Political Demonization is Solvable

Here's a situation in Switzerland. For more than twenty years, the country has been something of a laboratory for right wing populism. The right wing Swiss People's Party has successfully used referenda as a marketing tool for creating anti immigrant, anti EU policies. They have become the largest political force in Switzerland. Meanwhile, according to a twenty seventeen study, the number of racist incidents in Switzerland has never been higher.

Flavia Kleiner has a solvable. She co founded Operation Liberal to promote a patriotic liberal political platform to directly fight back against populism. My solvable is to build a political home for people who want to defend our liberal order against writing populists in Switzerland as well as in other countries. People who are patriots as I am, and people who are cheek enough to deal with the nasty writing populists. Populist parties have tripled their vote in Europe over the

past twenty years. More than a quarter of Europeans voted populists in their most recent elections, and they're even in government in eleven countries. They've been recently re elected in Australia and in the world's largest democracy, India. Why does this matter Well, Populists tend to frame politics as a battle between the virtuous ordinary masses and a corrupt elite. They insist that the will of the people must always triumph.

Of course, that can be just the framing. In reality, Often populous target poor people, foreigners, women, religious groups, anybody they have a problem with. Populace then use this us against them, framing to their advantage and cause real divisions that make it harder to unify for global goals, from fighting poverty, famine and disease to banding together to face climate chaos. In American history, populous movements have regularly sprung up on both the left and the right, and they're

thriving today. But back to Switzerland and our guest for this episode. It's thrilling to hear how Flavia took on the Swiss right wing machinery to take patriotism and Swiss pride those are usually used as a weapon against immigrants and argue us for a more progressive country. And she's winning too. Flavia's levity and optimism are not at all pollyannaish. She can back up her theories now in the number of victories under her belt. Flavia is making concrete changes.

So listen out for her advice around social media and framing and language. Okay, so let's take a listen to Anne and Flavia and I'll see you on the other side. Flay, you a few years ago identified what you felt to be a very deep problem in your country. Can you describe what it is and how did you first recognize it? So actually goes back to well by Data Firth. Nearly it was a ninety two there was a vote on Switzerland joining or not joining European Commercial Area or economic

European Economic Area. The EA and the Swiss refused that, and that was actually the starting point of incredible career of a party called the Swiss People's Party here, which is which happened to turn from a really conservative party into a rather writing populist party as well. And Christophe Blojo, he is the leader, the well known personality of this party.

There's a saying that he has tailor made suits but which actually don't really fit on the shoulder, so he would pretend to be one of you know, the people, but actually he's a billionaire. He's super rich, one of the richest people in Switzerland. He runs this party and he finances this party mostly and so that was basically the start of this career of the party. So the problem you identified is the problem of Swiss populism. You identified a particular event and it was the referendum on

mass migration. Can you explain what's the significance of randoms in Switzerland and why this one in particular affected you. The SPALPE came up with what we call a popular initiative, which is a direct democratic proposal to the Swiss people that we vote on and it means that you need to collect one hundred thousand signatures on a specific legal text, which then, if it is accepted, is being introduced into our constitution. So it's such just some law. You know,

it's changing our constitution. So the writing populists as well as other parties misuse this tool today as a marketing tool for their issues. They come up with this just right before election so they can campaign on a specific issue. But the originally this right was given to minorities which would never be represented in Parliament, and through this initiative they could introduce law and come up with issues which

matter to them. And so that particular event was in February twenty fourteen, but we voted on the so called mass immigration initiative. Already from the name, you can see that it comes up. It brings up a certain framing and the ESPAPE wanted to limit the number of people coming to Switzerland in the free movement of People agreement

that we have with the European Union. Switzerland is not a member of the European Union, but we have bilateral treaties and the asphape is that there's just too many people coming to Switzerland every year. And they won, yeah, by a really close marching of fifty point three percent. It was only twenty thousand votes which made the difference. And so you said to yourself, how do we stop this, and then you went through a process of trying to think,

how do we push back against this kind of language. Yeah, the thing was, we didn't actually recognize ourselves in the country that we grew up in because we saw Switzerland as a cosmopol international country, open and so on, and nobody really expected this to happen. It was like our Brexit moment. You know what, we said, Okay, that's not the country that we want to live in. We want to change this. We want to have a brighter future and a brighter vision for what twitterland it can be.

But the populist argument had already infected all the other parties. In other words, everybody began saying and so it's on, Well, actually, maybe it's true, maybe there are too many people here, Maybe we need stronger borders, maybe we need greater sovereignty. So how do you how do you push back against that kind of you know, this change of social mood. Basically, what we saw is that we want to promote Switzerland regarding to the future. We said, Switzerland is the land

of opportunity of the twenty first century. We're not a kind of open air museum where nothing should ever change and that's also the country we want to live in in two thousand and fifty. We're actually looking forward to the r two thousand and fifty. So you began reframing the conversation. But actually you said to me earlier you you thought first about creating a political party, and then you decided that wasn't the way to go, right. So for us, I mean, of course, we were super disappointed

about all the other parties. We just overtook the narration of the SPA pay of there are too many people in our trains, there are too many people renting apartments here. First we thought, okay, we have to just make a new party, because we don't we cannot identify with any other we don't have a political home. But then we realized that in the Swiss political system it doesn't really

make sense to create a new party. But instead we decided to create an overpartisan movement, which actually goes against this tendency of polarization. But we wanted to unite the progressive liberal minds in this country, and also we wanted to link us somehow back to the tradition of eighteen forty eight, which was the foundation of the liberal stat of Switzerland. And we introduced ourselves with our manifesto as the children of eighteen forty eight, so trying to link

these liberal ideas back to the past. So they're party of Swiss history, and they don't seem like some kind of foreign import. No. Absolutely, and even more, it was a really patriotic but emancipated, patriotic understanding of where we come from. The founding fathers of our country were the Liberals in eighteen forty eight, and we totally identify with their mindset of what it means to be a modern Switzerland. But then, how did you actually change people's minds? How

did you begin arguing this? I mean, you're a group of students at the university. You know what were actually the tools that you used? Now I jumped forward to October twenty fifteen, That was like one and a half year after the whole thing happened, and we launched our organization, our movement. We had elections in Switzerland in two fifteen, and that was a moment where again the SFLP, the writing puppetists, became the strongest party in Switzerland with twenty

nine percent, okay, twenty nine percent of our parliament. And so again the other party said, oh, come on, which is we can't you know, we have nothing to help us against the Superstruc party. And then only one month after the government said okay, guys, in three months time, we're going to vote on the so called expulsion of

criminal foreigners initiative. That was an initiative which wanted to expel criminal foreigners even for minor infrictions of law, for example driving two times too fast within ten years, which actually happens to everyone, you know. The other party said, oh no, come on, this is again about criminals and then foreigners, and it's driven by the Svapai is popular initiative. We have no chance. Rather we hide and let it just pass instead of you know, losing again energy and

time and any way, we just lost the elections. That was a moment where we somehow came up and said, okay, we don't want to live in a country where there's a kind of too tire legal system. You have to know that in Switzerland, twenty five percent of the population don't have a Swiss passport. They might live here for generations. They don't have a genuine link to the country that they come from, but they would have been maybe victims

of that new law introduced into our constitution. So that was a moment where we somehow stood up and said, Okay, we don't We're definitely not gonna make the gift to the writing populace and defend criminal foreigners because then you would anyway lose. So we realized that if we want to convince the conservative majority in Switzerland, we need to speak about something that matters to them as well, because it's so super easy what the writing populace wanted to do.

They wanted to ask the people and take, guys, this is your chance to expel criminal foreigners from that country. Why don't you just say yes? And who's going to

disagree with? All right? And so we said instead, guys, this is actually going against the fundamental principles of our constitution, against rule of law, against principle of proportionality, which is super important to judges, because actually this law wanted to limit and restrict the ability ability of judges to actually look at the individual case and instead introduce a kind

of automatism to our legal system. I think that was crucial because we decided that we somehow want to conquer the sovereignty of interpretation from the Writing Populists over their initiative through this, and that was actually the biggest compliment that the party leader of the Writing Populists made me was when he said after the election, after the whole campaign, he said, I didn't know what happened, but at sometimes, at some point we only spoke about rule of law,

and that was actually framing big success right that we had. So you reframed the idea. But then what were the tactics that you used. The most important tactics, I think is really to find a popular language to what I just described, which seems really abstract of course argument, we managed to translate it into a narrative, something tangible to people. And what we did is actually we spoke about Mother Helvetia.

She's like gegorical figure which represents all these Swiss values you find you find there on our coins and so on, and this Swiss referred to her. She's the emancipated figure which represents the values of eighteen forty eight, so the liberal institutions, and we said she would be smashed by what we translated as a metaphor at this initiative, she will be smashed by a wrecking ball. This statue of

modern healthbates that will be wrecked. And you did memes of that, yeah, exactly, and the video and so on afterwards. That's a special group or entity of volunteers we have. They're called online warriors. They basically are really active on social media and they're basically fighting back trolls and like

fake news which are spread online. They actually go there and engage the trolls into a debate, and they do it under their personal private account as citizens online with their real names, right, they debate there and what we see actually and that's the fantastic effect of it, that we can actually change debates online and that we can effect also the level of you know, factfulness and so on. So that's a really that's a really important change that

we can see. I really think you can be popular without being populistic, you know, and you can actually you need to find ways in this media society that we live in. You need to find ways to say things easier.

To give you another example, if we can pain we don't need to go to the noyetichal Titung, which is like the liberal leading newspaper that any anyway people read too who are convinced already you know, but we need to go to the Tantic Minutant twenty minutes, which is a newspaper that people read every day a quarter of the Swiss population when they commute. If you get to this newspaper, which is really short, really easy, and so on, you need to be able to say your message in

one picture and five words. That's all you get, one picture, five words. Can you give me an example the campaign that you won, because you've now won several campaigns, several referendum campaigns, right, so the one I was mentioning about the expulsion of criminal foreigners, that was really unexpected because we turned from sixty six percent in the first polls who were in favor of this initiative, we turn it into sixty percent refusing it. And that was a super

important moment in Switzerland. I remember that they after the vote when I walked through Swiss streets and you could really feel how people felt relieved that that was for the first time that the seventy percent that don't vote the SALPA and that didn't vote the SPA four months before in the elections, that they realized that they're actually

the big majority. Right that even though the writing puppeties managed to dominate the public discourse for years with their initiatives, with their propaganda, I must say, by setting the themes that all the other parties need to discuss about. Because they're just the richest party, and because they're the best organized party, we must and because they are the ones who know how to communicate in media society. All of a sudden, that was someone who could counter this, and

we felt that we are the seventy percent. And that was such an important moment in Switzerland where we managed to break this sovereignty of interpretation over what Switzerland is and what Switzerland could be. Is there a longer term goal? Is that right now you're fighting referendum by referendum, but what happens next? So definitely that's only the first step. You know, that's important to know about Switzerland. When you

win referend us, then you gain street credibility. You're the one who manages to convince the majority of the Swiss and so through this you gain a certain importance in the public discourse. But of course there we still didn't actually affect elections, because that's where laws are made in the parliament, that's where we see that we still need to improve our influence so that because by now we only always get in in the last possible moment, you know,

to somehow prevent wits learn from accepting some initiative. But what we actually want is to go over from this reactive mode into a more active mode. It comes down to this one thing that I would say, how do we manage that people see the real need of institutions

that guarantee their freedom. How do we make sure that hope is an emotion just as strong as fear, Because that's what I see is the biggest problem these days, that of course fear is a super powerful tool, but what we need and that's there was always a challenge to the roles. The future is unknown, So how can we promise a vision or like a future where people understand where they want to go to where they feel

at home. Because that was always, you know, part of the emancipational process, that there was something tangible close by, something which seemed to be an improvement of the actual situation.

And in a globalized world now where many values seem under pressure, I see that people aren't that sure whether the future will be brighter or will be more positive than it is today, and that's that's what I mean also by the mood or like the atmosphere that I want to touch her to change here in Switzerland, that people somehow are confident about the future bringing them a better life, that they're looking forward to the year twenty and fifty where they want to live with their families

and good jobs in this country. How can this model help others? And you know, you've you've created a movement inside Switzerland. It's got it deals with a very specific form of Swiss politics, namely these referenda that you have periodically, and you've you've organized yourself around these referenda. But do you think there's a way that your way of thinking, in your way of operating could work in other places? I think. I mean, if I look back on how

we started, and you know, we were total amateurs. We had no clue about what we were actually doing right, but there was this this passion, this will of we want to tackle the problem. And that's really a question of you know, what's your attitude? You know, And here I maybe I always say you need this kind of reality distortion field of I don't know if you're fans of Star Trek, but there's a la menagerie. I mean, imagine the SPA was the strongest party in our country.

That's not as it is in other countries these days. Oftentimes they are still smaller, maybe even more writing populous parties. Okay, but in Switzerland take the dominant force for the twenty five years that I grew up in. You know, I have no I don't know any other system. I don't even find it brave, but we just had to imagine a different system. You need to believe in what you do and where you want to go. And this doesn't mean that you have to believe in your own propaganda.

That's the worst you can do. But you need to be really convinced by where you want to go. And that brings me back to this vision that you need for your country, where you want to go to, and I think that's really what we're lacking of in many countries that politically just don't really provide a vision where people feel that they can feel at home there. So there's a there's a kind of template. You know, this

is what you do? Could you could you name five things that people wanting to create a similar kind of movement should do. What I find interesting is to think about likely and unlikely allies. You know, who is out there, who do you know, who do you don't know? And with whom could you collaborate in this mission? You know, that's a maybe an interesting statigue including allies, for example, conservative allies. Yeah, exactly, because you know, you might be

surprising to some people. But get out there, talk to people, get a common understanding about what really matters you, and that when I mean what really matters to you. I also want to stress the difference between civil society organizations and their possibility to actually stress what unites us, you know,

not as much as part parties. Parties have to stress what divides us right for their political means, So society organization we can actually stress what unites us, what kind of values we want to strengthen in our society, and how we want to build a closer society in a way less polarized about the more like the tactical side of it. I would really, of course recommend to work

with very modern tools but also more traditional tools. Really to go out there to together with people, to discuss with people, to get like a real human contact, you know, because that's what I at least is my experience. You can have the most evil troll who you know, who texts you on social media, but once you meet him, usually you find the common ground and you can humanly discuss about things. So meet people in real life. That's another piece of advice. Yeah, what about what kinds of

tools do you use? What kinds of messaging? So of course, I mean you always go with the newest strengths. So if you if it is Instagram, it's Instagram. If it's Twitter, it's Twitter, and you can The most important is that you somehow managed to translate your complex message maybe or argument into an understandable message so people can actually take it. And I'm not saying this because I think people are stupid. We have to do the work. We need to approach

them and to explain it, you know. So that's to explain it in a in a fast and easy way, in the ways that people find most accessible. So yeah, and whatever it is, commuter tabloids, right, or Internet memes and maybe even a fun way. Right you mentioned the memes, the short videos something which is fun that people love to look. I mean people love to look cat videos so and they are only twenty seconds long, so we you know that's so you made cat videos. We already

worked with cat videos. Yes, is there somebody who inspired you? The most firing figures were always resistant fighters, for example, who fought the fishist regimes in the twentieth century. That's why I do what I do. I don't want us to go that far, because we've seen what human beings can do to our society. To meet starts at a different point where we really need to figure out what are the basic elements of a society. And to me,

this really is personal contact. This is neighborhood, this is family. Maybe this is just some close relationship to other individuals which are not only like minded. Maybe I think this is something that that has changed a lot, at least how I perceive it, and we should really make sure that we reach out to people who have a different mindset or different vision of the future. It's so great to hear about that cool young historian's work. I just don't know how she manages to be cool and young

and a historian at the same time. But I'm grateful. Standing up and fighting back against the far right means no more politeness. You've got to be very much on the offensive, and you must lead the narrative. I love that Flavia insists on Europeans being proud of and protecting institutions that exist because of what we've learned from the past. Many citizens don't relate to these institutions and don't often

understand what they stand for. But that brings her to her other point that politics needs to speak directly to people's hearts and minds. If we believe that freedom and equal rights are necessary for society to prosper as a whole, then we've got to say so and back it up with action. Oh, Flavia, That quiet swis girl got me fired right up. Solvable as a collaboration between Pushkin Industries and the Rockefeller Foundation, with production by Talk and Blade.

Pushkin's executive producer is Mia LaBelle. Engineering by Jason Gambrel and the great folks at GSI Studios. Original music composed by Pascal Wise. Special thanks to Maggie Taylor, Heather Fame, Julia Barton, Carlie Migliori, Jacob Weisberg, and Malcolm Gladwell. You can learn more about solving Today's biggest problems at Rockefeller Foundation dot org slash Solvable. I'm Mave Higgins now go solve it.