I mean, Nazis weren't anything in 1923, either. I broadly agree with the statement that most people have no clue where Nazism really comes from, or how it is integrated with a whole host of other beliefs, and how those beliefs were used as a wedge to either manufacture consent or compliance in otherwise good people. Most of the world's governments were happy enough to work with the Nazis up until about 1937. They were ''good for business.'' Many of those elements, purely as ideas, are present now after having laid dormant for decades during the liberal democratic pax in the West. What isn't present, though, as you point out, at least in large enough numbers at the moment, are the kinds of men who will carry out what happened. Most men are scared of intimacy, let alone armed revolt.
The Nazis were a direct consequence of WW1, and perhaps less directly a consequence of German military culture and philosophy, which was very unique compared to the rest of the world's. It must be noted that Hitler himself was an undercover agent of the German military, whose direct purpose was to incite basically a military take-over to prevent a descent to Communism or anarchy. So what he did was literally a direct cause of WW1, and his success relied largely on how Germany was treated after WW1.
Those elements certainly still exist as ideas, but they exist all around, as Nazis, whether people like to admit it or not (and they will never do this), were as much a revolutionary movement as they were a reactionary one. Veganism, animal rights, environmental protections, abortion, euthanasia, universal health care, free education to all citizens, etc. were first brought to the public's attention in a major way, and successfully implemented, by Nazis. They also paraded many of the New Age, Asian-influenced, as well as neo-Pagan historically-influenced philosophies prior to modern day movements (German philosophy in fact had a fetish on ancient Indian history during those times, and Nazis followed that tradition). They were critics of colonialism and "robber baron capitalism" and received much of their strength and popularity by deflecting to these criticisms, whenever called out on their own actions. Few speakers ever came up with more heart-string pulling defenses of the poor American natives and the poor Indians that the "vile" Americans and British had been abusing, than Hitler himself. In his mind, Germans were merely yet another underdog nation being held down by colonialist and imperialist forces, which "schemed" behind others' backs to keep all the world's resources for themselves.
I do not think that those ideas "lay dormant", they influenced the world then, and continued to influence the world long after the Nazis were gone. And if you're talking about just purely the nationalistic, militaristic and the undemocratic/inegalitarian/anti-human nature of the movement, here's a news flash, every single one of the countries that fought in WW2, was nationalist in some sense (including Stalin's USSR), certainly militaristic, and had a sketchy record of human rights, democracy and egalitarianism at best.
American government itself had a widely popular eugenics/race fetish during that time, and it was only after WW2 and the events involved, that a backlash towards it, put a halt to the "scientific racism" and "eugenics" movement. There was a lot of correspondence between German and American believers in eugenics, and Germans admitted that much of their influence on race, came from America, its treatment of natives and blacks. But there has been very little historical evaluation about the fact that the whole world was pretty much nuts and subscribing to many of the same ideals that the Nazis took to their worst excesses. This includes America which had its borders fully closed to immigration, races segregated, black people largely confined to ghettos, men and women being sterilized, etc. Just because they had already wrapped up their genocide of natives, doesn't necessarily mean that they were operating from such a higher moral platform.
But there's also a problem here. I would rather have everyone overcorrecting and seeing Nazis in their closets than ''hearing them out'' one more time. Most people, or at least enough people to be a serious problem - and I think history has proven this - are not intellectually, emotionally, spiritually equipped to truly engage with fascist thought and come out the other end unsympathetic to it. There is a current of thought that seeks to disarm any comparison of today's time with that period in history. But if we do that, no lesson can ever be learned from it and applied to our time. For some angry larpers, this is actually the intent. The way I think about it is, if I could give you a time machine to go back to, say, 1928, what would you have said to everyone to avoid what happened? You are now armed with perfect hindsight. Compared to someone from 1928, you are a god. What would you have told them? Would they have even believed you? What if they said ''so what''? And why are they so different, rationally speaking, than people today?
You would, but I wouldn't. Why? Because it is delusional to think that anyone is "hearing out the Nazis" one more time. The movement is dead. It died in 1945. Hasn't existed since.
What you see are mostly some nationalistic guys, the same guys who fought in WW2
against the Nazis, waving their flag, being patriotic, being racist, indeed, buying into their nation's propaganda and its inherent superiority, and come to associate these people as Nazis. Yet they are not. Most of the men fighting in a foxhole in 1943 would've believed such ideas, and worse. Nazism had a lot more to it than just people believing that they were the best nation and race around. That was pretty much the norm then, to everybody. Americans preached as much about "keeping the race pure" and being the "greatest nation in the world" as much as anybody. As did Brits, French, Japanese, and much of the rest.
Whatever movements occur, will be new ones, and they are unlikely to represent the platform that brought about Nazi Germany, which again, was unique to German culture, the German people's sentiments, the German people's capabilities that existed at that time. These were a group of highly intelligent, highly respected, highly eloquent people, rather than a rabble of skinheads in military boots. Each of them war veterans, even war heroes, who had gone through experiences, in a war that ravaged an entire continent and brought about the deaths of millions, by gas, by machine gun fire, by artillery, by disease and starvation, that no man in history had ever gone through before. No man today, certainly, except for those WW2 vets still in existence.
To put it to perspective, Hitler himself had been part of some of the worst massacres in human history before even the age of 30, had seen a whole generation of men that he grew up with, wiped out in a single battle, one of only many that he participated in, nearly facing death himself by mortar shelling and mustard gas, receiving the highest German awards for heroism on the battlefield. How many such men capable of leadership, rather than being treated for PTSD, do we have walking around today?
Until something like WW3 happens, we need not worry about anything close to a "Nazi movement". Although if WW3 happens, worrying about a Nazi movement spawning as a result of it, is probably the least of our concerns, compared to nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.
