If disabled people or other people hit by what the government is doing draw analogies with what was done by Hitler & Co, they get the knee-jerk "Godwin!" response.
So what likenesses could be used instead?
Surely there must be regimes and political happenings that provide analogies for how disabled people are being treated now that are seen as 'bad' in terms of popular culture in the UK.
They need, I think, not to be seen as genocidal regimes, so as not to make it seem like an exaggeration.
I suppose one could talk about Dickensian times, but I think that gets debunked easily.
One analogy I use but can't find a quick way to describe, is that I describe what's being done to our welfare state as being like when Henry VIII closed the monasteries and in the process closed those institutions that provided education, relief of poverty, health/nursing care, homes for the homeless, care of the elderly etc., which left people with no help until Elizabeth I signed off on what's now called the Statute of Elizabeth, creating the type of tax-exempt trust that's called a charity. It then took hundreds of years for Victorian philanthropy to set in and for two world wars to give rise to the welfare state we've been familiar with that attempted to fill the gaps where charity and philanthropy were insufficient. How long will it take to devise and create an alternative to what's being currently dismantled?
Well, that works with those that want to chat, discuss, sound reasonable (even if at the start they have no sympathy with the 'welfare scroungers').
But what would work as a shorthand analogy? "It's like where in [country our country doesn't like to be likened to], under the leadership of [disliked regime but not commonly referred to stereotype of genocidal tyanny] they took away support for disabled (and poor?) people until [we/our allies/a country our country likes to be associated with] did something about it."
