Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

There's going to be a long section about the Blocher case in part III. However, honest question: Do you see SVP succeeding in polarizing the society? How exactly? Have the friends voting for SVP started treating you as an enemy? Do you fear expressing your opinion at particular places? Etc.



Sorry for the late answer.

Judging from the kinds of examples you give (fear of expressing one's own opinion etc.), I'm thinking that you might be talking about a level of polarisation that I mostly associate with the US currently. That's certainly not what is going on in Switzerland, but it's also not what is going on in many other parts of the world, so I don't think "not as bad as the US" is a sufficient criterion for "not polarised".

But the SVP does consistently put up posters such as this one: https://img.nzz.ch/2019/8/19/a8db938f-4e3a-4eb4-9eec-31102df... ("should we allow liberals and 'nice people' to destroy Switzerland?")

Or this one: https://www.sozialarchiv.ch/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/04_So... ("This is what liberals want")

Or: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/1lgJnhTI6CNiyT7h_-8D... ("free-for-all? no")

All of these examples (and many, many more, going back over decades) attempt to paint the political opposition as subhuman and as selling out the country to "bad people", and don't forget: this is the most powerful party in Switzerland (though, to be fair, in Switzerland with its multi-party system that doesn't mean more than 25-30%).

There are also numerous examples of the SVP using the same sort of language and imagery when referring to immigrants, muslims, etc., but while equally repulsive, I'll grant you that it's not an example of polarisation necessarily.

By contrast, I now live in Germany, and before the rise of the far-right AfD party just a couple of years ago, this sort of rhetoric and imagery would have been completely unimaginable. Even now, the AfD is politically isolated and its politics, language and imagery are reviled pretty much across the political spectrum, whereas in Switzerland, the SVP has succeeded in "normalising" this sort of political discourse over decades.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: