Switzerland ISN'T a prosperous and free country, page 1

reply to post by sovietman

I'd call the posters "fearmongering" and very suggestive. Not hate-speech. But again, the majority of Swiss won't fall for that bullpoop, no matter how you or I would label it.

Switzerland is multicultural in its own setup (Swiss-German speaking part, French speaking part, Italian speaking part, Rumantsch speaking part) and we usually get along quite well (some minor differences of opinion aside).
Multiculturalism only works when balance of view is achieved and all play along. This requires consent and finding common ground. Switzerland is (or used to be, according to my observation) very good at that; there is always a solution found that everybody can live with.
This campaign, as unlikely as it may look right now, will help to balance things out. People are talking about this issue. They are exchanging their perspectives, viewpoints and information. There will be the occasional bigot who won't hear any differing opinion, but those people are, luckily, a very small minority.
Most voting people will choose to inform themselves before they cast their votes. Those who don't vote don't matter anyway.

People are building their opinion not only from propaganda posters. They google stuff, talk to friends, at work etc.
hances are that everybody who lives or works in a city such as Zurich knows a muslim personally. I personally know several. Most of them are great people. There's of course the occasional dislikable individual, but that's usually for personal- rather than for stereotypical reasons.

reply to post by IKnowKungFu

When NATO started to bomb Belgrad, I accompanied a friend to the airport who was picking up his parents who got out of Belgrad with the second to last plane (as far as we were aware, don't know if it was really so).
I'll never forget the look in their eyes. My friends mother never liked me much but in this moment we all hugged and cried all together.

(Some time later, I heard the expression "may you see your house on TV. Took a while till I realized what this means, until my parents pointed out a destroyed bridge they visited some 20 years earlier during their travels, when it was still intact.)

Couple of days later, we discussed the happenings in school. Serbs, Bosnians, Albanians... the whole mixture was present. Tempers flared sometimes, but overall, everybody agreed that this crap must stop. But it also showed that some animosities don't just disappear, even when people find themselves thrown together in another country. "We may forgive, but we'll never forget!" a colleague told me.
It was there that I first realized how important balance and communication is. And that sometimes, to stir up healthy discussion, an act of provocation has to be done.

reply to post by sovietman

Don't worry, our government doesn't control those aspects in such a way as this campaign might lead to suggest. Switzerland IS over-regulated in a whole lot of aspects, but those principles of freedom aren't infringed upon. The right-wingers like to stir the pot occasionally but that's all there is to it. Our politics are still pretty balanced and no right-wing takeover is going to take place.