![]() ![]() Nixon looms large over Bingham’s new book, Witness to the Revolution, an oral history of 1969-70. “I’ve no idea if Donald Trump even knows this,” says the writer Clara Bingham, “but many of the signs at his rallies say: ‘The silent majority stands with Trump.’ I don’t know if Trump needs to identify with Nixon.” Now, in a bitter election year, the phrase is back. In the 1980s and 2000s, Ronald Reagan and George W Bush looked in the same direction. Nixon had created a cultural shibboleth: the silent majority, the conservative masses, appalled at the cultural and political advances of the 1960s, ready to reel them back in. “So tonight,” he said, “to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans, I ask for your support.” ![]()
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