The taboo reasons for the SVP's surge and the Greens' failure

Sunday's victory of the country's leading party at the expense of the Greens went according to plan. But it still wasn't enough for some commentators to acknowledge that immigration and wokism are causing criticism among the population.

You only need to have everyday conversations with people from different backgrounds to be aware that the tens of thousands of new arrivals to Switzerland (more than 80,000 people by 2022, or a good percentage of the population) are a cause for concern and, let's face it, frustration among some of our citizens. This is not to say that this concern is justified. It's just that it exists. And yet, there are still editorial writers who point out that the UDC imposed this theme during the campaign and that, in the end, it is thanks to this harping that immigration has become one of the three main concerns of the inhabitants of this country.

So many conditionals in the analyses, so many quotations to hide behind, so as not to assume the obvious: Switzerland is experiencing demographic growth. among the fastest-growing in Europe and the immigration that causes it is by no means felt as a blessing by all residents. No wonder the SVP made relatively strong gains (+2.3% of the vote) in this Sunday's federal elections, recovering two-thirds of the seats it lost in the 2019 ballot and reaching 27.9%, well ahead of the Socialist Party (18.3%).

So, yes, the SVP is one of the two parties with the biggest budget, yes, it communicates figures that are not always accurate and without the seriousness that the subject demands, yes, the international context of Islamist terrorism may encourage a demand for security, but the following is also true: last year's crime statistics show that 62% of murders, 65% of rapes and 75% of thefts were committed by foreigners. And some residents of this country, of Swiss nationality or not, of Swiss origin or not, simply note that public transport is overcrowded, that the proportion of schoolchildren with no command of French is increasing, that drug dealing is widely practiced by a certain population and is highly visible in certain towns...

The same blindness to wokism

Once again, there's no guarantee that the SVP will provide a solution to these problems. But they are real. It's up to all parties to take note. And the same applies to observers, too many of whom have been beating around the bush on television and in newspaper columns. We should be able to talk about integration, security, social spending, asylum or quotas in the same way as purchasing power, another major theme of the year. Out of fear of reality, we prefer to denounce our adversary's treatment of it rather than look at it for what it is.

Basically, it's the same blindness that leads us not to take the Greens« »societalism" seriously as one of the reasons, if not the main reason, for their national failure (-3.4%). Wokism is rife in the small academic world of which this ecologist formation has become a satellite, if only by the profile of its elected representatives. This unpopular tendency towards the dictatorship of feelings and the moralization of everything has also found a home in the media. Hence the tendency not to name the big elephant in the room, the subject of fights at the family table, and to summarize events in terms of inflation and what's happening in the Middle East. In this way, taboos are reinforced. And the parties who profit from it can gloat: a bright future is assured.

Write to the author: jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com

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