IT was quite surreal seeing ‘Weimar Germany’ trending nationwide on Twitter last week.

Despite my hopes that it was a resurgence of people being interested in European history, I instead found out it was from an opinion piece written by Martin Kettle in the Guardian arguing that “The political landscapes of Brexit Britain and Weimar Germany in the 1930s are scarily similar.”

This is a worrying argument to make, and one which I would argue is flawed.

For starters, there are many things which make 21st Century Britain and 1920s Germany completely incomparable.

Firstly, Germany was a country with little over a decade of democratic tradition, most of which had been dominated by massive economic strife and mass unemployment, not to mention three failed revolutions and pitched street-battles between the Communists and the Nationalists.

In addition, the elections of 1920s Germany show that between voting for the Communists or the National Socialists, over 51% of the voting public supported parties which actively opposed democracy.

Contrast that to 21st Century Britain, which has roughly 300 years of being the most liberal, open democracy in Europe, does not have pitched street battles or violent uprisings, and where unemployment and financial strife is nothing like that experienced in the 1920s and 30s.

In short, the piece in the Guardian was off the mark by quite a long way. Yes Britain has trouble with the rise of nationalism, but that is really where the comparison ends.

The far right and fascism are still a danger, and we would be foolish to ignore them, but to pretend that there are parallels which can be drawn between 21st Century Britain and 20th Century Germany is a dangerous game to play.

Saying that Brexit is akin to the rise of Hitler and the Nazis is dangerous, and disingenuous to the victims of the worst regime ever inflicted upon humanity.