Capitol rioters scramble to trash photos and social media posts showing they were part of mob

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44. Middle class support of authoritarian movements has deep roots

The most extreme historical example, however, is undoubtedly the substantial public support for fascist regimes in the interwar years — which came not only from the lower middle classes but also from significant parts of the upper bourgeoisie. Terrified by the specter of communism, the middle classes across Europe flocked to right-wing strongmen, showing little commitment to the ideals of liberal democracy and parliamentarism. Autocrats like Mussolini, Franco and Hitler seemed to offer protection for their wealth. Carl Schmitt, Hitler’s notorious legal theorist, claimed that only a strong authoritarian state could guarantee the preservation of the propertied middle class.

Edvard Benes, the Czechoslovak liberal politician, observed in 1940 from his London exile: “The middle classes realized that political democracy, carried to its logical conclusion, could lead to social and economic democracy, and therefore began to see in the authoritarian regimes salvation from a social revolution of the working and peasant classes.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/22/opinion/middle-class-liberalism-populism.html