Paddy Ashdown recently caused a stir with this tweet:
His subsequent explanation for comparing Conservative Brexiters to Nazis was pretty feeble. He excused it as a metaphor and then explained that brownshirts was essentially a synonym for extremists. Calling any group ‘brownshirts’ is always a metaphor in the sense that it’s not literally true. However it’s clearly a far more charged word than ‘extremists’ (not that extremist seems the mot juste for the average Tory Brexiter) and unambiguously invokes Nazism. Insisting that he was only referring to the Brexiters in May’s cabinet, not the entire group didn’t help much either:
He should withdraw the comment rather than seek to justify it.
