Silent Majority
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- "And so tonight—to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans—I ask for your support."
- —Richard M. Nixon, November 3, 1969
"Silent Majority" is a term used by U.S. President Richard Nixon in a 1969 speech (http://www.watergate.info/nixon/silent-majority-speech-1969.shtml). It refers to the large number of people in a country or group who do not express their opinions publicly. Specifically, when Nixon used it for the first time, it referred to those Americans who did not join in the large demonstrations against the Vietnam War at the time, who did not engage in riots, and who did not join in the Counterculture; who did not loudly thrust their opinions on others through public discourse or the media but expressed their devotion to the conservative conception of the American Way of Life through silently voting for Nixon. The unstated intention was to squelch political dissent that threatened Nixon by casting the dissenters as somewhat un-American.