Urban pied noir proletariat could not afford liberalism and swung to extremes

Evidence

At one end of the political spectrum there were the diehard conservatives, both rich and poor, some of them later to become known as “ultras”, who stubbornly resisted all change; at the other end, various kinds of liberals supporting reform of one sort or another. By the 1950s, these latter were reckoned to comprise twenty to twenty-five per cent of the overall population, loosely embracing the European professional classes; these figures also include the Muslim évolués and a large section of the Jewish community. But the liberals had little or no proletarian support. Many of the petits blancs were failed farmers who had gravitated towards the cities, and this in itself was to grant them a collective political consciousness not to be found among the more rural settlers of Morocco and Tunisia. Like the poor whites of Rhodesia, they could not afford to be liberal, but tended to be either Communist or reactionary; and, curiously enough, these two opposing forces were largely at one, at least where liberalisation for the Muslims was concerned, as has already been noted at the time of the Sétif uprising. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 167

Categorization

• XREF: Explains the social base for ‘ultra’ resistance central to the ‘Savage War of Peace’ theme. — connects to: Repeated disillusion pushed liberal moderates toward revolutionary extremism; Petit blanc poverty drove them into O.A.S. extremism that doomed them — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1652; Liberal moderates in Algeria became revolutionaries through successive disillusionments — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 110

Related

• Repeated disillusion pushed liberal moderates toward revolutionary extremism (similarity 0.84)
• Petit blanc poverty drove them into O.A.S. extremism that doomed them (similarity 0.83)
• European liberal intellectuals in Algeria faced impossible conscience conflicts as the war radicalized. (similarity 0.81)
• Algerian revolutionaries split between moderates and hard-liners over the pied noir presence (similarity 0.80)
• Liberal moderates in Algeria became revolutionaries through successive disillusionments (similarity 0.80)
• Pied noir survival in Algeria was untenable even without O.A.S. violence (similarity 0.79)
• Rural Algerians underwent a profound revolutionary politicization that French administrators could not reverse. (similarity 0.79)
• French rejection of moderates repeatedly drove them toward revolutionary extremism (similarity 0.79)
• France’s refusal to restrain settler fascism drove liberal Algerians to the F.L.N. (similarity 0.79)
• Every French reform effort in Algeria was blocked by pied noir pressure groups (similarity 0.79)
• The pied noir lobby immediately demanded violent suppression of the revolt (similarity 0.78)
• Pied noir soldiers balked at shooting Muslim demonstrators to save Algérie française (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Liberal moderates in Algeria became revolutionaries through successive disillusionments #exemplifies (0.75) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 110