In a recent analysis  in the Washington Post of why Republican voters keep on supporting Trump and his “macho gone beserk”-rhetoric, the veteran American political analyst E.J. Dionne cited a classic book about Right-Wingers and their rhetoric, what they believe their phrases can accomplish.

The social scientists Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab observed in their classic book from 1970 “The Politics of Unreason/ Right Wing Extremism in America, 1790-1970” that:

Right-wing extremists have always highlighted ‘the magical power of the word’ and the faith that just saying the right thing, believing the right thing, is the substance of victory and remedy.

That is exactly what fact-denying, experts-despising Brexiteers like Johnson and Gove, and of course Farage, have been doing all along the Brexit campaign. That racist Farage is extreme we already know, but Gove and Johnson should shudder from that way of doing politics.

Mussolini did the same talking about restoring the Roman Empire around “Mare Nostrum”: the Mediterranean, once Italy had walked, sulking but “liberated”, out of the League of Nations (sounds familiar?). When showtime arrived and confronted with an over-extended British Army, his ineffective tin-box tanks got stuck in the Sahara. Even the ill-equipped Greeks kicked him humiliatingly out in four months, where the classic Romans once had conquered it all thanks to substantial preparations and efforts. In both Greece and the Sahara, Hitler had to save grandiloquent, hollow Mussolini’s bacon. And after that, Mussolini needed SS support to eke out another two years as sorry puppet head of state.

Like Obama, we have to ask Johnson and Farage how and why they believe that just saying Paradise will descend on Britain after Brexit will make it happen inevitably. There’s no Harry Potter amongst all of the Brexiteers; they and we are all Muggles who struggle. “Free Beer Tomorrow” on a pub sign is just as illusory as proclaiming to rule the waves again after a “liberating” Brexit. If the Brexiteers are better than all kinds of experts, let them present the BBC TV weather forecast every night, or gamble all England’s capital on just one surefire stock (they themselves selected) at the stock exchange. Not being experts, they would pull both off effortlessly, just by talking big. Obama would say “Talking points is all the expert strategy they can offer”…

* Dr. Bernard Aris is a historian, a D66 parliamentary researcher and a LibDem supporting member.