be good for maintaining a sense of urgency, it is downright irresponsible politics which just miseducates people about what fascism really looks like and how imminent it is in Bethnal Green.