Several examples come to mind. Nazis were only able to gain power when the middle class came to support them in opposition (i.e., reaction) to the leftist working class. This is common wherever authoritarianism, or at least fascism, comes to power.
If you look at US militia groups, they tend to be middle class. It makes sense, since someone has to have enough wealth to heavily arm themselves and organize such a group. It’s not only having the means and capacity but also the motivation.
Extremist movements, specifically on the right-wing, tend to be driven by anxiety, often class status, if mixed with ethnonationalism and supremacy. That is why it’s specifically the lower middle class, during economic hard times, who are most prone as they’re the upper edge of the precariat.
When people are stressed, research shows that they tend to become more conservative, authoritarian, conformist, collectivist, fundamentalist, xenophobic, punitive, etc. It’s measured with lower on the dual personality trait of ‘openness to experience’ and ‘intellect’.
Multiple scholars and journalists—Arlie Russell Hochschild, Michael Kimmel, Timothy Carney, etc—have noted that the strongest MAGA support is among the middle class in areas of high inequality. Related to that, January 6th insurrectionists were mostly middle class professionals.
These people tend to be no only above average in wealth but also in education, but they’re typically just barely above average. So, in most cases, they don’t represent the intellectual elite. What they do have, though, is experience in tech fields, management, small business ownership, etc.
Many of them, by the way, spent their early life working class or even poor. That is what causes them such overpowering anxiety about falling back down again. This is true even for some elites like Steve Bannon who grew up working class and never was accepted in elite society.
Donald Trump had a similar problem. His family wasn’t only new wealth but specifically gained their wealth from disreputable real estate and construction that, in NYC, is linked to organized crime. When he was younger, Trump wasn’t allowed membership in some elite clubs.
Also, the reactionary right tends toward nostalgic fantasies and invented traditions. The fence might not be as old as it seems. It might even be quite recently put into place but made to look old or look like what some think an old fence looks like. And even if there were original reasons (though there may not have been), the reasons claimed for the supposed old fence might be modern inventions or else highly skewed. The past is treated as serving the present and so the past can be altered as needed.
The non-reactionary left, on the other hand, tends to think the past has to be studied scientifically and so understood on its own terms, that the past is a foreign land. As best we can we should resist anachronistically projecting our biases and beliefs onto the past. Then based on the best evidence, research, and theory, the different positions should be scientifically debated. The past is treated as an object of study, only afterward to be applied to understanding and improving the present.
I’m thinking of scholarship like Luke Kemp’s Goliath’s Curse, Agner Fog’s Warlike and Peaceful Societies, James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a State, David Graeber & David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything, etc. Sure, everyone has their biases and I’m sure these scholars would admit to it. But they’re the kind of intellectual who, in likely measuring higher on ‘openness to experience’, is more willing to challenge and change their own biases with new insights and ideas, evidence and views.