They have money and mouthpieces - they don't have a majority
After a week or more of mobs attacking refugee centres and abuse being hurled at people who happened to be a different colour pissed-off progressives mobilised in force.
In Liverpool "Nans Against Racism" locked arms to form a human barricade around a church which offered advice to immigrants.
In Brighton meanwhile, eight racist agitators found themselves entirely encircled by some 500 counter-demonstrators and ended up cowering behind a police cordon.
Even The Daily Mail, in a front page the following morning, seemed to recognise where the balance of power lay.
"Night anti-hate marchers faced down the thugs," read the headline, which also echoed the Prime Minister's own language in describing the protests as "far-right."
It's helpful to remember these scenes when, some 12 months on, we're led to believe by some commentators that people shinning up lamp-posts with the St George's Cross - an effort with suspected links to Britain First - or gobbing off outside asylum hotels, are the true centre of public opinion in Britain
In reality, the two things you need to know about "the silent majority" is that they're rarely silent and they're certainly not a majority.
We're so used to hearing the strident bile from newspaper columnists and Facebook groups that even some progressives have started to convince themselves they're outnumbered.
That maybe even those who lack the confidence to cheer Tommy Robinson or graffiti the local Indian restaurant have some sympathy with the sentiments if not the actions themselves.
But let's be clear, a recent social attitudes survey revealed that 31 per cent of Britons believed that migration had undermined our culture and 32 per cent that it had damaged the economy.
For almost a third of the population to hold these views is far from insignificant and under our ludicrous voting system it is quite possibly enough to carry an openly prejudiced political party to power.
But the take away surely has to be that those people are outnumbered by more than two to one by those with a far more tolerant outlook. It is a greater margin of victory than any one government has secured in more than a century of free and fair elections and it utterly dwarfs the four per cent advantage which delivered Brexit.
Take any other issue that someone like Nigel Farage claims to have a great popular mandate - be it leaving the European Convention on Human Rights or scrapping net zero - and you find a similarly sizeable majority oppose his plans. Donald Trump, Farage's favourite world leader, is stupendously unpopular in this country - with an approval rating 50 points underwater.
On the specific issue of race hatred, more than half of Britons believe that free speech martyr Lucy Connolly - jailed for encouraging an attack on asylum hotels - received a sentence that was about right or even too lenient. Just a third thought her time behind bars was unduly harsh.
What gives me heart is that the general public has generally become more liberal even as our political class have radicalised.
When my parents were young in the 1960s and 70s, racism was broadly accepted. Indeed the uncomfortable truth about Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech is that public polling suggesting more people than not agreed with its sentiments.
Back then it was our elites who helped douse the flames; Tory leader Ted Heath summarily sacked Powell from the shadow cabinet, while The Times' editor William Rees-Mogg branded the MP's intervention as "evil" and "racialist".
Today we have elected representatives and a media infrastructure which is instead fuelling the flames; front-rank politicians like Farage and Robert Jenrick speak in terms which in recent history would have only been acceptable within the ranks of the BNP. Outlets like GB News and Elon's Musk's amplify misinformation intended to alarm and divide.
These top-down attempts to foment hatred have far more parallels with the 1930s. Almost ninety years ago it was ordinary working people and trade unionists in London's East End who stood down Oswald Moseley's fascists at the Battle of Cable Street. This at a time when Moseley's New Party was receiving strong support from Lord Rothermere's Daily Mail and many others in high society had sympathy with its politics.
All this is important because it puts the apparent tidal wave of bigotry into some sort of perspective.
When I first saw the flags strung up in nearby Coleshill, the North Warwickshire market town I regularly visit to browse a second-hand bookshop, I felt a wave of unease.
But that suggests everyone living there is entirely in agreement with those who hoisted them high and all the polling would indicate they're not.
What to do with this knowledge? To begin with progressives need to get better at staking out their own definition of patriotism. Up against people with a seemingly visceral hatred for our capital, our courts, our national broadcaster and even the National Trust there is plenty of space left open.
And yet where former England football boss Gareth Southgate and Danny Boyle's Olympic Opening Ceremony somehow managed to tell a story about our nation utterly untethered from narrow-minded nationalism no major political figure has been able to follow suit.
We also need to get better at separating people who hold genuinely odious views - even believing violent protest is justified - to those who have been manipulated into feeling afraid. Even within the Reform's 30 per cent vote share, there is a desperation and despondency that encourages some to take a gamble. They can and should be persuaded to step back, which is why challenging misinformation and pushing back is never a waste of time.
Finally there is something to be said for knowing that most people are not consumed by xenophobia. The reactionaries have more money and more cheerleaders in the media but they certainly don't have us outnumbered. For a group so constantly furious with minorities, it's time they realised that they're very much one themselves.
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