ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to set in international context the deployment of the idea of ‘silent majority’ as a rhetorical weapon and form of political mobilization in Italy. Starting from the first and best-known case in Milan in 1971, the article maps a network of grass-roots committees and public figures who used this label to delegitimize and oppose left-wing protest movements. This article draws on sources from the archives of the Ministry of the Interior, the press, and memoirs to analyse a political phenomenon of public opinion that was nationwide in scope and would extend from 1968 into the 1970s, and which cannot be reduced simply to neo-fascism and subversive motives even though it has been commonly associated with these terms in Italy. Fear of Communism and intolerance for street demonstrations by students and workers overlapped with the defence of morality and urban decorum, while demands for security in response to what were claimed to be rampant crime were interwoven with the calls for moderate reforms in the university system. By investigating these multiple demands for the restoration of the established order, this article opens the way for transnational comparisons with other Western countries in ways that may help overcoming the difficulties of defining a conservative and right-wing sphere of influence in Republican Italy.