Ominous Parallels

This is a book that details the parallels between Weimar/pre-nazi Germany and modern America. But not the way one might expect. The author looks at the social movements and sentiments in Weimar Germany and notes that anti-rational, anti-scientific collectivism was dominant. Youths would quite their jobs and go off into the forest in groups (c.f. the "Drop out/Tune out"/beatnicks/hippies). Subjectivism and 'personal realities' were favoured over any sort of objective outside of ones self existence. Abstract art movements, like DaDa ism, beyond mere pointalism and disortion were extremely popular. Even in monetary policy the state and public favoured unrealistic inflation producing standards, which exacerbated the global economic collapse that might've really been able to push the nazis into power.

As many people here are aware the Nazis were something of a mystico-religious cult, one of several in the same vein, such as the Thule Society (of course, to be clear, hitler outlawed Thule), and those sorts of things appealed to people just as much as nationalization of businesses and socialism for workers and labourers.

Now, this book was written years ago, but are thing so different today as they were when the author wrote it or even when the Weimar Republic was around? Ecclesiastical religion seems to moderate what most people think politically now, and how often do people make appeals to religion, whether its the bible, kabbala, or new-age ism, to soley justify their proposals? The bible commands this, therefore it should be law, the numbers demand this balance, therefore it should be practiced, or the earth 'suffers' under man, therefor this must be regulated, and such.

But if there are similarites, then why hasn't the history played out differently? Are irrational popular ideologies a requirement for something like nazi rule, or are they in themselves enough to result in it, and what can balance it out?

Here is the author's page on the book.
Here is an amazon page on one edition with some interesting reviews.
Here is another one, with some 'preview' functionality.