Following on from yesterday’s post: there has of course been an outcry against Rees-Mogg’s accusations, albeit mainly from ex-civil servants; who, if R-M is right, won’t count. Several have likened  his ‘pre-empting’ the argument in this way – establishing an ‘excuse’ if the Brexiteers don’t get what they want – to the conspiracy theory the Right used to fall back on in 1930s Germany: the ‘stab in the back’ explanation for Germany’s defeat in World War I. (See https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/feb/03/brexit-civil-service-1930s-germany?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+main+NEW+H+categories&utm_term=262846&subid=630649&CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2.) We’re always being warned against too easily falling back on ‘Hitler’ comparisons (it’s known as ‘Godwin’s Law’), and no-one would want to paint Lord Snooty as a putative Adolf; but both in Britain and in America the comparison with the conditions that contributed to the rise of Fascism between the wars is being made more and more often; and, I would say (as a historian), increasingly convincingly. Of course, there are Fascisms and Fascisms…