Prevention of Right-Wing Extremism, Xenophobia and Racism in ...

& Wallerstein, 1988). Right-wing extremism is thus not a problem specifi c to youth. It is a
problem of our society as a whole.
Public and private strategies and programs against right-wing extremism and xenophobia
The anti-racist movement in Switzerland is made up of a diverse group of actors, which as the
racist problems they are combating represents a Swiss “special case” (Gerber, 2003).
For the majority of Swiss people, racism – primarily understood as “skin colour” racism – was
for a very long time not not considered a problem that directly affected them. The reason given for
this is that Switzerland, in contrast to most European countries, was never a colonial power.
Thus, it is not surprising surprising that the discrimination of foreign workers and the initiatives against
“foreignization” in the 1960s and 1970s are discussed in terms of “hostility to strangers”, or
xenophobia, despite the fairly obvious presence of a culturalist and essentialist discourse.
That the use of the term racism applied to conditions in Switzerland only gained broad acceptaccept- ance in the 1980s, when a larger number of people “of a different skin colour” immigrated to
the country.
The term racism also has different connotations in the different language regions of
Switzerland. In the German-speaking part of Switzerland, for example, the term is associated
mainly with the National Socialist politics politics of Germany’s past, and the idea that this under-
standing of race-racism is in any way applicable to Switzerland is widely rejected for two main
reasons. It is seen that this would downplay the atrocities committed by the fascists, and it
is considered incongruent with Swiss history. Things are very different in French-speaking
Switzerland, where the term race, as in France and throughout the English-speaking part of
the world, is applied much more broadly and associated mainly with colonialism. This makes
it diffi cult to operationalize the term for anti-racist actors across the entire country (Gerber,
2003).
Switzerland is also a special case in that the heterogeneous composition of the anti-racanti-rac- ist movement makes it diffi cult to state its its concrete goal. It is composed of a varied group of
per sons representing a broad political spectrum, from middle-class conservatism to left-wing
militarism. Individual motivations also vary. Some people become active because they have
been discriminated discriminated against as members of a discriminated group (“I have been a victim my-
self, which is why I want to work for the rights of my group”) or because they are committed
to solidarity (“I do not think it is right that ‘these’ people are discriminated against”). Other
people become engaged in anti-racist efforts because of their civil and democratic commit-
ments (“I do not want to live in a racist, undemocratic country”).
Because of this heterogeneity, there is little discussion about conceptions of racism. More- More-
over, some organizations have shifted their emphasis from racism to human rights, which has
a more positive connotation. Not only educational interests but also fi nancial interests lead to
a preference for human rights discourse over discussions of racism because the former meets
with greater approval (Gerber, 2003). In 2000, when hundreds of skinheads disrupted the
Swiss President’s address during the annual national celebration day, the public and the gov-
32 The Special Case of Switzerland