HERE'Ssomeshockingnews.An in-depth investigation by this column reveals that Labour MP Anne Moffat waselectedtoparliamentunder exactly the same system that gave Britain Enoch Powell, Ian Paisley and Oswald Mosley, the father of British fascism. Worse, there is evidence that East Lothian "voted" for Moffat much as "votes" were once cast in the USSR for Joseph Stalin. What more do we need to know?

Obviously, no-one is comparing Moffat to a mass murderer, or even to Alex Salmond. The very suggestion would be offensive. After all, the Labour MP was democratically elected to represent a party so popular it commands a minority of the vote. She bears no resemblance to certain ruthless demagogues (or Stalin). It was merely her duty, last week, to discuss the failings of PR by nonchalantly dropping the names Hitler and Salmond into the same sentence, as one does.

But did she compare the latter to the former? Absolutely not. She said: "Is it not the case proportional representation gave Germany Adolf Hitler and in Scotland, to a lesser degree, we have the member for Banff and Buchan Salmond. Can that be a good thing?"

Clearly not. Clearly, anyone wading through one of those fascinating articles weighing the merits of the single transferable vote is flirting with totalitarianism. All the many countries around the world that have dabbled for decades with PR are obviously on the road to the Fourth Reich. Then again, all those dull, peaceable countries don't catch headlines the way the name Hitler catches headlines. But how was poor Moffat supposed to know that?

Who cares? Seriously. Political insults, intended or not, are not life-threatening. Moffat, steadfastly refusing to apologise to outraged Nationalists, is factually correct when she denies making a comparison. She set up a certain association between two names, it is true, but unknown backbenchers tend to be unknown for a reason. The implication, if intended (take a guess), was risible. The victim, if any, was Moffat herself. So why were there yelps of "outrageous" in the Commons?

All that the MP managed to prove is the fact that Salmond bothers Labour people. They respond with cheap shots because cheap is all that they can currently afford, given recent events in Scotland. But Salmond will only invade Poland after he abolishes the council tax: don't hold your breath either way.

Moffat's action was less interesting than the reaction. In some quarters, it seems, there is still no possible context in which the name Hitler can be used without causing offence. This will come as news to all the traffic wardens and planning officials cursed daily as diminutive dictators. It might even cause Mel Brooks to regret making The Producers, the second funniest film ever made, though I doubt it. (Springtime for Wee Eck? Still doesn't work). And should we burn every copy of Chaplin's The Great Dictator? Hitler would have liked that.

It would probably have given the maniac great satisfaction, in fact, to know that his name is still being used to frighten. Adolf understood the power of words and the function, equal and opposite, of censorship. He grasped by instinctwhatOrwellexplained: manipulate language and you manipulate ideas; manipulate ideas and you control thought. Control, social control, depends on taboos.

Interviewing Mel Brooks is a very pleasant ordeal. He doesn't need questions, just prompts. Any coherent thoughts you prepared earlier are best discarded. Behind the blizzard of gags, however, there is a sophisticated, thoughtful Jewish man with central European roots who needs no lessons on the Holocaust. He has broken most of the taboos about Hitler and Nazism because comedy is his revenge.

He said as much, eventually, when I sat the Brooks test years ago. He was publicising his remake of the old screwball comedy, To Be Or Not To Be. It's the story of a Jewish theatre company attempting to flee, none too adeptly, from Adolf's armies. The obvious question came up, when the comic paused for breath: Nazis again? Were there any jokes left after "Springtime for You Know Who"? Was good taste an issue?

I'll paraphrase the response. Brooks doesn't do good taste. He doesn't believe in forbidden jokes. And no-one has the right to tell him what he can and cannot say about Hitler. Especially if it's funny.

Did anyone in the Commons last week think that Alex Salmond had been insulted? I mean properly insulted, as in besmirched, his honour and humanity questioned, his integrity wounded? When Helen Liddell was secretary of state for Scotland she endured the nickname "Stalin's Granny". Can't think why. Yet historians agree that the Soviet monster probably caused more deaths than Hitler. Still, no-one ever batted an eye over a joke that has appeared in print countless times.

Would Moffat be offended if I said that she behaved last week with all the blind, dim-witted loyalty of one of Mao's red guards? Apart from the dim-witted part, she'd probably put it down to hostile journalism. But if Stalin killed more than Hitler the chances are that state communism's last emperor murdered more than both combined. So have I just offered another outrageous slur?

Hard luck, then. Words become powerful by default. Fear of causing offence becomes offensive. Hurt, actual or not, becomes more important than thought and expression: that strikes me as a bad bargain. Some Labour loyalists were a little miffed recently when a former civil servant described Gordon Brown as "Stalinist". No-one took this to mean that the Treasury was hatching plans to pack half of us off to the gulags. The remark was understood, rightly, to mean that the next prime minister has a hunger for control. The point is that you can speak the name Stalin, but not Hitler.

In a world of cultural, ethnic and religious diversity you can insult someone, somewhere, almost daily, without even bothering to try. God's peoples are particularly sensitive, but they are not unique. Everyone, it seems, is "sensitive", everyone can be cut to the quick by a few vowels and consonants, even - for this no longer matters - if there is no intention to injure.

The trouble is that there are also people who can be put at real risk by words. Racism is the obvious case in point. The world echoes what language allows. A person dehumanised by adjectives and nouns is treated, inevitably, as less than human. Hitler, this week's guest star, understood the fact only too well. But when everyone claims victimhood all perspective becomes lost, every hurt, real or imagined, is taken to be equal and equivalent.

What's wrong with that? Why shouldn't we just be more considerate? First, because censorship distorts reality. Secondly, because that road leads to the sort of absurdities only comedy can cleanse. Finally, because the need to defend free expression allows every BNP creep the defence that he is, merely, innocently, "not PC".

How daft can this get? Here's how daft. The mighty McDonald's fast food chain, purveyors of yummy, nutritious, life-enhancing, er, stuff, wants the Oxford English Dictionary censored. The company claims that an entry defining the word McJob as "an unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector" is outdated and insulting to its 67,000 British employees, who have been invited - I'm sure that's the word - to sign a petition to the OED.

Clive Betts, a Labour MP - no little Hitler he - has joined the campaign with an early day motion regretting "derogatory" phrases applied to the glamorous, fulfilling world of fast food. The British RetailConsortium,theBritishChambersof Commerce and the Institute of Economic Affairs have given their support to the campaign. None appear to realise that the OED merely reflects usage. Perhaps they should open the thing now and then.

No matter. McDonald's "chief people officer" - he only looks after chief people, presumably - wants McJob erased for the sake of "those talented, committed, hard-working people who serve the public every day". Somehow I don't think he was talking about racially abused black nurses, or the latest victims of the queer-bashers.

Equal esteem for burger-flippers, then. Equal victimhood all round. Say not a word that someone, somewhere, might mistake for sticks and stones. Better still, if this goes on, say nothing at all. Some people should get a McLife.