threespires
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I agree that throwing around Nazi insults and comparisons is often done too cheaply without understanding and runs the risk of trivialising the horrors of the Nazis. However as numerous people have pointed out that isn't what he did, he made a specific point about comparative language.
I don't think he was for a minute suggesting our government is as vile as the Nazis. I think he was making a point about propaganda and the power of the spoken and the written word and where it can ultimately lead to. When I think of pre WWII Germany the question from history is not why did a bunch of psychopathic fanatics concoct their evil plan but why did an entire nation of ordinary people just like you and I allow them to execute it? The salutory lesson is that the German people didn't get out of bed one morning and decide to support one of the most murderous regimes in human history. The events of Nov '38 and beyond followed well over a decade of an explicit process both pre and post coming to power an important part of which focused on language that normalised abnormal thoughts and behaviour with a view to creating a passivity and acceptance in the broader population that 'something had to be done'.
So I think it is healthy we are having this discussion. It's a shame much of our public discourse is now undertaken on technology platforms actively designed to distort that discourse. Nonetheless I think what he said is a legitimate topic for discussion. This governments penchant for a certain type of sloganeering doesn't make it nazi but it does raise questions about it's behaviour; it's fitness to govern and where it is trying to take us as a country.
There is a certain irony in how the BBC have subsequently behaved in this spat in that during the 20s both Himmler and then Goebbels coveted the ability to exert pressure on ithe mass media and entertainment spheres but they did not have the financial wherewithal. In '27 Goebbels exhorted the party faithful to focus on public speeches as the most cost effective way for the Nazis to operate within their current financial constraints, at the same time he provided guidance for a level of message discipline that showed how much he understood the power of slogans repeated ad nauseum as a conditioning tool on a broader population.
(As an aside as we're on the subject. For what it's worth my own view is that whilst we must be vigilant in this country, more obvious parallels can be drawn with the MAGA movement in the US. As a simple example, if you look at the 'drain the swap' term, its been used in US politics since the late 1800's but the way MAGA used it clearly echoed Goebbels positioning of the Nazis participation in the Reichstag to their base).