Silence when it serves the mood

The same parties, associations, and commentators have been harping on the "Anti-Racism Law ARG" for almost twenty years, using the same set pieces over and over again. Particularly popular is the complaint about "attacks on the freedom of expression", also put forward by bourgeois right-wing extremists who like to cover up media representatives with defamation suits. The accusation of "political correctness" is also rarely missing. Not even Arthur K. Vogel, editor-in-chief of Der Bund. As early as winter, he was already getting worked up "about the Sharia of political correctness," about "a body of laws and sanctions whose authors and enforcers" were unknown. Now, at the beginning of summer, he comments on the acquittal obtained by Dominic Lüthard, president of the right-wing extremist party National Oriented Swiss PNOS, before the Supreme Court. Lüthard had first warned of the threat of "Islamization" at a rally in Langenthal in October 2010, then wiped five cardboard minarets off a Swiss flag with a broom. Is Lüthard really just saying that the five existing Swiss minarets should disappear? After all, those who want to discriminate have practice in speaking in symbols when they want to exclude or disenfranchise minorities. Two organizations file criminal charges. Vogel accuses them of wanting to "prosecute unpopular political actions or expressions of opinion". In plain language: Vogel discredits what he claims to defend. He does not consider that Lüthard, with the five cardboard minarets that stand for the five existing Swiss minarets, may also have wanted to expel all Muslims from the country, which would then be punishable. Conclusion: The acquittal of the Bernese chief justice is understandable, but Vogel's reservations against the complainants and the public prosecutor are not.

Incidentally, a second observation is remarkable: The media persistently pay attention to questionable criminal charges against celebrities, leaving other criminal proceedings against racism to the left. The proceedings against Willy Schmidhauser, once president of the Swiss Democrats SD of the canton of Thurgau, only received coverage in the local media recently. The proceedings began in November 2009, a few days before the vote on the ban on minarets, with a nationally reported story in the SonntagsZeitung. The SD man claimed at that time - after arbitrarily selected Koran quotations - in Ulrich Schlüer's Schweizerzeit column that a "friendly federal coexistence" with Muslims was impossible. Immigration and naturalization of Muslims would have to be reconsidered. Yes, it remains "only the mass home creation of Muslims ". After the first media reports, the SVP National Councilor Schlüer hurriedly wrote of a "blunder ". Geneva Muslims filed a criminal complaint months later, because no one else had done it and also the prosecution authorities had not become active, although the racism criminal norm is one of the official offenses. After almost three years, the public prosecutor discontinued the proceedings against Schlüer. With understandable reasoning, in the first place the author is responsible for a published text. Remarkable, however: the discontinuation order proves the lack of quality control on the Schweizerzeit editorial staff. Both editor-in-chief Schlüer and "final editor" Reinhard Wegelin successfully defended themselves by pointing out that they had not looked at Schmidhauser's text at all before putting it in the paper. The main thing was that the length was right. Now the district court of Andelfingen has ruled in the first instance: Schmidhauser's text is racially discriminatory. The verdict is not yet legally binding. Some regional media report, the rest remain silent. Also Arthur K. Vogel's Der Bund. Silence can also be used to create an atmosphere.

Hans Stutz, Lucerne
Cantonal Councilor for the Green Party and author of the chronology "Racism in Switzerland".