IF you haven’t watched the clip of the angry woman screaming at a Trump supporter in London, take a good look at it and tell me what you see. What, do you think, is really disturbing about the footage? Is it the fact that the woman is yelling in the man’s face, mouth wide, eyes burning? Is it the fact someone throws a milkshake on the man and it runs down over his hair and face? Or is it that the man is vastly outnumbered – one against two, or ten, or a hundred, who knows? What is it that makes that scene so ugly?

I’ll tell you what it is: it’s the laughing. It’s the fact that when the milkshake finds its target, the blonde woman, and some other people in the crowd, have a good old laugh about it. The woman in question – apparently an NHS worker called Siobhan Prigent – has since apologised, but the fact that she and others mocked the man really got to me, possibly because most of us know bullying when we see it: the strong going for the weak, the biggest targeting the smallest, the most hitting out at the fewest.

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I have to say the unpleasant, laughing face of that angry woman in London got to me for another reason too: I think it’s a sign of the political entropy and decline affecting some areas of public life, most obviously social media where a common response to someone expressing their opinion is a mocking, laughing-face emoji. It may sound unlikely, but the sound of laughter is also one of the five stages on the road to fascism, or in this case liberal fascism. It’s worth going through all five of them and thinking about where they might be taking us.

The first stage, obviously – on the left or the right – is anger at some perceived injustice – something politicians, bigots and demagogues have exploited for a long time. The second is intolerance of people who don’t agree with you - the woman in London for example. The third is conformity to the group: think the same as us or you’re in trouble. And the fourth, and most troubling, is indifference – or delight – in the suffering of your opponents – you really know you’re in trouble when people start laughing at the pain or distress of others.

As for stage five – well, we all know that one, and it usually spells the end game: it’s when the situation turns violent.

Sadly, all five of the signs are evident in the current state of public life. You can see stage one – anger –­ on both the left and the right of politics: the left is furious about Donald Trump and the right is furious about Brexit or the lack of it. But the one that really worries me, because it’s everywhere, is intolerance of different opinions. The angry, laughing woman is one example but there are plenty of others that demonstrate the same thing: be careful what you think, but be especially careful what you say. I can think straight away of four recent cases that prove the point: the case of the writer, the rugby player, the singer and the philosopher.

The writer is Gareth Roberts. Mr Roberts writes stories about Doctor Who. This makes me like him. Mr Roberts also says things like “I don’t believe anybody is born in the wrong body.” This makes me like him less. But can it possibly be true that he was sacked for his views on transgenderism?

I’m afraid it is. Mr Roberts revealed this week that he was commissioned to write a story for a new Doctor Who anthology from BBC Books but that, when the fans found out about it, some of them called for his removal from the book. Some of the other authors also threatened to withdraw if Mr Roberts was involved so the publishers told him his story would not be included.

It’s hard to believe, isn't it, that something like that could happen? I don’t agree with Mr Roberts’ views on transgenderism, but I agree with him that his views are neither extreme nor unusual - in fact, lots of people think the same way. I have to admit some of his tweets on the subject have been pretty robust – and the use of the word “tranny” was ill-advised – but the point is that Gareth Roberts should not have been sacked for his opinion.

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The same applies to the rugby player: Israel Folau, who was sacked recently by Rugby Australia after he tweeted the following: “Drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists, idolaters. Hell awaits you. Repent. Only Jesus saves.”

Again: I disagree. Again: this is a not unreasonable view for a Christian to hold and he should not be sacked for it. He should only lose his job if he discriminates against someone because of those views – for example, by refusing to play with a gay colleague. But no, we are in full-on stage two of liberal fascism.

There are plenty of other examples. I’ve written before about the singer Morrissey’s new album being banned from record shops and his posters being taken down from train stations in Liverpool because of his support for the right-wing For Britain party. But shouldn’t the posters be triumphantly put back up again because of his support for more left-wing friendly causes like republicanism and veganism?

Then there’s the philosopher Roger Scruton, who was sacked as a government advisor on housing after appearing to question the existence of Islamophobia and speculating on the influence of the Jewish philanthropist George Soros in Hungary. What is particularly troublesome about that case is who fired him. If a Conservative government won’t resist liberal fascism, then who will?

The difficult part for me, in the end, is why people who behave in this way can’t see the contradictions in what they’re doing: trying to protect liberal values by being illiberal. However, I also hope they can understand this point: if we accuse the president of the United States of being intolerant of other people’s opinions (and he is), shouldn’t we be careful to avoid doing exactly the same thing ourselves? Isn’t it obvious what that kind of intolerance means for all of us? It means that if Donald Trump and his supporters are fascists, then so are we.