Written by Classical Liberal

~~~   ***   ~~~

The largest part of a country’s population that consists of people who are not actively involved in politics and do not express their political opinions publicly. (Definition of ‘The silent majority’ by Merriam-Webster)

I believe that many of us who vote – or voted – for UKIP do so because we feel that the main political parties either take our votes for granted or don’t care what we want. We are part of ‘the silent majority’ that the major parties feel they can ignore. Especially the Labour Party, which has forgotten its traditional supporters, the white working-classes, as it pursues minority groups and progressive causes.  Donald Trump harnessed the power of ‘the silent majority’ to win the 2016 US Presidential election. In many ways, the Leave vote in the EU referendum was a victory for ‘the silent majority’; despite the Establishment’s best efforts to thwart the will of the people. Of course, it doesn’t always work. Witness Trump’s failure to repeat his success in 2020.

‘The silent majority’ is an unspecified large group of people in a country or group who do not express their opinions publicly. The term was popularised by US President Richard Nixon in a televised address on 3 November 1969. He said, ‘And so tonight—to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans—I ask for your support’. It referred to those Americans who did not join in the large demonstrations against the Vietnam War at the time, who did not participate in the counterculture, and who did not participate in public discourse. Along with many others, Nixon saw this group of Middle Americans as being overshadowed in the media by the more vocal minority.

Preceding Nixon by half a century, the term ‘The Silent Majority’ was employed in 1919 by Calvin Coolidge‘s campaign for the 1920 Presidential nomination.

In 1919, Madison Avenue advertising executive and Republican Party supporter Bruce Barton employed the term to bolster Calvin Coolidge‘s campaign for the 1920 Republican Presidential nomination. Barton portrayed Coolidge as the everyman candidate in Collier’s magazine: ‘It sometimes seems as if this great silent majority had no spokesman. But Coolidge belongs with that crowd: he lives like them, he works like them, and understands’.

The contemporary concept of a ‘silent majority’ derives ‘deeply from Richard Nixon’s basic political orientation’, said Rick Perlstein, a historian. He has written multiple books on conservatism and the Nixon era, including Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America and The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan.

In 1955, Nixon was serving as Vice-President to Dwight D. Eisenhower. John F. Kennedy wrote in his book Profiles in Courage, ‘Some of them may have been representing the actual sentiments of the silent majority of their constituents in opposition to the screams of a vocal minority…’ In January 1956, Kennedy gave Nixon an autographed copy of the book. Nixon wrote Six Crises, some say his response to Kennedy’s book, after visiting Kennedy at the White House in April 1961.

In 1967, labour leader George Meany asserted that those labour unionists (such as himself) who supported the Vietnam War were ‘the vast, silent majority in the nation’. Meany’s statement may have provided Nixon’s speechwriters with the specific turn of phrase.

In the months leading up to Nixon’s 1969 speech, his vice-president Spiro T. Agnew said on May 9, ‘It is time for America’s silent majority to stand up for its rights, and let us remember the American majority includes every minority. America’s silent majority is bewildered by irrational protest…’ Journalist Theodore H. White analysed the previous year’s elections. Writing: ‘Never have America’s leading cultural media, its university thinkers, its influence makers been more intrigued by experiment and change; but in no election have the mute masses more completely separated themselves from such leadership and thinking. Mr. Nixon’s problem is to interpret what the silent people think, and govern the country against the grain of what its more important thinkers think’.

On October 15, 1969, the first Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam demonstration was held, attracting thousands of protesters.

Feeling very much besieged, Nixon went on national television to deliver a rebuttal speech on 3 November 1969, where he outlined ‘my plan to end the war’ in Vietnam. Nixon stated his policy of Vietnamization would lower American losses. As the South Vietnamese Army would take on the burden of fighting the war. He announced his willingness to compromise provided that North Vietnam recognized South Vietnam. And finally promised he would take ‘strong and effective measures’ against North Vietnam if the war continued. Nixon also implicitly conceded to the anti-war movement that South Vietnam was not very important. He maintained that the real issue was the global credibility of the United States as he stated his belief that all of America’s allies would lose faith in American promises if the United States were to abandon South Vietnam. Nixon ended his speech by saying all of this would take time. And he asked for the public to support his policy of winning ‘peace with honor’ in Vietnam. As he concluded: ‘And so tonight, to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans—I ask for your support. Let us be united for peace. Let us be united against defeat. Because let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that’.

In one line of his speech, Nixon called out the anti-war movement directly, speaking of protesters in San Francisco carrying signs that read ‘Lose in Vietnam. Bring the boys home’. ‘As president of the United States’, Nixon said, ‘I would be untrue to my oath of office if I allowed the policy of this nation to be dictated by the minority who holds that point of view and who try to impose it on the nation by mounting demonstrations in the street’.

The public reaction to the ‘silent majority speech’ was very favourable at the time. The White House phone lines were overwhelmed with thousands of phone calls in the hours afterward as too many people called to congratulate the President for his speech.

Thirty-five years later, Nixon’s speechwriter Pat Buchanan recalled using the phrase in a memo to the President. He explained how Nixon singled out the term and went on to make use of it in his speech: ‘We [had] used “forgotten Americans” and “quiet Americans” and other phrases. And in one memo I mentioned twice the phrase “silent majority”, and it’s double-underlined by Richard Nixon, and it would pop up in 1969 in that great speech that basically made his presidency’. Buchanan noted that while he had written the memo that contained the phrase, ‘Nixon wrote that speech entirely by himself’.

Nixon’s ‘silent majority’ referred mainly to the older generation (those World War II veterans in all parts of the US). Still, it also described many young people in the Midwest, West, and the South, many of whom eventually served in Vietnam. ‘The Silent Majority’ was populated mainly by blue-collar white people who did not participate in politics: suburban, exurban and rural middle-class voters. They did, in some cases, support the conservative policies of many politicians.

In his famous speech, Nixon contrasted his international strategy of political realism with the ‘idealism’ of a ‘vocal minority’. He stated that following the radical minority’s demands to withdraw all troops immediately from Vietnam would bring defeat and be disastrous for world peace. Appealing to ‘the silent majority’, Nixon asked for united support ‘to end the war in a way that we could win the peace’. The speech was one of the first to codify the Nixon Doctrine, according to which ‘the defense of freedom is everybody’s business—not just America’s business’. After giving the speech, Nixon’s approval ratings hovering around 50% shot up to 81% in the nation and 86% in the South.

(To be continued with Part 2 tomorrow)

Print Friendly, PDF & Email