The Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which centered its campaign on anti-immigrant rhetoric, is projected to win 29 percent of the vote, up from 25.6 percent four years ago and higher than pre-election polls. It has been the country’s largest party since 2003.
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The only reason the Swiss make chocolate is so we don’t associate them with blood diamonds and nazi gold.
- Sean Lock
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A country with beautiful geography and a hideously ugly economic foundation.
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2/3 of global gold trade goes through Swiss. Just for scale.
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As with any issue balance is the key. Being anti immigration is wrong, but also letting in anyone without strong stipulations is wrong as well.
As a lefty, the problem with the left, and the reason they are losing this issue, is because they want to be so PC that they won’t even allow discussion on the issue for fear of not looking ultra progressive to their friends.
If you want to immigrate into a country, you must 100% be aligned with the values of your new country. You can’t come in and demand that people respect your religious views if they are anti women or anti homosexuals or anti trans.
To many of my progressive brothers and sisters seem to be ok tolerating intolerance. If your religion demands that your wife walks behind you pushing the stroller with a burka on in 40 degree weather, while you get to walk around in shorts and flip-flops we’re going to have a problem.
Sounds like a pretty well constructed straw man woven in with some genuinely disturbing nativist stances (e.g., 100% value alignment as a precondition). And all in response to an article where nothing is mentioned about any positions on immigration from any of the other parties, most of which (including the socialists) just maintained their size. But yes, I’m sure “as a lefty” you think “balance is key” on every issue and somehow manage to use the rise of the right to talk about how it’s really progressives’ fault.
You’ve perfectly demonstrated the validity of my argument and why we are the left losing this argument. You’re basically accusing me of being alt right or fuck else who knows, because I believe this issue isn’t just let anyone in who wants to get in.
It’s idiotic I even have to say this, but one glance at my comment history shows that I’m not some both sides dickhead.
Again, it’s sad I even have to point this out, but here we are.
I’ve always said with immigration, bring your heritage, your cultures, your customs your food, but they MUST not conflict with values of liberty and equality for all.
The fact that this is controversial to you just shows how warped a person’s thinking and perspective can become in the persuit of pc culture.
I’m accusing you of being a center-left “smart Democrat” who blames right wing radicalization of the populace based on deep seated and enduring prejudices on “progressives”. I did briefly look at your comment history and just a page in you’re once again making a straw man about progressives while prefacing it with “I’m as liberal as it gets”. And all while capping this response with a “PC culture” complaint that’s more or less saying “woke mind virus”. It’s basically just early Bill Maherism.
And I’ll reiterate again that your blame the left comment for anti-immigrant prejudice is in response to an article where none of the immigration positions of the left parties were even mentioned.
No. I blame us losing to right wing candidates by making idiotic stands that do not appeal to regular people.
Saying open borders anyone can come in just won’t fly. Hell, if it won’t fly with someone like me who’s more left than average it has no chance of succeeding.
So you can’t scratch your head and wonder why are the crazy rights winning, when you couldn’t even get liberal people on board.
I don’t know if we are talking past each other, I’m simply saying there needs to be solid requirements for immigration.
Requirements that defend freedom and autonomy for everyone. We don’t need to tap dance around the fact that religion in general, but Islam in particular does not have a good track record here.
No one says any of those things!
You just make up progressive positions to be angry about, mirroring the right wing arguments in the process, while complaining about out of control PC culture like a 90s Third Way Democrat trying to prove they’re not one of those crazy liberals who wants to make crime legal for minorities.
If you want to immigrate into a country, you must 100% be aligned with the values of your new country.
It’s just hard to say that when a lot of European Colonialism took place in these countries, some gaining independence within the last 100 years (referring to the middle east as alluded to in your last paragraph)
I don’t really know where to stand and I don’t think you can be in a position that is correct given the effects of colonialism from Europe. The fact that some effects of this colonialism (especially in Africa) have destroyed some countries/cultures, when the natural population didn’t “100%” align with the colonizers makes it hard to not sympathise with these people. A lot of these immigrants are leaving their home countries (not all), due to the rippling effects of colonialism.
I should say while I agree with your statement, I don’t know how to account for the effects of external influence that may be causing said immigration.
You can take in refugees and immigrants, and expect them to adhere to the law. It’s not hard.
It doesn’t even make sense, logically speaking. They do not tolerate intolerance, unless the intolerant person has a dark skin, then it’s fine. I just don’t get it.
you must 100% be aligned with the values of your new country.
Uh… no.
So what then? You go to a new country as a hardcore Muslim, and are allowed to treat women like shit? Is that fair to the citizens of that country? I mean, I remember that story in the US about that man who "honor killed’ his daughters, is that okay?
Woah, is it only 100% or 0% in your mind?
this is going to be an unpopular take but you’ve said a bunch of vaguely-sounding popular things but have missed the main issues with immigration.
Anyone who says they want to limit immigration for cultural reasons (e.g. I may wear a hat you don’t like, or speak a different language, or comb my hair in a different way) is lying.
“but so-and-so said…”
they were lying.
It boils down to this: if you can meet a (surprisingly low) wage in your new host country, you are a net benefit to that country and will be welcomed.
All that about burqas, treatment of women, LGBTQ+ rights is irrelevant. All that stuff about assimilating, or values, or tough restrictions is nonsense. Politicians say that stuff all the time. But it’s a lie. The truth is in the policy and the policy says: if you earn roughly USD$20k or local equivalent a year: welcome home!
Now people may think it should be different - but that I’d not the reality.
So, what are you suggesting? I mean, you sound like you’re just going with the same old “let everyone in, worry about it later…” rhetoric that many on the Left like to spew…
I’m saying that the real immigration question is “how much money do you want to lose?”
immigrants are incredibly valuable, long term, to a country. You get someone who - even if they end up earning minimum wage - didn’t cost you anything to birth, nurse, and raise, doesnt qualify for benefits but starts paying tax. Even just the savings on the cost of school itself probably makes an immigrant worth it monetarily.
Not only that but the marginal cost it does take, that would eat into those “profits”, is then paid for by the fees an immigrant pays to emigrate.
That’s why the only check is a fairly low income checkmark, so that the process remains profitable.
As we’ve seen repeatedly in the past decade, the Swiss has a major issue with racism on all fronts. It’s been pretty extreme.
This time SVP didn’t even hide or deny their connections to known neo nazi groups. They openly posted so on IG. One parliament member even got one of these groups organize her campaign.
But to provide context: Many countries in Europe are shifting to the right at the moment. Not a huge surprise unfortunately.
And germanny with AFD, Austria with FPÖ, USA with MAGA and Republicans…
Swiss had a shift to the left for a while and now with Ukraine and Israel it’s right again.
Btw. are you rage baiting? You could be a twitter bot.
No? You can look at my comment history if you want. I just noticed that the Swiss have had multiple incidents of pretty blatant racism in the past few years, along with extreme xenophobia that wasn’t even just immigrant focused.
Not surprising, given they were the only ones serious about advertising. We got so many leaflets from them at work and home and I even saw them on Reddit, yet nothing at all on those distribution channels from any other parties. I’ve seen some billboards by others, but it feels like 80% of the ones I’ve seen were SVP.
I personally hate them and didn’t vote for them, but I don’t think it’s surprising they have such a big following.
That’s an interesting case to analyze, following the money for those campaigns might be dangerous. Just a few days ago the US sent notes to several countries regarding external influences on elections.
Additionally, many european countries are literally getting old. The birth rate has been dropping for a while.
31% of the population of Switzerland are non-Swiss residents without voting rights.
I wonder how much of that is in the service industry.
Service industry and, surprisingly, upper echelons of corporate management.
Switzerland imports a lot of people for executive and c-suite positions.
Where the money is…
This one was definitely the worst oneI think it’s pretty sad that this is influencing people’s decision who to vote for - I understand it a bit if you vote the politicians directly since those change every couple of years but voting a party that’s been part of the political system forever because they advertised more than the other parties? That seems very sad
A lot of voters are ignorant idiots who prefer not to think about politics, but have been convinced that voting is something they should do. I have an acquaintance who was convinced by their progressive politically active partner to vote and, before an emergency intervention corrected this, was thinking about voting for an insane Republican because their name sounded cool.
Pumping up the number of voters in aligned bases is still a good idea for parties, but the deeper you get into those kind of apathetic non-voters, the more they’re going to vote based on nonsense.
Can you stop electing fascists please? It’s ruining my day.
“If you’re not Liberal, you’re a Fascist” Sincerely, Liberals.
We are under attack by a global RW fascist insurgency.
I think we need to bring back the global “it’s ok to punch Nazis” rule
After reading this comment, I realize that I need to finish watching the Danger 5 series.
Does Switzerland even have meaningful immigration to be concerned with banning it?
Isn’t this the country where communities vote on their neighbors’ citizenship applications?
20% of the population is immigrants. But the vast majority aren’t Muslim, so this party seems like it would be targeting Christians more than Muslims in actuality. Though I doubt they admit that to anyone.
In the cities it can even reach 40%. They are mostly Germans and from other European countries. The numbers are high because citizenship is difficult to get. SVP however is strong in the countryside, not in cities. Most concerns are about refugees from the middle east and Africa.
SVP are clearly racist, anti-Muslim based on past referendums and rhetoric. The european court for human rights is denounced by them as “foreign judges” who are blocking the will of the Swiss people. But no, they don’t admit to being racist.
Religion doesn’t give immigrants a pass. They’re poor, look different, and will take our jerbs. Also, unrelatedly, everything’s too expensive and no one wants to work anymore. The US’s immigrants are overwhelmingly Christian, but the “Christian” party hates their guts.
1/3 of swiss popularion are not from here. But yeah, it’s silly, with the whole 4-cultures thing in swiss.
Most of which are German or Italian, then, somewhat curiously, Portugal before France. Austria+Germany together are the largest group by language spoken. (And yes Austro-Bavarian does qualify as German (when compared to Swiss German)).
The Portuguese are the low-cost, seasonal (construction) workers in West-Switzerland. That’s how they are before the French.
There’s plenty of immigration or our economy would get crushed by our ageing population.
And there may still be some villages where they still vote on this, but most places have it regulated. The rules are inconvenient however so our immigration number is high (20-25%) even if they’ve lived here for years.
~1/3 of swiss population are not from here. But yeah, it’s silly, with the whole 4-cultures thing in swiss.
“We’re really just interested in more of that Nazi gold…”
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Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about
Did he imply that islamic extremists were good?
Nah, the rhetorical ploy employed here is to imply those are the only options. Also, note that he put “nazi” and “jew killer” in opposite categories.
Are you implying that Nazis are good? Would you kindly fuck off?
the problem is there’s a lot of people that really don’t understand the complexities of the Middle East at all and then try to have an opinion about it
Israel are the Nazis committing genocide.
It’s pretty simple really.
No no Kahanites aren’t Nazis. They’re fascists, that’s for sure, but they definitely have a different coat of paint.
So the SVP gets 29%. The Social Democrats have 17%, the Free Democrats have 15% and the Center Alliance has 15%. The SVP 29% would still not be enough if any two the others form a coalition against them.
Enough for what? Switzerland doesn’t really have coalitions, that’s more Germany. At most there’s “coalitions” on single issue votes. And there’s 7 presidents, proportional to parties, so no such thing as a ruling party or coalition. That said, the FDP votes identical with the SVP in nearly everything already, especially economic issues, so much so that’d it’d be hard to distinguish them based on votes, minus the blatant populism.
Jupp, another 4 years of a right wing government. Another 4 years of sabotaging actual solutions to actual problems to enrich the rich further and to blame the foreigners for it.
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Gross. The Swiss have a responsibility to pay the world reparations for all time for laundering nazi gold. They should use some of that wealth to take in refugees.
I work for a family from Sweden. They’re great people, very humble, very proud to be American and very proud of their Swedish roots. However, they recently went back to Sweden and were appalled by some of the stuff they experienced. They said they saw more “street gangs” roaming around, something you’d see like in Los Angeles. It’s something they’ve seen before, but it looks like it’s getting worse. This is something new to many Swedens…street gangs were almost unheard of a decade ago. My point is that a country has a right to implement strict immigration rules/laws if it means keeping their own people safe first.
You do realize that this article is about Switzerland and not Sweden right?
Yes, of course. I’m just giving an example of what could happen if a country isn’t careful…
Ah, the famous American geography.
I’m simply saying that I know a family from another country, Sweden, that has experience something similar to what’s going on in Switzerland. Sorry, I guess I should have been more specific.
Ok. But those are probably the two worst countries to compare without being specific.
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Islam is only 5% of the population’s religious demographic. Considering around 20% of the country’s population is immigrant families, that means the majority of immigrants aren’t even Muslim. So this party is entirely about fearmongering.
You should switch your profile pic to Johnny Ramone, Joey would be ashamed of the shit you are saying.
🤡
Oh jesus you’re literally just copy pasting your islamophobic disinformation. Can nazis be any more flangrantly obvious?
“Now I’m a leftist, but [insert bigoted far right opinion]” is SO overdone. And to copy and paste it everywhere? God its pathetic.
