Swiss Racism Redux

Fascism is alive and well in European politics. Notwithstanding the self-righteous of many of the European elite who like to look down on Americans for being allegedly politically uncouth for electing George Bush, European politics itself is still dominated by the continental shame and sins of nativism, xenophobia and ultra-nationalism.

George Bush at least had the decency to champion the cause of vulnerable mostly Hispanic migrant workers and sought to humanize them, while the new vote-getter in Europe is bashing immigrant workers and their descendants. And this is true of both the far-right and the mainstream right.

France's right-of-center President Nicholas Sarkozy, himself the child of an Eastern European immigrant with a distinctly unFrench name, this past summer sought to boost his ailing political fortune by making a show of "patriotism" and booting hundreds of Romas and this act of deporting people was followed by another chauvinistic proposal to strip the citizenship of individuals who attack police officers provided that the person in question is not a born French national.

Sarkozy is still the mainstream right, but blatantly hateful far-right and ultra-nationalist parties have recently made significant strides in many nations: Netherlands, Denmark and more recently Sweden.

What used to be the Jewish-obsession for the far-right (many of the parties presenting themselves as respectable have neo-Nazi roots) has been replaced by Islam. Muslims are now the target de jour. Italy's Northern League champions animus against Muslims in order to strike a unifying issue for an otherwise disparate electorate in northern Italy.

And a pioneer, and that term is used in the most reprehensible sense, in the field of politically profiting out of ignorance and prejudice is the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), a mainstream right-wing party and the largest ruling faction in the Swiss parliament today.

Several months back, it successfully championed a referendum that banned the construction of minarets (in a nation where only four existed) as a stealth radical Islamic conquest measure, or some neo-fascist nonsense rational like that to pick on a minority.

That campaign was horridly racist: showcasing minarets (which do not even broadcast in Switzerland) as missiles. The SVP is also known for its ad where four white sheep kick out an unwanted black:

svp anti minaret poster mu9Sv 19672

svp 01a tWNiu 19672

The SVP is back with another measure:

Switzerland will hold a referendum next week in which voters will be asked to decide whether foreigners who have been found guilty of murder, rape, drugs trafficking and other serious offences should be deported.

Go to the site to see the new tawdry ad campaign, which is too pornographic to post here.

Sarkozy better hurry in this contest of vulgar European nationalist oneupmanship.