Who Is The ‘Silent Majority’?

Fall, 1969. As Nixon approached the end of his first year in office, the promise of the 60s had curdled into political unrest and violence.

Matt Lassiter: You had urban uprisings. Detroit and Newark in 1967. King’s assassination in 68. Civil Rights movement. Pressure and backlash against that, and the Vietnam War kept escalating.

Brian Balogh: That’s historian Matt Lassiter. He’s written extensively on 20th century politics and culture. On November 3rd, Nixon decided to address the nation from the Oval Office in a televised speech.

Nixon: Good evening, my fellow Americans. Tonight I want to talk to you on a subject of deep concern to all Americans, and to many people in all parts of the world, the war in Vietnam.

Matt Lassiter: The anti-war movement was having massive demonstrations around the country. So the November 1969 speech was really designed to address the nation at a time of real crisis, both domestic and foreign policy.

Brian Balogh: The speech took about 30 minutes, and Nixon spent most of that time outlining the American government’s plans for Vietnam.

Nixon: I would like to answer some of the question that I know are on the minds of many of you listening to me. How and why did America get involved with Vietnam in the first place? How has this administration changed the …

Brian Balogh: But towards the end of the speech, Nixon used a phrase that jumped out from the rest of his words. He made a plea for support from the American people, or at least some of them.

Nixon: So tonight, to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans, I ask for your support. I pledged in my campaign for the presidency to end the war in a way that we could win the peace. I have initiated a plan of action which will enable me to keep that pledge. The more support I can have from the American people, the sooner that pledge can be redeemed.

Matt Lassiter: The power of the silent majority term is that it’s a populist label that tries to define the great center of the country against the alleged extremes. He called them people who work hard and play by the rules, who don’t protest, who don’t riot, who don’t commit crimes, and he was really reaching out in this sense in a domestic, as well as foreign policy sense. Defining middle America as the people who were not violent activists, anti-war activists, Civil Rights protesters, urban rioters. In other words, most Americans, he said, were not what people imagine Civil Rights protesters and anti-war demonstrators to be. It’s not a new term when he says the great and silent majority in November 1969. It’s an updated version of the group that he called the forgotten Americans in the 68 election.

Brian Balogh: Who out there listening to this speech, or perhaps reading about it, who did this really resonate with?

Matt Lassiter: This is essentially an appeal to white voters, but it’s a color blind language. Nixon didn’t explicitly say these are white voters. In fact, he often said black voters are part of the silent majority also, but it wasn’t really a language designed to win their votes, it was to try to create a coalition politically that crossed the class boundary between the working class and the upper-middle class white voters.

Brian Balogh: The Silent Majority speech was a big win for Nixon. His approval ratings shot up, and thousands of letters and telegrams poured into the White House supporting the president. In the wake of the speech’s success the Nixon administration devised an idea to mobilize the silent Majority.

Matt Lassiter: I was doing research in the Nixon Presidential Library and came across a bunch of folders where they tried to create organizations called the Silent Majority Incorporated in all 50 states. They tried to AstroTurf a grassroots movement with the silent majority group. Chuck Colson, a White House operative, created a group called Americans for Winning the Peace, and the held a few rallys. They even worked with a really elusive African-American to create something called the National Black Silent Majority. Which put out a few pamphlets.

Brian Balogh: But Lassiter says their plan to AstroTurf, or create a fake grassroots movement sort of backfired, or at least misfired.

Matt Lassiter: The most interesting thing about the silent majority concept is Nixon applied it in the context of the Vietnam War, but it gained its most political traction as white Americans began to mobilize against court order busing, and against other policies of Affirmative Action, housing integration, crime issues. So grassroots organizations around the country started calling themselves variations on the silent majority theme. Started identifying as members of the silent majority that have been pushed around by judges, and the Civil Rights activists. It really took off more in domestic politics than it did in foreign policy, and they tried to AstroTurf it as a foreign policy wave of support for Nixon’s Vietnam program, but it really resonated more in terms of urban and suburban politics on the domestic front.

Brian Balogh: As you know better than anybody, Matt, we live in a political age of polarization. Was this appeal to a silent majority part of that, or was Nixon simply trying to tap into a trend that was already going on, and that he just wanted to capitalize on?

Matt Lassiter: It was both, but Nixon and his advisors deserve a lot of credit or blame for their explicit efforts to polarize the electorate. Kevin Philips, who said that the Republicans were gonna have a dominate majority because of the Sunbelt.

Brian Balogh: The emerging Republican majority.

Matt Lassiter: Exactly. He said the secret of politics is figuring out who hates whom, and appealing to their hatreds.

Brian Balogh: This sounds very current as well, Matt.

Matt Lassiter: That has been a blueprint for Donald Trump obviously, but Nixon also said this is who we’re against, and the power of the silent majority is it’s a moral language that portrays ordinary Americans as victims and as heroes at the same time. They’re heroes because they just go about their day, and they don’t protest. He always said tax-paying, hard working Americans. So they’re the heroes of the country, but also they’re the victims. Victims of these forces outside their control. When Conservatives have successfully utilized this language, they portray middle Americans, meaning white Americans, although they don’t say that explicitly, as victims of left-wing activism, but Democrats have been able to use the language too.
I feel like Bill Clinton practically plagiarized Nixon when he said, “It’s the forgotten and quiet people who just work hard and play by the rules.” Obama used this language, and when Democrats have used it successfully, it’s almost like an anti-polarization strategy for Democrats. They’re trying to redirect peoples’ anger at unfair economic systems at difficult times. It’s been a strategy that works for both political parties, but in terms of polarization it’s definitely a part of the Republican playbook.

Brian Balogh: Let’s step back for a moment, Matt, and talk a bit about the legacy of Nixon’s silent majority speech and the silent majority strategy that grew out of it. What is the lasting impact?

Matt Lassiter: On the one hand, the legacy of the silent majority is a populace language in American politics where everybody from Reagan to Clinton to Obama to Trump can say that they’re speaking for the real Americans. It’s a very portable concept. It’s a populist idea that most people are on one side, and their enemies are on the extremes. On another hand, it was a very backward looking idea for Nixon that the real America was the kind of nostalgic mythical 1950s. Men working, women at home, children obedient, people not protesting, and so it’s an effort to appeal to a kind of nostalgic past, a make America great again kind of past to neutralize anti-war activists, to neutralize Civil Rights activists.
It’s resonated in that sense throughout the years as a way for politicians to try to say that most Americans oppose these kind of vocal activists on the fringe. It’s less successful as an electoral strategy, I think, than as a way to position legitimate civil dissent as outside of the boundaries of the American political tradition.

Brian Balogh: Matt Lassiter is a History professor at the University of Michigan. He’s also the author of the ‘Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South’.