The current batch in Germany are far less crude, more refined in their approach. They have to be. Germany after the first world war was an economic basket case. People were out of work, their money was worthless and starvation was real. Anger was everywhere, and a LOT of people were looking for someone to blame. Kaiser Wilhelm II had already gone into exile, and anyway, even if they hung him from the highest tree, that wasn't going to feed anyone. It was a demagogue's dream.
Today's Germany is relatively prosperous. Their systems of welfare are clumsy and cumbersome, as all systems put together by bureaucrats tend to be. But unemployment is not at 40%, and there is a safety net for the worst off. It is not perfect, but the number of people without health insurance is in the hundreds of thousands, not the tens of millions like in the USA. Welfare money does run out for some near the end of every month, as my wife (a former German social worker), but she said that was among the heavy abusers of alcohol and cigarettes, which are deliberately expensive (the cigarettes, that is) to offset the expensive care they need when they get lung cancer and emphysema. On the whole, Germany, even after having absorbed over a million Syrian refugees, is an affluent country. Like the USA, on the whole, stores are filled with shoppers, trains, hotels and planes are full, cafés and restaurants are full, and to rile up people to the point where they vote for the far right, a sophisticated media propaganda machine is necessary to get people to be angry about something. That's where Musk's huge financing comes in. Without an expensive PR machine, their path upward is full of obstacles. Ninety years ago, the National Socialists had it handed to them on a silver platter.
I live there, speak the language fluently, am married to a citizen and have one daughter who got a job there and chose to stay there. If you want a real impression of what's going on there, learn German, watch their talk shows, read their papers. Blogs from elsewhere won't cut it.
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