Our rulers think they are Churchills and their foes are all Nazis. Anthony Eden gambled what remained of British imperial prestige in 1956 against Nasser, a “Mussolini on the Nile.” George H. W. Bush wrapped himself in Churchillian prose as he let loose the American military on the Hitlerian Beast of Baghdad, and his son, desperate not to be misunderestimated, smashed Saddam for the second time on the same grounds. These so-called statesmen reduced history to an exercise in Godwin’s Law, which states that if you talk online for long enough, someone will compare something to Hitler.

The election of Donald Trump has pushed Godwin’s Law to the fore once again. Many people on the Left seem to think that Hitler has seized power. They cite the rise of the Trumps, Le Pens, and Brexiteers as proof that we have entered a postmodern 1930s. Read up on your dictators, ladies and gentlemen — the center cannot hold, and the blackshirts are coming.

The events of the last year do warn against complacency. Trump, Farage, and company have thrown aside their dog whistles. Racist bile gushes from their mouths, as they paw at whichever women come within reach, and pass off sexual violence as a normal part of life. They offer vague promises for a return to national greatness, when the wrong people knew their place and the right people kept theirs at the top. They have allies in rightist governments from Poland and Hungary to Turkey and Russia, governments that would think nothing of enacting the travel bans and other xenophobic measures that Trump glories in. But while casting all these reactionaries as the second coming of Hitler might be gratifying — and there are obvious similarities between some of their ideas and those of latter-day fascists — I think it’s also wrong.