This starts with an excessively fair-minded, appallingly nice observer; and that gesture. The observer is me, debating with colleagues; and the gesture is Elon Musk’s “salute”. I say no, they say yes. Yet again, we are thinking, only because we must, about Hitler. Are comparisons with Trump and team useful, or not?

Not. All my life Nazi Germany has hung around, noisy and unavoidable, the monster in the basement. It’s been the biggest historical fact: many schoolchildren seem to learn little else in the human story. Its imagery is everywhere: in 1975 the (Jewish) comic writer Alan Coren published a book called Golfing for Cats, embellished with a giant swastika because the biggest-selling books then were about golf, pets and the Nazis.

New Statesman