So does Sacha Baron Cohen fancy himself the heir to Charlie Chaplin with his new film The Dictator? The political agenda of Cohen’s larger than life creations has never seemed more transparent . “General Aladeen”? Must have taken all of 20 seconds to think of that name. But I suppose people in Iowa will get ‘Aladeen’ more than ‘Seenbad’.

I’ve no idea what the film’s like. I’ve just seen the hysterical pre-release marketing featuring Cohen in a general’s uniform and jihadist-style beard. A neat conflation of Arab Spring bogeyman and Islamic extremist, with that frisson of Hitler for those with a knowledge of Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator”. And today a cover ad feature in Metro to cheer up the sleepy-eyed commuters with hilarious music hall style Middle-Eastern names.

Perhaps it’s too po-faced to go into the propaganda value of such a creation, and recall that the conflation of Middle East bogeyman, Islamic extremism and reference to Hitler is the stock rallying cry for whatever war in the region we are expected to support. As a piece of agit-prop it looks fairly spectacular, lampooning a recurring hate figure in the west ever since Muslims replaced Communists as the bad guys, and with the value of being re-usable for whatever new movements emerge from the period of upheaval in the region. Cohen has built a huge audience in countries that bomb Muslims, and a lot of that audience don’t feel the need to think too deeply about why the conflicts happen, happy to take the cue of a few ridiculous catchphrases, fake beards and whatever “mankini” moment the film is bound to throw up.

But it would be naive to underestimate Cohen’s work, both for its ability to strike a chord with a massive audience and also for the satire to work simultaneously in a variety of directions. Like I say I haven’t seen the film and have no intention of doing so, but perhaps there are more levels to it than the ones I’ve identified. I don’t know perhaps there is a comatose Israeli character with a long history of massacres behind him, General Gabriel Moron? Or a selection of oily (oily!) arms dealers with premises in various European capitals falling over themselves to supply the dictator, along with western sports promoters, architects, financiers and the like. Or an ex-British prime minister dedicated to palm-greasing any likely looking figure in the region.