The tiny minority

The uses and dangers of a favourite political euphemism

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The problem with a small minority, is that it only takes a very small minority supported by a sizeable sympathetic minority. In the case of binge drinking, how many of us can cast the first stone? When the majority is guilty they have trouble cracking down on the minority who are guilty right now, at this moment in time. Because ten years ago it could have been me.

In the case of terrorism, unlike drinking, the sympathetic minority have never committed a terrorist act nor will they ever partake in a terrorist act. But they also won't see any terrorists among them unless the neighbors are actually carrying large boxes labeled EXPLOSIVES into a van. Hunting down terrorists in this environment, when the community is blind, indifferent or even hostile is difficult if not futile. Until the community says it is not okay, it can be suppressed but not eliminated.

As for British foreign policy being responsible for homegrown Islamic terrorism I don't find that argument persuasive. America has plenty of Muslims, immigrants, converts and descendants of immigrants, a foreign policy far more likely than Britain's to radicalize them and yet other than the Somali immigrant who just returned to Africa to blow himself up, we are having a hard time creating them. Maybe the uprising will happen tomorrow, but we've been waiting over eight years now... When you factor in the fact weapons are incredibly easy to obtain in the US and that unlike London, we have virtually no police surveillance cameras, you wonder what they are waiting for. Then consider that precursor chemicals are easily obtainable and the US population is not particularly vigilant about these things because we've never had an IRA or Basque or whomever movement teaching us vigilance through a public bombing campaign and you really start to wonder. I mean if it was solely foreign policy, why is our high rate of violence in America pretty much just drug related? Until the true cause of the radicalization of European Muslims is found, it is a disservice to promulgate false ones.


'Sometimes there are forgivable reasons for choosing understatement'

Yes - or to put it another way there are reasons to restrain the media from pumping up an issue. So terrorism for example has never been a major cause of death even in Northern Ireland (compared with road accidents or cancer, say) but you would never guess this from the media coverage. Let us have accuracy by all means but you cannot complain about the mote of 'minimization' without also addressing the beam of exaggeration!


Good piece. A tiny point which is completely irrelvant to the main thrust of the article needs making I feel. British football hooliganism abroad has little to do with the fortunes of the national team, after all big incidents in the past (e.g. Heysel) have generally involved club fans. The two main reasons for the fall in football-related violence are an increase in the nationalaity diversity of top division players (hooliganism abroad often being the result of xenophobia) and - above all - the sheer cost of being a fan of a premier league team.


Britain already has the most punitive taxes on alcohol in Europe; without visible effect. The practice of buying "rounds" (a practice quite unknown abroad) goes a long way to explaining Britain's excesses. Once you have paid for your mates' drink you insist the favour be returned that evening, ensuring that many more "rounds" are consumed than would otherwise be the case. There is no solution to this custom, short of having obligatory breathalysers linked to the police at every exit to every pub (and I bet the police would just love having to deal with the results).
And WHY should individuals having a beer or bottle of wine in the privacy of their home - and not bothering anyone - pay even more for the pleasure. No, this is just another stealth tax: it will raise revenue but change nothing.
Even if you set pub prices at £10 a drink it wouldn't work - already youngsters have a couple of quick drinks at home before going out - so they already feel the buzz without paying pub/club prices.


An entertaining article - but to say that Britain "is imperilled by fanatics" appears to be blowing the issue out of proportion.

Erich Fellgiebel

The Cynical Bankers of The City are just a "small minority".
Their pushing of all sorts of immorality - maybe that is part of the problem ?
Church of England maybe still of some value ? Remember: The Nazis were Heathens. Many British have become de-facto Heathens. Figure what will happen.


"the British National Party, another outlet for jingoism"

Whether you agree with the BNP or not, it is simply not accurate to call it jingoistic. The BNP does not advocate any sort of aggressive, interventionist foreign policy.

Think about the so called "War on Terror". You know that the world is truly upside down when war is a reasonable option but any discussion of immigration is totally off the table. Consider all the money (trillions?) that have been wasted and all the lives (on both sides) that have been lost and have yet to be lost. The truth is that there is nothing to be gained in the war in Iraq or even the "good war" in Afghanistan. Some will scapegoat on various tactical errors, like not having enough troops, inadequate preparation, not adapting to the indigenous culture, etc. But this ignores a much larger issue: that in the long run, these backward cultures cannot sustain any form of government other than various flavors of brutal autocracy.

Halting all immigration would have done much more to protect the nations of the west without the obscene waste of lives and money. What if, after 911, we had chosen this path instead? Wouldn't we all better off now and wouldn't those benefits only compound into the future? Not only is this the appropriate answer to 911, it the answer to the Madrid bombing, the Danish cartoon riots, the 2005 riots in Paris, and so on.

It is not easy to come to this conclusion. It is difficult because this idea lies beyond the constraints of multiculturalism and political correctness. Even once realized, it can never be stated aloud for fear of being mauled by the thought police. So the only people left to point out the emperor's lack of clothes are those with nothing to lose, those who just simply don't care about social status, and those protected by the anonymity of the internet.


Describing this Bagehot column needed a few euphemisms for politeness' sake. It was a classic of the work of one of the most destructive of tiny minorities - journalists who are more worried about entertainment than truth. They reproduce the releases of special interest charities like the British Liver Trust, report as fact rumours in science and medicine, sensationalise crimes and hooliganism, and then campaign for bad laws to deal with the so-called problems. Finally they attack the politicians for the loss of freedom and the nanny state. Fortunately, there is an even tinier minority of journalists who seek out the real story. They reported the result of an overwhelming scientific consensus that drinking alcohol increases longevity, they looked at the story of hooliganism in the European Nations Cup in Belgium and realised that it was entirely a media invention, and they interviewed workers in the factories in Iraq that Colin Powell said were making weapons of mass destruction. I love the Economist because it has an unusually high number of this rare group. They rarely produce this sort of sugar - pardon the euphemism.

Berend Mondriaan

I do agree with the article, that when the gouvernment talks about TINY (issues) minorities, it is really time to pay big


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