Cover for The Smallest Minority

The Smallest Minority

Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics

Hardcover

List Toll: 28.99*

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Other Editions of This Championship:
Digital Audiobook (9/16/2019)
MP3 CD (9/17/2019)
Compact Disc (9/17/2019)

Description

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

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

"Ideological minorities – including the smallest minority, the individual – can go 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 volume unafraid to tell the people that they're awful." —NATIONAL REVIEW

"Williamson is blistering and irreverent, stepping without dubiousness on more than a few toes—but, then again, that'due south kind of the point." —THE NEW Benchmark

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

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

Reader beware: Kevin D. Williamson—the lively, literary firebrand fromNational Reviewwho was too hot forThe Atlantic to handle—comes to coffin democracy, not to praise it. With electrifying honesty and spirit, Williamson takes a flamethrower to mob politics, the "animal with many heads" that haunts social media and what currently passes for real life. It'due south destroying our capacity for individualism and dragging usa down "the Road to Smurfdom, the identify where the deracinated demos of the Twitter age finds itself feeling pocket-sized and blue."

The Smallest Minority is by no means a memoir, though Williamson does reflect on that "tawdry lilliputian episode" withThe 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 bitter appraisals of social media ("an economy of Willy Lomans," political hustlers ("that sure kind of man or woman…who volition kiss the collective donkey of the mob"), journalists ("a contemptible matrimony of neediness and arrogance") and identity politics ("identity is more than attainable than policy, which requires effort"),The Smallest Minority is a defiant, funny, and terrifyingly insightful book about what nosotros human beings have done to ourselves.

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

"If anyone picks upward this book under the mistaken impression that it will flatter him or his political allies, he will be rapidly disabused of that notion. In that sense,The Smallest Minorityis the perfect antidote to our daydreaming historic period of populist politics. It is a book unafraid to tell the people that they're awful.The Smallest Minority is ostensibly a book about politics in the historic period of social media, but it is at root a timeless exploration of group dynamics and mass psychology. Williamson provides an intellectual road map to navigate the social-media landscape — a thoughtless morass of cynicism, of vitriol, and of pessimism masquerading equally wisdom. And he does so with enough of wit and off-color commentary. Williamson does not disappoint for those who are attracted to this work to go the inside scoop on his own brush with the censorious mob that ejected him from a brief tenure atThe Atlantic over a ginned-up, intellectually dishonest contretemps. The occasionally juicy anecdotes involving the swarm of Millennial cultural revolutionaries who convinced their elders to serve him up in cede to the hivemind are absorbing, but they are relegated to the prologue. And for good reason. They only reinforce the veracity of the narrative Williamson weaves throughout the book."
— National Review book review

"'Procedural democracy is aconvenience,' writes Kevin D. Williamson in his new book,The Smallest Minority: 'It pacifies the chimps in the electorate and gives united states an culling to ritual gainsay for the chimps in office.' To say that Williamson has little organized religion in the American political system, all the same, would exist a mischaracterization. His real gripe is with the distortion and inversion that occurs when the ethos of 'majority rule'—which, he argues,shouldbe confined to our governing institutions—instead determines social club's beliefs and morality at large. Witness the sociopolitical climate, current yr. To please the masses has ever been to wield power, but instead of thepanem et circensesof Roman times, the mob now clamors for a new sort of alimentation: outrage. Shallow pretenses of classical liberalism shortly requite manner to outright barbarism and enforced ideological conformity. The stop result: 'ochlocracy,' or mob rule, a phenomenon that Williamson teases out in its many social, psychological, and upstanding dimensions. Williamson is blistering and irreverent, stepping without doubt on more than a few toes—but, and then again, that'south kind of the point."
— The New Criterion book review

The Smallest Minority is "stylish, unrestrained, and straight from the heed of a pissed-off genius. That stylistic choice, on top of all the actual FUs, is part of his overall 'spiral off' existence delivered to the gatekeeping that he'south come up against. And, gates unkept, the effect is remarkable and madly readable... Then has Williamson written a manifesto? A tell-all? A piece of work of philosophy? No, it'southward a dare. I dare y'all to handle information technology, Williamson is saying. I dare you to ignore the language and style and personality and engage the ideas. I cartel yous to get over yourself and over all the pointless social rules that constrict discourse today. I dare you to call back. When you read a author who isn't even trying to play the Take Virtuous Opinions and Show Status game, it's a stark reminder of only how much anybody else is playing that item game. This is the tradeoff for sometimes proverb unfortunate stuff well-nigh hangings, the tradeoff theAtlantic decided wasn't worth information technology. Reading this book shows only how worth it it is, though."
— The Washington Free Beacon book review

"The most profane, hilarious, and insightful book I've read in quite a while: Kevin Williamson's new, vicious have on social media mobbing."
— Ben Shapiro, founder of The Daily Wire and host of The Ben Shapiro Bear witness

"He's not one of the about talented bourgeois writers in America. He'south one of the almost talented writers in America.

— Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in primary, The Atlantic

"... and that's why he can't piece of work here."
— Besides Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief, The Atlantic

"Shocking and brutal... too intellectually honest."
— Ruth Marcus, Washington Postal service

"Kevin Williamson tin exist a total jackass. He has also written some of the sharpest, most insightful work I've read. Some folks are complicated that mode."
— Will Saletan, Slate

"Kevin Williamson'southward gonzo merger of polemic, autobiography, and bats—t craziness is totally vivid."
— John Podhoretz, Commentary

"Disrespectful, impertinent, snide, insulting, and hurtful—in short, everything I look for in a writer."
— Nick Searcy, actor

"Truly reprehensible."
— Paul Krugman, New York Times

"An ogre."
— Jack Shafer, Pol

"Unemployable."
— Rich Lowry, National Review

Regnery Gateway, 9781621579687, 256pp.

Publication Engagement: July 23, 2019

About the Writer

KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON has written for the Wall Street Journal, Washington Postal service, Indian Express, Playboy, The New Criterion, Academic Questions, and Commentary, and for an infamous three days he was a staff writer at The Atlantic. A reporter and columnist for National Review, he has taught at Hillsdale and the Male monarch's College and writes a regular column for the New York Post. His previous books include The Smallest Minority: Contained Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics.