History repeats?

Some think it's a stretch to draw parallels between the rise of Nazi Germany and the changes shepherded in by George W. Bush and his ideological compatriots. Undoubtedly, Bush is no Hitler. But in sociological and economic terms, you've gotta wonder what's afoot.

From Erich Fromm's Escape from Freedom:

...certain socioeconomic changes, notably the decline of the middle class and the rising power of monopolistic capital, had a deep psychological effect. These effects were increased or systematized by a political ideology--as by religious ideologies in the sixteenth century--and the psychic forces thus aroused became effective in a direction that was opposite to the original economic interests of that class. Nazism resurrected the lower middle class psychologically while participating in the destruction of its old socioeconomic position. It mobilized its emotional energies to become an important force in the struggle for the economic and political aims of German imperialism.

(Thanks, Jim.)