The Silent Majority’s real advantage over other equally fuzzy epithets like ‘average voter’ or ‘my fellow Singaporeans’. Unlike these more neutral terms, Silent Majority confers an air of moral superiority to your position or argument. After all, you are not just another asshole with an opinion, but the representative of a group who has been ‘silenced’ and persecuted—a sort of messiah. It allows you to play the victim card without being the victim of anything, and in a tasteful, dignified manner.
For the PAP, its utility is equally straightforward. As everyone knows, the PAP’s central leadership consists mostly of anglicised ‘western liberal types’ who graduated from either Oxbridge or Ivy League via the holy trinity of RI, HC, or AC. The Silent Majority rhetoric is useful for branding. By positioning themselves as the defenders of a “silent majority” who has been oppressed by vocal “western liberal” bogeyman like PJ Thum, it would distract from their own status as “western liberal types” who grew up in, and graduated from, the same milieu.
If you’re generous, it can be construed as an attempt to be ‘close’ to their constituents. If you’re cynical, it’s just so much virtue-signalling—like US senators talking about “Main Street instead of Wall Street” or “real, hard-working Americans”.
In either case, it’s past time we put this divisive nonsense to rest. As I have tried to show, so many people have spoken on behalf of the Silent Majority, or claimed membership to the club, that this ‘majority’ surely no longer has any right to call itself ‘silent’.
What was once an off-the-cuff remark by LKY has ballooned into an ever-expanding cliché which encompasses basically every imaginable demographic: Chinese, heartland, economic, socio-political, conservative, liberal, en bloc preference, educational status and so on. As a member of the vocal minority who dislikes motherhood statements, I say it’s time we confine this phrase to its rightful place in the trash can.
https://www.ricemedia.co/current-affairs-commentary-how-lky-invented-singapores-silent-majority/
For the PAP, its utility is equally straightforward. As everyone knows, the PAP’s central leadership consists mostly of anglicised ‘western liberal types’ who graduated from either Oxbridge or Ivy League via the holy trinity of RI, HC, or AC. The Silent Majority rhetoric is useful for branding. By positioning themselves as the defenders of a “silent majority” who has been oppressed by vocal “western liberal” bogeyman like PJ Thum, it would distract from their own status as “western liberal types” who grew up in, and graduated from, the same milieu.
If you’re generous, it can be construed as an attempt to be ‘close’ to their constituents. If you’re cynical, it’s just so much virtue-signalling—like US senators talking about “Main Street instead of Wall Street” or “real, hard-working Americans”.
In either case, it’s past time we put this divisive nonsense to rest. As I have tried to show, so many people have spoken on behalf of the Silent Majority, or claimed membership to the club, that this ‘majority’ surely no longer has any right to call itself ‘silent’.
What was once an off-the-cuff remark by LKY has ballooned into an ever-expanding cliché which encompasses basically every imaginable demographic: Chinese, heartland, economic, socio-political, conservative, liberal, en bloc preference, educational status and so on. As a member of the vocal minority who dislikes motherhood statements, I say it’s time we confine this phrase to its rightful place in the trash can.
https://www.ricemedia.co/current-affairs-commentary-how-lky-invented-singapores-silent-majority/
