Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter
Keywords
insurgent minorities, decision-making, government
Abstract
The central thesis of Hans O. Staub, editor-in-chief of Zurich's Weltwoche, is sharply formulated: "It is not the majority that governs. Minorities of all kinds have become decision-makers; they dominate, they tyrannize, or terrorize the majority which appears principally as a conglomerate of constantly changing minorities" (p. 159). To prove his thesis, the author surveys recent events in Spain (Basques and Catalonians), France (Corsicans and Bretons), Great Britain (Welsh and Scots) , Switzerland (Jurassiens) and Germany ("Grunen") . (He could have added today's Iran with the rising dominance of the "Fundamentalists".) Staub then observes: The "flight into the minority (or minorities) has become the hallmark of our decade" (p. 160), characterized by a growing, at times bitter and violent intolerance. The relative irrelevance of a Catholicism "incapable of coping with the problems of birth control, the marriage of priests, and the ordination of women" (p. 162), the emptiness of a Protestantism that can offer "no more than conventional stammering largely removed from daily reality" (ibid.), and the near meaninglessness of an earlier secular faith in 'fatherland' or 'nation' as a genuine supra-communal unit, explain in Staub's view the growth of a supposed tyranny of minorities.
Recommended Citation
Schelbert, Leo
(1981)
"Hans O. Staub, "The Tyranny of Minorities," Daedalus, 108 (Summer, 1980), 159-68.,"
Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter: Vol. 17:
Iss.
3, Article 13.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_newsletter/vol17/iss3/13