The Smallest Minority: Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics

Written by Kevin D. Williamson

Narrated by Stephen Graybill

"The most profane, hilarious, and insightful book I've read in quite a while." — BEN SHAPIRO

"Kevin Williamson's gonzo merger of polemic, autobiography, and batsh*t craziness is totally brilliant." — JOHN PODHORETZ, Commentary

"Ideological minorities – including the smallest minority, the individual – can get trampled by the unity stampede (as my friend Kevin Williamson masterfully elucidates in his new book, The Smallest Minority)." — JONAH GOLDBERG

“The Smallest Minority is the perfect antidote to our heedless age of populist politics. It is a book unafraid to tell the people that they’re awful.” — NATIONAL REVIEW

"Williamson is blistering and irreverent, stepping without doubt on more than a few toes—but, then again, that’s kind of the point." — THE NEW CRITERION

"Stylish, unrestrained, and straight from the mind of a pissed-off genius." — THE WASHINGTON FREE BEACON

Kevin Williamson is "shocking and brutal" (RUTH MARCUS, Washington Post), "a total jack**s" (WILL SALETAN, Slate), and "totally reprehensible" (PAUL KRUGMAN, New York Times).

Reader beware: Kevin D. Williamson—the lively, literary firebrand from National Review who was too hot for The Atlantic to handle—comes to bury democracy, not to praise it. With electrifying honesty and spirit, Williamson takes a flamethrower to mob politics, the “beast with many heads” that haunts social media and what currently passes for real life. It’s destroying our capacity for individualism and dragging us down “the Road to Smurfdom, the place where the deracinated demos of the Twitter age finds itself feeling small and blue.”

The Smallest Minority is by no means a memoir, though Williamson does reflect on that “tawdry little episode” with The Atlantic in which he became all-too-intimately acquainted with mob outrage and the forces of tribalism.

Rather, this book is a dizzying tour through a world you’ll be horrified to recognize as your own. With biting appraisals of social media (“an economy of Willy Lomans,” political hustlers (“that certain kind of man or woman…who will kiss the collective ass of the mob”), journalists (“a contemptible union of neediness and arrogance”) and identity politics (“identity is more accessible than policy, which requires effort”), The Smallest Minority is a defiant, funny, and terrifyingly insightful book about what we human beings have done to ourselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Sep 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9781799722212

Kevin D. Williamson

Kevin D. Williamson is a reporter and columnist for the New York Post and National Review. His work has appeared everywhere from the Washington Post to Academic Questions to Playboy. He began his journalism career at the Bombay-based Indian Express Newspaper Group. He has served as the theater critic for The New Criterion and taught at The King's College, New York. He is also the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism.

Reviews for The Smallest Minority

[benjamin · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Williamson gives an identity to the power perverts that exist on social media.

[Dillon Evans · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

The author is hellbent on revenge. I can’t believe I listened to this crap.

[Jados Moreno · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This is a book about how people were mean to Kevin on twitter. I cant imagine William Buckley being such a tremendous baby.

[Bill Gow · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What a joy to listen to... every sentence was exceptional by itself ... great fun... I will read/listen to more of his material ... awesome style !!

[Nathaniel Whitehead · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The fact that this book explains why we can't let the mob control thought and opinions.

[davidwineberg · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Kevin D. Williamson is an extremist – his choice of word. He disdains most everyone and everything, like a good conservative, and is also a proud libertarian. He detests Donald Trump and his administration, thinks abortion is premeditated murder, and loves to call people very, shall we say, colorful names, much like Trump does. The smallest minority of the title is the individual, as befits the libertarian creed.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Williamson is opinionated. Some of his opinions are even backed up with proof sufficient to satisfy him.
-He calls the current obsession with memes “the moron bomb”. He calls them the agent of antidiscourse, the prevention of communication rather than the enablement of it. Antidiscourse recurs throughout The Smallest Minority. It’s a major meme.
-“The modern primitive is no less primitive for having a smartphone.”
-“If the 99% can’t boss around and pillage a minority that constitutes a mere 1 percent of the population, then what’s the point of democracy anyway?” He calls it “anti-Semitism for nice people.”
-He likens political discourse to dogs barking at each other.
-Speaking of the internet, he says “Outrage is intoxicating, and like other intoxicants, it makes people stupid.”

Clearly, Williamson is a provocateur. He insists on calling the Founders the Founding Fathers. A riot is honest, in his world. “The Bill of Rights ought to be titled ‘A List of Things You Idiots Don’t Get To Vote On, Because They Aren’t Up For Negotiation.’”

A lot of what Williamson describes is inherent contradiction. So for example, the way to combat Nazis is to implement policies like the Nazis did, curtailing free speech and oppressing minorities. I first learned this 40+ years ago from a comedian named Yvon Deschamps, who is still around. After a very long bit about the evils of intolerance as the root of hatred, disunity and unhappiness, Deschamps is carried off the stage yelling “Death to the intolerant!” as the battlecry of his movement to restore humanity. You can apply this contradiction to pretty much anything in life, and Williamson has filled a book with it. But at no point does it or he prove that the conservative or libertarian way is better.

He also does not cite libertarian deity Barry Goldwater, who said political ideology was not a continuum from right to left, but a circle. For example, people on the extreme left had very similar positions to his on the extreme right. He said he had more in common with extreme leftists than with the centrists in his own Republican party. So when Williamson claims antifa antifascists are fascists: yes.

In his chapter on corporations, he misrepresents the first amendment’s right of free speech, but gets it right later: “The first amendment exists to prohibit the censorship of political speech by the state.” But in between, he rails against any individual or organization attempting to keep things calm and civil, something not protected by the constitution. It’s another of those contradictions. He criticizes any law that “censors only ‘extreme’ speech – which is of course the only kind of speech that actually needs formal protection.” These meme games fly in the face of his criticism of memes, but when he employs them, it’s clever and entertaining. Up to a point.

He also discovers the single value underlying societal life – crowd control. It’s all about conformity, and those who won’t are doomed. In politics, family, work, anywhere, it’s all about conforming. It gives people a base to launch diatribes, outrage and hatred, knowing they qualify and belong. It is also stifling. This is hardly a new thought. Crowd control is the basis of religion, the feudal system, capitalism, socialism, democracy, monarchy, communism… anywhere there are numbers of people who could upset the ruling classes.

Possibly the most memorable quote is that Republicans think “angry white guys in moribund Rust Belt towns have an existential right to a 21st century standard of living with an Eisenhower-era culture.”

The longest chapter is on democracy and the appreciation of its aspects, particularly by German philosophers. Even more puzzling is the second longest chapter, which is a treatise on the devil, satan (both capitalized and lower case), his history, role and employment in western literature. The final chapter is not a conclusion but a memoir of his firing at The Atlantic, and how he came out better for it.

Williamson flings words around, but usually manages to keep the reader’s interest, much like his despised Donald Trump, who lies so often it has lost its punch as an impeachable offense (It’s hard to reconcile with Clinton being impeached – for lying). Interestingly, Williamson has perspective. He knows what people think of him and his opinions, and he admits to numerous weaknesses. In the end, it’s an entertaining book, but the reader will wonder what the point is.

Let’s just say Williamson is an iconoclast and leave it there.

David Wineberg