The former leader of the populist Swiss People’s Party (SVP), Christoph Blocher, caused an outcry over the weekend after comparing the treatment of his party in a controversial referendum campaign to that of the Jews in Nazi Germany.
A majority of Swiss voters recently rejected the SVP’s initiative which called for the mandatory expulsion of all foreigners in Switzerland convicted or fined by a court. In an interview with the daily ‘Zürichsee-Zeitung’, Blocher was critical of the campaign by other political parties and media outlets against the SVP initiative.
"If all the media and the other parties still have only the goal of slandering, discriminating against, and bashing the SVP – primarily out of envy and resentment – we are no longer voting about factual issues," the 75-year-old billionaire, who for a long time led the SVP and who served as Swiss justice minister until being voted out of office by parliament in 2007, was quoted as saying in the interview.
"In this, the referendum campaign over the enforcement initiative reached an unprecedented pinnacle. The fight against the SVP by state media and by [newspapers from 'Blick' to the 'Neue Zürcher Zeitung'] reminded me in its radicalism of the Nazis' methods against the Jews."
Jonathan Kreutner, the general secretary of the Swiss Jewish Community Federation, criticized Blocher's comments, saying that such a comparison trivialized the crimes committed by the Nazis against the Jews. "That shows an apparent lack of knowledge about history," Kreutner was quoted by the newspaper 'Blick' as saying.
Asked about the comments on Monday, Blocher told the news agency ‘Reuters’ that his comments referred to the Nazis' measures to exclude Jews from society, before the violent persecution that eventually led to the deaths of 6 million European Jews in the Holocaust.
"The comparison of the methods is meant seriously," he said. "Nip it in the bud. Saying this is no cause for regret."
Rival parties and activist groups all mobilized supporters to vote against the SVP initiative in February. In the highest turnout for any referendum in Switzerland since 1992, 59 percent of voters opposed automatic deportations.
