I've been researching the rebellion, and I can't decide whether or not it was a product of Chinese petit bourgeois chafing against a Mongol rulership or if the rebellion should be credited to a the Maitreyan/Manichean ideology of the White Lotus or both... or if I'm off base with both ideas.
What do you mean by "petit bourgeois"?
The initial events in northern China in 1351, provoked by Han Shantong and continued by Liu Futong and which provoked Peng Yingyu in the south to revolt, involved large numbers of lower-class people and a belief centering on the Maitreya Buddha featured prominently. After all, Han Shantong was not a member of the Yuan elite or middle-class but a longtime sectarian leader whose grandfather had been a White Lotus leader^1, and the rather abortive rebellion of Han Shantong centered around the congregation of large numbers of poorer people in an unstable region (for the repair of the Grand Canal and the channeling of the Yellow River). To quote from Yuan History,
At first, Han Shantong's grandfather deluded the masses by burning incense in the White Lotus gatherings, so that he was expelled to the Yongnian county of Guangping. By the time of Han Shantong, he publicized that "the world is in total chaos and Maitreya is descending." The ignorant commoners in Henan and the region between the Yangtze River and the River Huai trusted his words. Then Liu Futong [...] falsely claimed that Han Shantong was in fact the eighth-generation grandson of the Song emperor Huizong and should be the ruler of China. Liu Futong and other persons killed a white horse and a black ox as sacrifice to Heaven and Earth and swore to rise up [against the Yuan]
Or to quote from The Valuables of the Immortal Bookstore by He Qiaoyun, who lived during the Ming,
Han Lin'er, the Young Prince of Radiance, was the son of Han Shantong, a rebel from Xu. His grandfather deluded the masses with his White Lotus teachings and recruited a large number of followers. At the end of Yuan, Han Shantong publicized that since the country was in chaos, Maitreya would descend and the Prince of Radiance would arise.
Or from The Unofficial History of the Years of Gengshen
Han Shantong took the lead in the rebellion. In the name of the Maitreya Buddha's rise, he gathered villains and young bullies and led them to meet and burn incense: gradually the group expanded. They first broke into the prefectures in the region west of the River Huai. Then Huguang, Jiangxi, Jiangxiang and other regions successively fell into their hands.
The almost simultaneous revolt of Peng Yingyu in the south was similar in their veneration of the Maitreya Buddha, and the southern Red Turbans were in fact more zealous than their northern counterparts. To quote from a late 16th-century history,
Previously there was Peng the monk, who persuaded the public to recite the Buddhist title of Maitreya, to burn incense-lamp at night, and to chant and worship. [...] Then Zou Pusheng spread the false words that the Maitreya Buddha was descending and would be the Lord of the World.
The Red Turban movements were anti-Mongol and anti-Yuan by their very nature, although I would not term their ideology "nationalistic." However, religion - particularly the Maitreya - did feature prominently, and it was not a product of the petit bourgeois.
See:
^1 although certain books, such as Popular Religion and Shamanism, discredits the influence of the White Lotus ideology on the Red Turbans.