More on Hitler

Although the name of the Nazi Party is short for "National Socialist," the Nazi were not socialists in any way whatever. The reason for the name is that Hitler took over an existing party, called the German Workers Party, later renamed the National Socialist German Workers Party, and its initial platform had socialist elements, although it was primarily racist and nationalist. Those socialist platform items were dropped long before the Nazis took power. The Nazis were closely allied with German capitalism and enjoyed the full support and collaboration of Germany's industrial barons. They were also bitter opponents of socialism and murdered socialists and communists by the tens of thousands.

The core of Nazi ideology was a bizarre, mystical ideology, which had actually developed in Germany in the 19th Century, which Hitler absorbed in his formative years. This ideology divided humanity into races in a more finely grained way than even most modern racists are inclined to do, and imagined a pure "Aryan" race that was the superior version of humanity. The only country where relatively pure examples of the Aryan race existed was Germany, southern Europeans and Slavs and even to some extent the French having degraded their racial purity by interbreeding with lesser races. Hitler actually despised the French but he apparently believed the English were relatively pure. 

It was the divine destiny of the Master Race, the pure Aryan Germans, to rule the world. The plan specifically was first to neutralize France by conquering it and setting up a puppet state, then turn to the east, conquer the Slavic lands, enslave their people, move in German overlords and extract the wealth of the conquered territory for the glorification of Germany. .Hitler also believed that "the Jews" constituted a monolithic conspiracy that had undermined German greatness and polluted the purity of the German homeland. Hitler initially contemplated removing them from Europe, and even had talks with Zionists who wanted to join him in that project, but ultimately decided on extermination. He also set out to exterminate "defectives" in order to improve and further purify the German Master Race. This included people with disabilities. It also included homosexuals which was kind of ironic considering that many of the Nazi leaders were homosexuals, which Hitler knew full well and with which he had no problem. Like J. Edgar Hoover and Roy Cohn, they evidently had no problem persecuting people like themselves. 

The MAGA cult is mostly not so explicit about these matters, although some of its thought leaders such as Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka are, and that's what the infamous Charlottesville rally, with "good people on both sides," was about. But it's still a white ethno-nationalist movement, albeit with a somewhat more inclusive concept of whiteness, and as we have seen with numerous threats and attacks on Jewish institutions it has plenty of antisemitism mixed in, along with homophobia (another word that isn't quite right) and patriarchy, which was also a component of Nazism. Immigrants trying to enter from the south are of course racially impure. Ever wonder why they aren't much worried about the Canadian border, or immigrants such as Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk? 

 

Anyway they don't have any other platform or policy agenda, except to end multi-ethnic democracy and install autocratic rule on behalf of the Real Americans, i.e white Christians. So yeah, it's kind of similar.