Journalist Jon Snow’s refusal to wear a poppy while reading the news, his subsequent comment about “poppy fascism” and Christian calls to wear a white poppy instead of red to make a pacifist statement, all contributed this week to the ignition of fierce public debate.

Unsurprisingly, the BBC’s website, Have Your Say, was not immune. Here’s a comment posted from someone who signed off with the unlikely name of Barry Leotard. “I honestly do not care about Remembrance Day and will not be wearing any sort of poppy,” writes the towering intellect that is Barry. He goes on. “Nobody cares about a bunch of old farts who died doing their job years ago.”

Quite apart from Barry’s chimp-like grasp of timeline and logic, manifest in his apparent blindness to the fact that those who died in the two world wars never had the chance to grow into old farts – instead, for example, during world war two, died on average around the age of 24 – he also seems to believe that both wars were fought by enthusiastic career soldiers rather than terrified conscripts thrown into the fight because they had no choice.

Of course, we can happily ignore Barry, because quite clearly he is a piece of knuckle-dragging, educationally sub-normal scum. However, on the same site there are plenty more comments from considerably more civilised representatives of humanity which, albeit in more temperate language, unfortunately appear to echo a little of Barry’s noxious contempt. Some talk about boycotting the red poppy because they do not wish to “glorify war”, another writes about the wearing of the poppy encouraging “cultural imperialism that has nothing to do with a modern multicultural Britain”. Eh?

This is all rather baffling. But if we can forgive the public for being confused over the poppy’s origin and intentions, it’s harder to understand how a top- notch journalist like Snow could be so muddled. Snow says that he is constantly asked to wear ribbons for Aids, breast cancer, heart disease and so on, that he says no on grounds of wishing to retain neutrality, and that this is why he is saying no to the poppy.

Let’s try to get this straight. The poppy’s purpose is fourfold. The first is simply to raise money for ex-servicemen and women and their families. The second is as a respectful symbol of remembrance. The third is as a sign of participation in a communal act of gratitude, and the fourth is as an annual reminder of the terrible, repugnant, human cost of war. Far from “glorifying war”, I have always understood that the phrase “Lest we forget”, chiselled on to war memorials countrywide, means that not only must we never forget the people who sacrificed their lives to retain our freedom, but also that we must remember the horror of war itself. It couldn’t be clearer.

Now, while commendable charity ribbons, like an Aids or cancer badge, may well echo two of the poppy’s purposes, those of raising money and sympathising with victims who suffer from those illnesses, the similarity stops there. Remembering a dear friend who has died tragically from a disease, and calling for funding to support research into its cause and possible cure, is quite different from making the leap of imagination the poppy demands.

We’re asked to remember strangers, say a 19-year-old soldier nearly paralysed with fear, about to engage in a mission that he knows will almost certainly end in his death but will defend the people and values he loves and is about to leave forever. Some of us don’t even need to imagine. Many of our generation’s elderly parents still bear the emotional scars of lost loved ones or hardships and horrors endured.

It’s doubly unfortunate that Snow should have chosen the word “fascism” to illustrate his irritation with what he perceives as a pressure to conform, since the stupid comparison between the genuine, terrifying ideology that these servicemen and women died to protect us from, and the wish of some broadcaster merely desiring its presenters to take part in national remembrance, makes Snow look, at best, like an insensitive fool. Nobody is forcing Snow to do anything. He is free to do as he pleases. He would be far from free if those who died fighting the fascists had failed in their duty.

Nobody should care if Jon Snow does or does not wear a poppy, but what is objectionable is his making an issue of it. Because, in common with the white poppy brigade, he is distracting us from a peaceful and thoughtful act of communal gratitude to those who died, making it all about him and not about them. And while the ideas behind wearing a white poppy are not particularly mendacious, there is an unavoidable perception of moral superiority and aggressive protest behind the suggestion. Both are just as unhelpful as Snow’s public posturing when it comes to concentrating on a consensual effort to put aside selfish concerns and thank those who died to give us the freedom to protest, abstain, or contribute as we wish.

As for the correspondent who worried about the red poppy upsetting a multicultural Britain, what can this possibly refer to? Many people we are remembering were of different races, faiths and nationalities, people who fought for freedom just as hard, whose lives were just as precious, and whose memory is cherished equally. How the act of demonstrating gratitude for their sacrifice could be seen as encouraging cultural imperialism is beyond my limited philosophical powers.

It’s ghastly that this pathetic, unseemly squabble now seems to happen every year. With fascism becoming somewhat globally popular again, this time with a god at its head instead of a führer, the words “Lest we forget” have rarely been so apt. Is it so terribly difficult, for just one day, or if that’s much too hard, just for two minutes of silence, to sublimate our own political and moral posturing, remember the struggle, the dead and their sacrifice, say thank you, mean it, and move on?