Silent majority
[1] The term was popularized by U.S. President Richard Nixon in a televised address on November 3, 1969, in which he said, "And so tonight—to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans—I ask for your support.
[7] In 1902, Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan employed this sense of the phrase, saying in a speech that "great captains on both sides of our Civil War have long ago passed over to the silent majority, leaving the memory of their splendid courage.
"[8] In May 1831, the expression "silent majority" was spoken by Churchill C. Cambreleng, representative of New York state, before 400 members of the Tammany Society.
[9]In 1883, an anonymous author calling himself "A German" wrote a memorial to Léon Gambetta, published in The Contemporary Review, a British quarterly.
America's silent majority is bewildered by irrational protest..."[8] Soon thereafter, journalist Theodore H. White analyzed 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.
[23] Feeling very much besieged, Nixon went on national television to deliver a rebuttal speech on November 3, 1969, where he outlined "my plan to end the war" in Vietnam.
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."
"[25] Nixon's silent majority referred mainly to the older generation (those World War II veterans in all parts of the U.S.) but it also described many young people in the Midwest, West and in the South, many of whom eventually served in Vietnam.
The Silent Majority was mostly populated by blue collar white people who did not take an active part in politics: suburban, exurban and rural middle class voters.
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.
"[31] Larsen described how the silent majority had elected Nixon, had put a man on the moon, and how this demographic felt threatened by "attacks on traditional values".
According to him, past labels used by the media include "silent majority" in the 1960s, "forgotten middle class" in the 1970s, "angry white males" in the 1980s, "soccer moms" in the 1990s, and "NASCAR dads" in the 2000s.
At the beginning it was of conservative tendency; later it moved more and more to the right, and in 1974 Degli Occhi was arrested because of his relationships with the terroristic movement Movimento di Azione Rivoluzionaria (MAR).
[38] The phrase "silent majority" has also been used in the political campaigns of Ronald Reagan during the 1970s and 1980s, the Republican Revolution in the 1994 elections, and the victories of Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg.
[44] CNN analyst Harry Enten described that Trump's support fits better with the term "loud minority", based on the fact that neither did he win the popular vote in 2016 nor did he hit 50% in any live interview opinion poll throughout his first presidency.
[45] Jay Caspian Kang argues that some politicians and analysts (Jim Clyburn, Chuck Rocha) feel the unexpected increase in support for Donald Trump among blacks and Latinos in the 2020 election reflects a new silent majority (including some non-whites) reacting against calls for defunding the police and the arrogance of "woke white consultants".
In 2019, when the democratic movement became increasingly violent, the Carrie Lam administration and Beijing authorities appealed to the "silent majority" to dissociate themselves from the radical activists and to vote for the pro-government camp in the District Council elections, which were seen as a de facto referendum on the protests.
