Kicking out the "black sheep" -
The Swiss People's Party campaign "Creating security:
Popular initiative to 'sheep out' criminal foreigners" 

FOR GENERATIONS, SWITZERLAND HAS enjoyed a global reputation as a place of tolerance, neutrality, democracy, and basic decency. But with a key local election approaching, it looks as if one major party is itching to trash all of that in exchange for votes.

The center-right Swiss People's Party (SVP), Switzerland's largest, captured the world's headlines last November by pushing through a nationwide referendum to ban the construction of minarets. For years it has also supported initiatives designed to slow foreign immigration and deport "criminal foreigners" on a fast track system. In doing so, it has made skillful use of Switzerland's system of direct democracy through plebiscites. Now, with the Muslims at bay, it has identified a new scapegoat for the country's ills: other Europeans, starting with Switzerland's neighbors to the north, the Germans.

It all started in 2007, when the Swiss parliament approved "full freedom of movement and residence" for most European Union citizens. All Europeans needed in order to move to Switzerland and enjoy the society's benefits was a work contract. Since then, thousands of Europeans have moved to this landlocked Alpine nation to assume frequently high-status jobs in business, research, education, and medicine. A full quarter of a million Germans now call Switzerland their home.

This arrangement has worked out quite well for the Swiss, 63.7 of whom are already German speakers anyway. Experts claim that without German doctors, the exemplary Swiss healthcare system would fall to pieces. But last November, Christoph Blocher, the SVP's chief strategist, issued an announcement stating:  "It is intolerable that now - in the midst of the recession - thousands of Germans are still coming into Switzerland every month." The timing was no accident, because the city of Zurich is already gearing up for local elections in March, which will represent an important test for the 2011 parliamentary election. So on December 15, the SVP duly published ads in the daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung, proclaiming: "German sleaze is spreading: Because Germans mostly hire other Germans - in universities and hospitals." Other ads shouted: "More and more arrogant foreigners. Stand up for Switzerland!" and "Arrogant foreigners are driving up our rents!"

 
"A free passport for everyone? No."
SVP posters display a single-minded obsession with the color black.

Unlike the Muslims, who have scarcely any lobby in Switzerland, the Germans have been fighting back since late December with an ad campaign of their own. Two hundred German professors and researchers living and working in Switzerland signed a statement grandly claiming that "the racist and xenophobic rhetoric, ideology, and policies of the SVP are sabotaging our youth's education and is endangering our future."

Over the past few days the SVP has counter-attacked with a new campaign making fun of the professors' protest. "Are Germans a 'race'?," the news ads ask, pointing out that it was "exalted professors who first introduced racial superstitition to the world in the first place" - a reference to the German "racial hygienists" of the early twentieth century who not only legitimized but in many cases also perpetrated Nazi war crimes. It's hard to imagine a greater insult to present-day German academics. No one knows what will happen next, although some of the party's critics claim that a boycott of German instructors and even German-owned restaurants may be next. Already, individual Germans are claiming to have received anonymous threats.

"To our professors: Are the Germans a race?"
SVP ad making fun of German anti-racist charges

So are we likely to witness an anti-German Kristallnacht in the near future? Hardly. Until the bricks start flying, there is no reason to expect this conflict to expand beyond newspaper pages and websites. But the emotions behind it are real. German nationals hold a great many prestigious positions in Switzerland, including half of all professorial chairs, and already represent 10 percent of Zurich's population (the city is now 30 percent foreign). Official statistics show that 1,600 Germans moved to Switzerland every month last year. 30,000 have moved in since 2007 alone. Many qualified Swiss do indeed feel as if they are being "elbowed out" by their big neighbor. And as East Germans already learned to their despair after 1989, (West) Germans really do believe they know everything better. But the SVP campaign plugs into broader trends and fears.

Since the attack on Swiss banking privacy laws in the wake of the global recession, the Swiss - who have so far resisted complete integration into the EU - have become aware of how privileged they have been so far and how much they have to lose in a united Europe and an increasingly globalized, networked world. Trained professionals feel the pinch more than anyone else. Why even strive for an academic or medical career when there are thousands of better-qualified Europeans trained in places like Munich, London, and Paris lining up for their turn to move across the border? The Zurich city government is even hiring bus drivers in Berlin. Moreover, Switzerland is being swamped by foreign cultural influences, symbolized by the High German spoken by their northern neighbors, which is increasingly displacing the distinctive Swiss dialect. After centuries of true or at least perceived isolation and neutrality, the Swiss are now facing global competition on a scale never imagined before. Not everyone regards this state of affairs as an opportunity.

 
Switzerland's Karl Rove:
SVP strategist Christoph Blocher

The Swiss government and business interests have not responded well to these challenges. Instead of investing more in the training and qualification of their own people, they have found it easier to import foreign talent wholesale. Nor have they given much thought to integrating foreign workers and developing a new understanding of what it means to be Swiss in a rapidly changing world.

The SVP has been cultivating these worries for years now and has been taking tips from its more experienced allies, which include the US Republican Party, the British Conservative Party, and Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia. As a result, its traditionally cautious conservative platform (calling for law and order, tough anti-drug policies, the strengthening of traditional authoritarian values and gender relations) has steadily been creeping rightward to embrace outright xenophobia. And yet, the SVP's mindset is hardly new in Switzerland, which has a hidden tradition of racism and exclusion that the country's leaders have so far been adept at hiding. For example, few people recall that it was the Swiss (seconded by the Swedes) who asked the Nazis to print a prominent black "J" in the passports of Jews to make it easier for Swiss officials to turn Jewish refugees away at the border.

So it is worth keeping an eye on the SVP as a test case for the rest of Europe as the continent faces the double challenge of globalization and recession. While Switzerland's current situation may be unique, the concerns the SVP is exploiting - and the populist anger it is tapping - are universal.

Of course, Harry Lime said it best: