You may be a Nazi if...

US comedian Jeff Foxworthy’s comedy musings “You might be a redneck if...” became for a time a catch phrase, eliciting much mirth and merriment at the expense of people generally considered not just beyond but beneath the pale. For instance, you might be a redneck if: your dad walks you to school because you’re in the same grade, or: if you mow your lawn and find a car, or: if you have more cars than teeth, or: if you’ve ever taken out finance for a tattoo... you get the picture. All harmless fun, after all, a redneck is hardly going to encounter or understand this particularly highbrow vein of comedy gold.

But that was then and this is... well it’s the rise of the redneck, or as we call them these days, Nazis. And according to Germany’s far-left “anti-hate” cabal, the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, you may be a Nazi if, for instance, your kids are perfectly normal. Now, you may say, so what, it’s Breitbart? But that doesn’t mean it’s not true... and true or not it is horrifying. Or is it? Is it – and this is far more likely – just a symptom of the times in which we live where, around every corner, over every page and in every frame of video or second of audio we risk finding something to be offended by?

Owen Jones was all over social media on Sunday evening, gleefully recounting how his rowdy rabble of masked and screeching Nazi-seeking minions had seen and routed actual Nazis as they goose-stepped through London. I don’t know if you saw any footage of the Brexit march, but what I saw was a crowd of decent people, people who had worked all their lives in the hope of a better future, turning out to show how let down they felt by a system that rewards fictitious Nazi hunters and punishes those who dare to quietly get on with their lives.

.I saw people troubled by the unprecedented and unwanted change they see all around them, people who feel threatened by the new priorities of the age, people being directly threatened by Owen Jones’ baying rent-a-mob with genuine hate in their eye and murder in their souls. And the reaction of these supposed Nazis to their tormentors? A resigned sigh, a look of almost-pity for their assailants but most of all a determination to maintain a quiet dignity and humour in the face of such embarrassingly juvenile disruptive behaviour. In France the gilets jaune may have resorted to violence, but it’s not the British way. Maybe the Antifa family learned their techniques from some continental regime, possibly from 1930s Germany?

Being labelled as a Nazi is now as passé as being called a racist or being dubbed male, pale and stale. Even Jones’ favourite epithet ‘gammon’ fails to elicit any more than a shrug and the knowledge that you belong to a club on the right side of, well everything, really. So hey, if you have blond hair, or blue eyes, or believe in high standards of public behaviour; if you are troubled by violent yobs, or people with little experience of life suddenly appearing to have so much influence over it, you’re now a Nazi.

You may be  redneck if...

If your parents or grandparents fought actual Nazis and you abhor all they stood for it makes no difference; you are a Nazi. If you marched on Sunday, or if you support those who marched, or even if you merely voted the way you felt was right for Britain in 2016, you are a Nazi. If you believe that the pantomime Brexit being performed by our Prime Minister is nothing more than a pre-scripted display of EU intransigence which further reinforces your decision to vote to leave you are definitely a Nazi. What do you mean you’re thinking of growing a little moustache?