Two things have been clear for years: a) Katie Hopkins has cleverly built a popular, personal brand on provocative views that tend to to demonise people she doesn’t like, and get a rise out of people who don’t like her; b) the best way to respond is not to respond at all.

That’s fine - Hopkins has children to feed and dress - and we can unfollow her, and avoid what she writes and says. Free country, free speech. Just look the other way.

But when a national newspaper, which gives this brand an audience of two million people, happily prints language that might give Hitler pause, is that still OK? Or is it worth responding this time, even if she’ll love every minute?

A bit strong to compare Hopkins to Hitler? Read her column on page 11 of yesterday’s Sun.

“Rescue boats? I’d use gunships to stop migrants”. That was The Sun's headline, written apparently without concern.

She then refers to migrants in Calais who try to board trucks heading to Britain as “a plague of feral humans”.

She proposes an Australian approach to migrants on boats. “They threaten them with violence until they bugger off, throwing cans of Castlemaine in an Aussie version of sharia stoning”.

She says we don’t need Save the Children “encouraging” migrants to make the journey. “What we need are gunships sending these boats back to their own country”.

She adds: “Some of our towns are festering sores, plagued by swarms of migrants and asylum seekers, shelling out benefits like Monopoly money”.

Katie Hopkins' most offensive moments Show all 16 1 /16 Katie Hopkins' most offensive moments Katie Hopkins' most offensive moments Katie Hopkins on 'plus size' 'To call yourself 'plus-size' is just a euphemism for being fat. Life is much easier when you're thinner. Big is not beautiful, of course a job comes down to how you look.' Katie Hopkins' most offensive moments Katie Hopkins on naming children ‘I think you can tell a great deal from a name. For me, there are certain names that I hear and I think ‘Urgh’. For me, a name is a shortcut of finding out what class that child comes from and makes me ask, ‘Do I want my children to play with them?’ There’s a whole set of things that go with children like that and that’s why I don’t like those sorts of children. ‘Hi, this is my daughter Charmaine’. I hear: ‘Hi, I am thick and ignorant.’’ Katie Hopkins' most offensive moments Katie Hopkins on gender equality 'Women don't want equal treatment, they couldn't handle it if they got it. It's a tough world out there. What a lot of women are actually looking for is special treatment. What women need to realise is that they have to toughen up.' Katie Hopkins' most offensive moments Katie Hopkins on immigration 'I've always said if you go into a school playground and shout Mohammad, you'll probably get 100 children running towards you!" Katie Hopkins' most offensive moments Katie Hopkins to Benefits Street's White Dee 'Do you not feel like the patron saint of druggies and dropouts?' Channel 5 Katie Hopkins' most offensive moments Katie Hopkins on tattoos 'Are tattoos just a badge for the stupid? For me, and for lots of people like me, when you see tatoos you think of someone who is just looking for attention, who hasn't managed to find a way in their life through conventional means and who is just shouting 'I want attention! I want to be looked at!' Katie Hopkins' most offensive moments Katie Hopkins on addiction ‘I don’t believe what Russell Brand says about addiction. I just don’t buy it. Gazza likes drinking, let him crack on. He is enjoying himself.’ Katie Hopkins' most offensive moments Katie Hopkins on The X Factor 'The X Factor 2013 has ended in a painful showdown between a fat mum in a jumpsuit (Sam Bailey) and a small boy in whatever his mum laid out for him on his bed (Nicholas McDonald)' ITV Katie Hopkins' most offensive moments Katie Hopkins on the Egyptian uprising 'The difference between most mothers and me is that I didn’t sit around drinking coffee at baby group for 12 months after the birth of my baby. No, in three weeks I was back in my suit, back at my desk earning profit for my business and I don’t see why other women shouldn’t do the same.' Katie Hopkins' most offensive moments Katie Hopkins on maternity leave 'Egyptian uprising continues to look like Bonfire Night. Protest fireworks. Right up there with angry cup cakes.' Katie Hopkins' most offensive moments Katie Hopkins on 'gingerism' 'Ginger babies. Like a baby. Just so much harder to love. A ginger person with tattoos called Jayden? The triumvirate of horror!' Katie Hopkins' most offensive moments Katie Hopkins on affairs 'I lied to get someone else's husband because I wanted him. I give myself 8 out of 10 for ruthlessness for that one.' Katie Hopkins' most offensive moments Katie Hopkins on the elderly ‘Personally I hate mobility scooters. I find their owners intolerable. Ran past a mobility scooter going up hill. Made me giggle. I need to grow up and stop being an arse.’ Katie Hopkins' most offensive moments Katie Hopkins after the Glasgow helicopter crash 'Life expectancy in Scotland is 59.5. Goodness me. That lot will do anything to avoid working until retirement.' Katie Hopkins' most offensive moments Katie Hopkins on Ramadan 'Channel 4 broadcasts Islamic calls to prayer for Ramadan. A 30 day reminder that minority rules in the UK. Any more PC, it'd be a bloody laptop.' Katie Hopkins' most offensive moments Katie Hopkins on self-harming 'I am advised by the Twitterati to 'cut myself'. I grazed myself on my house gate yesterday. Will that suffice?'

Then she writes this, and The Sun prints it. “Make no mistake, these migrants are like cockroaches. They might look a bit “Bob Geldof’s Ethiopia circa 1984”, but they are built to survive a nuclear bomb. They are survivors”.

In the environment that led to creation of the Third Reich in Germany, Polish people were seen as "an East European species of cockroach", while Jews were rats. When Hutu extremists used radio propaganda to incite violence against the Tutsis during the Rwandan Genocide, they called on people to “weed out the cockroaches.”

Putting to one side the facts - that Hopkins’ cockroaches include families trying to flee war zones - it is not a challenge to free speech to question the publication of language that reads so much like dehumanising, fascist propaganda. You don’t have to be humourless, or unsympathetic to the truck drivers Hopkins set out to protect, to feel like something is wrong here. And it is not about political correctness. It’s about decency.

Even before we consider her words in relation to the legal definition of racial hatred, The Sun has a responsibility to decide where to draw the line. What if any discussions took place before editors sent page 11 to be printed? (I asked Stig Abell, the Managing Editor, and Dylan Sharpe, the paper’s head of PR, for their thoughts on Twitter last night, but no reply so far.)

I suspect that if any other journalist had filed that column to The Sun, editors would have rightly gasped and spiked it immediately. But this is Brand Hopkins. This is what she does, and she peppers her prejudice with gags. People like her - there is demand for her views, and it’s good for business. And what about free speech?!