Middle Earth -> Middle Class

From Matthias Gardell's Gods of the Blood, an account of racist and fascist Aryan paganism.

Apart from the idiosyncratic casting of those who had "run their own business" as "the educated working class" when they are clearly middle class this strikes me as a useful corrective to assumptions about the class basis of modern racism and particularly fascism.

"Who is attracted to the Aryan counter-culture? The stereotypical image recycled in the media paints a picture of the generic national socialist or Aryan activit as a barely literate young man from a poor working class family with an absent or alcoholic father and traumatic childhood experiences ... While people fitting this stereotype certainly do exist on the scene there were remarkably few of them in the circles of activists that I encountered.

To undertake a class analysis of the revolutionary white racist milieu it would be beneficial to differentiate between leaders and the rank and file ... A class background typology for the leaders of the Aryan counter-culture ideologues presents a picture at odds with the stereotypical white trash thesis. Most leaders come from unbroken middle class families. A minority was raised in the upper middle class, all sons of affluent businessmen. A smaller minority came from the educated working class most of whom were children to families where the father had run his own business as, say, a radio or TV repairman or a mechanic. The second largest category comprised those who had an agrarian background and were brought up on farms. Another common background was to have been raised in a family in which the father was a small but independent businessman or manager of a small company. Some leaders came from families where the fathers had been university professors or policemen, and the remainder had fathers who worked as physicians, lawyers or pastors. All but a small minority came from non-broken families, and only one had been adopted. Very few of the up-and-coming leaders of the radical white-racist milieu had been raised in a big city. The overwhelming majority had been bought up in small town or rural surroundings, or, to a lesser extent, in suburbia. White-trash backgrounds were virtually non-existent.

When it comes to the rank and file activists, the picture is slightly different. The majority were raised in families in which the father was a military man, policeman, pastor, farmer, businessman or middle- to low-white-collar or skilled worker like an electrician, carpenter, plumber or mechanic; most of these fathers were either self-employed or worked for a small enterprise. Relative to the leaders, the number coming from skilled working-class backgrounds was higher, and the number coming from  families of high-ranking military officers was lower. As with the leaders, few had grown up in a big city ...

While the above characterisation of the typical Aryan activist might be surprising to readers accustomed to the white-trash stereotype, it is probably less astonishing to the historian of fascism. The German NSDAP mobilised strong electoral support among small but independent businessmen. artisans, farmers and military offices — that is exactly the same classes that the Aryan activists are coming from. Interpretations have suggested that these classes felt 'displaced' between big business and the working class of proletarians and have pointed at agrarian resentment against 'degenerate' metropolitan life. A comparable feeling of having been 'declassed' nurtures the emotional state of the Aryan activist."

Matthias Gardell, Gods of the Blood, Duke University Press, Durham and London 2003 pp 328-332.