UP until just before final recording I was set to appear on The Collective, the new BBC Scotland debate show, four episodes of which were due to be screened in April.The premise is that as its late-night mostly anything goes. A group of people with opposing views sit around in a fake living room discussing big issues of the day. When filming the pilots, I had a broad-ranging discussion with poet, drag queen and a part-time soldier on whether there was ever such a thing as a just war and belief in the afterlife.

Despite us coming from different walks of life, the discussion was nourishing fun. I was all set to film for the final show when I was told I could no longer take part because of my involvement with other new BBC channel projects. I was disappointed. I’d been looking forward to it, and not just because I’ve been banking on the paycheck.

Then, it came to light that the BBC had hired Count Dankula, real name Mark Meechan, for two of the episodes. This is a man whose notable achievement in life is training his dog to do a Nazi salute whenever he said “sieg hell” or “gas the Jews”. This act landed him with a hate-crime conviction and an £800 fine for causing gross offence.

His episodes were dropped after his appearances became public knowledge at the weekend but what had felt like a missed opportunity now feels like a lucky escape. I have no desire to chat about the big issues of the day with someone who mines atrocity for likes and shares.

I posted about this on social media because it feels so quintessentially 2019. Right now, at a time when British Jews are exhausted by the news cycle that brings fresh horrors daily, as we watch those on the left re-appropriate ideas we are most more used to seeing come from the right.

Of course, OF COURSE, this is the moment when we’ll also be confronted by ridiculous conversations about whether dogs can be Nazis, while simultaneously being accused of having no sense of humour. It’s not just him, it’s not just the dog. This is the cherry on the shit-cake, when every day feels like a struggle to get people to understand that the UK has a serious problem with institutional anti-Semitism.

These concerns are dismissed daily – and now we have to be available for comment on why some idiot teaching his innocent dog to do a Nazi salute just isn’t all that funny. Especially when, post-conviction, said individual immediately began courting the alt-right, spoke at a Tommy Robinson rally, and became a member of Ukip, actively recruiting more young proto-fascists for Gerard Batten’s party.

Planning to have him on the show was an extraordinary editorial decision for the BBC to have taken at a time when the impact of growing anti-Semitism in the UK is so salient. Part of the reason that it is growing is because “larfs” like this, and fellow YouTuber PewDiePie’s “death to all Jews” sign, have become so normalised by social media that many don’t see what the problem is.

Instead of critically reflecting on the downstream consequences of being deliberately offensive, defenders will instead to cite a sense of humour failure and those who have a problem with Meechan’s behaviour. Some prominent commentators have called the BBC’s decision to axe him for the series as ridiculous, censorious, and cowardly. It sounds more like a moment of clarity to me. Why on Earth would the new BBC channel want to associate itself with anyone resembling a Diet Coke Mosely? They’re not stupid.

I don’t want to spend this column debating the ins and outs of who gets to make jokes about the Nazis but you can safely say it’s not alt-right shit-posters.

Having morally dubious opinions and an outlandish way of interpreting the world does not automatically discount you from your freedom of speech. But that same entitlement to it does not automatically shield you from the consequences of what you choose to say or do. You can make a joke, but if it’s bad, we don’t have to laugh. If it falls foul of hate crime legislation, then you will feel the consequences. Oh, and when someone sees sense, you might get the boot from your TV show.

We cannot have it both ways. It’s incumbent on those of us in the left to recognise when a claim to free speech is being used as a Trojan horse for something more sinister. Once upon a time, free speech was synonymous with the civil rights movement bent on securing freedoms for marginalised people.

Today it has been appropriated by those who already control the lion’s share of social power, it has become a cri de coeur for those desperate to hang on to their disproportionate share. Right-wing freedom of speech defenders don’t actually care about the rights of all being upheld. For them, this issue has become a means of maintaining the status quo. The words have lost their social meaning.

Make no mistake about it, the ardent defence of free speech by internet provocateurs has allowed for the pushing of the Overton window, and has facilitated for the slow drip of right-leaning poison into mainstream spaces, thoughts, speeches, and ideas.

If free speech ceases to become the profound tool for change that it once was, and has been reduced to simply meaning saying whatever the hell you want to but free from consequence, then we’re only going to see more of this sort of thing in future. When a pug has acceptable face of fascism, it’s time to ask questions about where we’re heading.