Like Berlin 1930

Anyone who thinks that identifying the beginning of the rise of the next wave of neo-fascism in Europe will be as simple as keeping an eye out for bulk purchases of Matalan's discount black shirts is going to be disappointed and surprised.

1930s fascism was totally discredited – more than any other ideology, ever – by the comprehensive defeat of all of its exponents in the Second World War. The trouble is, the stresses and urges that created it haven't gone away. In fact, I'm worried that they are back big time and that an inability to stop obsessing about the superficial exterior forms of 1930s fascism – specifically the Nazis – is blinding us to this.

OK, I completely accept that it would be utterly ridiculous to suggest that there has been any catastrophic dislocation remotely comparable to the First World War and its aftermath in recent times.

I don't think it would be crazy to suggest, though, that the Afghanistan and Iraq wars have altered the nature of the relationship between the government, the military and the public in this country.

Eight years of unsuccessful war and a steady drip-drip of casualties have directed public sentiment against the government's conduct of the war, while boosting sympathy for the "betrayed" armed forces. The meteoric rise of very new groups like Help for Heroes is evidence of this.

At the same time, the wars have, if not themselves created, then cemented and reinforced the position of a visible enemy without and within – "radical Islam".

The Cuts, meanwhile, are shortly going to be putting thousands of demobilised ex-military personnel onto the streets without much hope of getting jobs. Many of them will have been fighting overseas, ostensibly for their country against radical Islamism, and they will find themselves out of work, back in a country that – in their eyes – is being infiltrated by the very people they've been trying to kill for nearly a decade. The government and the political class, they will quickly conclude, have given up on them and on the cause they were fighting for.

So, we will soon have a whole lot of trained fighters who are anti-Islamist and very pissed off at being stabbed in the back by the political class on our streets.

Enter groups like the BNP and, I think more significantly here, the English Defence League. "Political militias" were at the heart of the rise of 1930s fascism – alleged patriots defending their nation from communist conspiracies, by going out and kicking the shit out of their enemies.

Of course the EDL don't dress up like a bunch of South American paramilitaries and give Hitler salutes to one another (not officially, at least). Expecting them to do that is to fall into the trap of imaging that fascism is all about appearances. That's like expecting Nick Griffin to sprout a toothbrush moustache overnight. They probably won't use as much BrylCream or have such good posture as Oswald Mosley either.

Surveillance technology today means that thugs – political and apolitical – go around hooded and masked, not wearing their medals.

Ah, surveillance technology... don't forget that most European fascist movements never actually came to power, but instead created atmospheres of disorder and subversion where the governments moved further and further to the authoritarian right, on the one hand to co-opt them against the communists and on the other to suppress them. Again, the uniqueness of the Nazi example blinds us to the perhaps more relevant examples of Romania, Hungary and indeed Italy where battling crazies on the streets led to governments turning to dictatorship in the name of "order".

Civil liberties in this country are being eroded as we speak, thanks to the "enemy within" trope (maybe with Iran playing the role of the Soviet Union).

At the same time, what have we got? Collapse of faith in the political class as a whole and "conventional" political institutions? Check. Unfocussed anger against "international finance"? Check. Unemployment AND inflation? Check. A whole load of newly-democratic East European countries under massive economic and social strain? Check. Popular anti-science sentiments, belief in social decadence and growing millenarianism (only this time environmental rather than "biological")? Check.

Gosh, it does look remarkably like history is repeating itself. Just don't expect them to come wearing tell-tale "baddie" uniforms this time.