Speaker 1: Bushkin. This is solvable. I'm Jacob Weisberg. Back in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: my co host Anna Applewam interviewed a Swiss history student,
Speaker 1: then twenty eight year old Flavia Kleiner. My solvable is
Speaker 1: to build a political home for people who want to
Speaker 1: defend our liberal order against writing populists as well. In
Speaker 1: Switzerland as well as in other countries, populous tend to
Speaker 1: frame politics as a battle between the virtuous ordinary masses
Speaker 1: and the corrupt elite. They demand that the will of
Speaker 1: the people should always win, and that sounds pretty reasonable,
Speaker 1: but in reality, many populous movements have actually targeted the poor, immigrants, women,
Speaker 1: religious minorities and others to create an US against them dynamic.
Speaker 1: Those divisions can make it harder to unify around local, national,
Speaker 1: and global goals like fighting poverty and disease and banding
Speaker 1: together to face our climate crisis. Does this all feel
Speaker 1: uncomfortably familiar and close to home. I wish I could
Speaker 1: say the populism had decreased around the world since our
Speaker 1: interview with Kleiner first aired last year, but it's the opposite.
Speaker 1: Listening again, I was struck by just how encouraging it
Speaker 1: is to hear about Kleiner's winning strategies. Flavia Cliner is
Speaker 1: the co founder of Operation Libero, and just last month,
Speaker 1: her organization helped defeat yet another populist xenophobic referendum. Cliner's
Speaker 1: insights and optimism feel especially meaningful as we approach our
Speaker 1: own divisive national elections here in the United States. Here's
Speaker 1: her conversation with my co host Anne Appleball. You a
Speaker 1: few years ago identified what you felt to be a
Speaker 1: very deep problem in your country. Can you describe what
Speaker 1: it is and how did you first recognize it? So
Speaker 1: actually goes back to well by date of birth. Nearly
Speaker 1: it was a ninety two there was a vote on
Speaker 1: Switzerland joining or not joining the European Commercial Area or
Speaker 1: economic European Economic Area. The EA and the Swiss refused that,
Speaker 1: and that was actually the starting point of incredible career
Speaker 1: of a party called the Swiss People's Party here, which
Speaker 1: is which happened to turn from a really conservative party
Speaker 1: into a rather writing populist party as well. And Christophe Blojo,
Speaker 1: he is a leader, the well known personality of this party,
Speaker 1: saying that he has tailor made suits but which actually
Speaker 1: don't really fit on the shoulder, so he would pretend
Speaker 1: to be one of you know, the people, but actually
Speaker 1: he's a billionaire. He's super rich, one of the richest
Speaker 1: people in Switzerland. He runs this party and he finances
Speaker 1: this party mostly, and so that was basically the start
Speaker 1: of this career of the party. So the problem you
Speaker 1: identified is the problem of Swiss populism. You identified a
Speaker 1: particular event and it was the referendum on mass migration.
Speaker 1: Can you explain what's the significance of referendums in Switzerland
Speaker 1: and why this one in particular affected you. The SPAPE
Speaker 1: came up with what we call a popular initiative, which
Speaker 1: is a direct democratic proposal to the Swiss people that
Speaker 1: we vote on, and it means that you need to
Speaker 1: collect one hundred thousand signatures on a specific legal text,
Speaker 1: which then, if it is accepted, is being introduced into
Speaker 1: our constitution. So it's such just some law, you know,
Speaker 1: it's changing our constitution. So the writing populists as well
Speaker 1: as other parties misuse this tool today as a marketing
Speaker 1: tool for their issues. They come up with this just
Speaker 1: right before election so they can campaign on a specific issue.
Speaker 1: But the originally this right was given to minorities which
Speaker 1: would never be represented in Parliament, and through this initiative
Speaker 1: they could introduce law and come up with issues which
Speaker 1: matter to them. And so that particular event was in
Speaker 1: February twenty fourteen. But we voted on the so called
Speaker 1: mass immigration initiative. Already from the name, you can see
Speaker 1: that it comes up. It brings up a certain framing
Speaker 1: and the ASPHAPE wanted to limit the number of people
Speaker 1: coming to Switzerland in the free movement of People agreement
Speaker 1: that we have with the European Union. Switzerland is not
Speaker 1: a member of the European Union, but we have bilateral
Speaker 1: treaties and the ASPHAPA is that there are just too
Speaker 1: many people coming to Switzerland every year. And they won, Yeah,
Speaker 1: by a really close marching of fifty point three percent.
Speaker 1: It was only twenty thousand votes made a difference. And
Speaker 1: so you said to yourself, how do we stop this?
Speaker 1: And then you went through a process of trying to
Speaker 1: think how do we push back against this kind of language. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the thing was we didn't actually recognize ourselves in the
Speaker 1: country that we grew up in because we saw Switzerland
Speaker 1: as a you know, cosmopol international country, open and so on.
Speaker 1: And nobody really expected this to happen. It was like
Speaker 1: our Brexit moment. You know what, we said, Okay, that's
Speaker 1: not the country that we want to live in. We
Speaker 1: want to change this. We want to have a brighter
Speaker 1: future and a brighter vision for what Twittererland can be.
Speaker 1: But the populist argument had already infected all the other parties.
Speaker 1: In other words, everybody began saying and so it's on. Well,
Speaker 1: actually maybe it's true, maybe there are too many people here,
Speaker 1: Maybe we need stronger borders, maybe we need greater sovereignty.
Speaker 1: So how do you push back against that kind of
Speaker 1: you know, this change of social mood. Basically, what we
Speaker 1: saw is that we want to promote Switzerland regarding to
Speaker 1: the future. We said, Switzerland is the land of opportunity
Speaker 1: of the twenty century. We're not a kind of open
Speaker 1: air museum where nothing should ever change. And that's also
Speaker 1: the country we want to live in two thousand and fifty.
Speaker 1: We're actually looking forward to the year two thousand. So
Speaker 1: you began reframing the conversation. But actually you said to
Speaker 1: me earlier, you thought first about creating a political party,
Speaker 1: and then you decided that wasn't the way to go right.
Speaker 1: So for us, I mean, of course we're super disappointed
Speaker 1: about all the other parties. It just overtook the narration
Speaker 1: of the SPA pay of there are too many people
Speaker 1: in our trains, there are too many people renting apartments here.
Speaker 1: First we thought, okay, we have to just make a
Speaker 1: new party because we don't we cannot identify with any
Speaker 1: other we don't have a political home. But then we
Speaker 1: realized that in the Swiss political system it doesn't really
Speaker 1: make sense to create a new party. But instead we
Speaker 1: decided to create an overpartisan movement, which actually goes against
Speaker 1: this tendency of polarization. But we wanted to unite the
Speaker 1: progressive liberal minds in this country, and also we wanted
Speaker 1: to link us somehow back to the tradition of eighteen
Speaker 1: forty eight, which was the foundation of the liberal stat
Speaker 1: of Switzerland. And we introduced ourselves with our manifesto as
Speaker 1: the children of eighteen forty eight, So trying to link
Speaker 1: these liberal ideas back to the past, so they're part
Speaker 1: of Swiss history and they don't seem like some kind
Speaker 1: of foreign import. No. Absolutely, and even more, it was
Speaker 1: a really patriotic but emancipated, patriotic understanding of where we
Speaker 1: come from. The founding fathers of our country were the
Speaker 1: Liberals in eighteen forty eight, and we totally identify with
Speaker 1: their mindset of what it means to be a modern Switzerland.
Speaker 1: But then, how did you actually change people's minds? How
Speaker 1: did you begin arguing this? I mean, you're a group
Speaker 1: of students at the university. You know what were actually
Speaker 1: the tools that you used? Now I jumped forward to
Speaker 1: October twenty fifteen, that was like one and a half
Speaker 1: year after the whole thing happened, and we launched our organization,
Speaker 1: our movement. We had actions in Switzerland in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: and that was a moment where again the sval Pay
Speaker 1: the writing Popputists, became the strongest party in Switzerland with
Speaker 1: twenty nine percent, okay, twenty nine percent of our parliament.
Speaker 1: And so again the other party said, oh, come on,
Speaker 1: which is we can't you know, we have nothing to
Speaker 1: help us against this super strong party. And then only
Speaker 1: one month after the government said okay, guys, in three
Speaker 1: months time, we're going to vote on the so called
Speaker 1: expulsion of criminal foreigners initiative. That was an initiative which
Speaker 1: wanted to expel criminal foreigners, even for minor in frictions
Speaker 1: of law, for example driving two times too fast within
Speaker 1: ten years, which actually happens to everybody, you know. The
Speaker 1: other party said, oh no, come on, this is again
Speaker 1: about criminals and then foreigners, and it's driven by the SVAPAI,
Speaker 1: this popular initiative. We have no chance. Rather we hide
Speaker 1: and let it pass instead of losing again energy and
Speaker 1: time and anyway, we just lost the elections. That was
Speaker 1: a moment where we somehow came up and said, okay,
Speaker 1: we don't want to live in a country where there's
Speaker 1: a kind of two tire legal system. You have to
Speaker 1: know that in Switzerland, twenty five percent of the population
Speaker 1: don't have a Swiss passport. They might live here for generations.
Speaker 1: They don't have a genuine link to the country that
Speaker 1: they come from, but they would have been maybe victims
Speaker 1: of that new law introduced into our constitution. So that
Speaker 1: was a moment where we somehow stood up and said, okay,
Speaker 1: we don't We're definitely not gonna make the gift to
Speaker 1: the writing populace and defend criminal foreigners because then you
Speaker 1: would anyway lose. So we realized that if we want
Speaker 1: to convince the conservative majority in Switzerland, we need to
Speaker 1: speak about something that matters to them as well, because
Speaker 1: it's so super easy what the Writing Populace wanted to do.
Speaker 1: They wanted to ask the people and take, guys, this
Speaker 1: is your chance to expel crim foreigners from that country.
Speaker 1: Why don't you just say yes? And who's going to
Speaker 1: disagree with that? Right? And so we said instead, guys,
Speaker 1: this is actually going against the fundamental principles of our constitution,
Speaker 1: against rule of law, against principle of proportionality, which is
Speaker 1: super important to judges, because actually this law wanted to
Speaker 1: limit and restrict the ability ability of judges to actually
Speaker 1: look at the individual case and instead introduce a kind
Speaker 1: of automatism to our legal system. I think that was
Speaker 1: crucial because we decided that we somehow want to conquer
Speaker 1: the sovereignty of interpretation from the Writing Populists over their
Speaker 1: initiative through this. And that was actually the biggest compliment
Speaker 1: that the party leader of the Writing Populists made me
Speaker 1: was when he said after the election, after the whole campaign,
Speaker 1: he said, I didn't know what happened, but at sometimes,
Speaker 1: at some point we only spoke about rule of law,
Speaker 1: and that was actually framing big success right that we had.
Speaker 1: So you framed the idea, but what were the tactics
Speaker 1: that you used. The most important tactics, I think is
Speaker 1: really to find a popular language to what I just described,
Speaker 1: which seems really abstract of course argument. We managed to
Speaker 1: translate it into a narrative, something tangible to people. And
Speaker 1: what we did is actually we spoke about modern Helvetia.
Speaker 1: She's like an allegorical figure which represents all the Swiss values.
Speaker 1: You you find her on our coins and so on,
Speaker 1: and this was referred to her. She's the emancipated figure
Speaker 1: which represents the values of eighteen forty eight, so the
Speaker 1: liberal institutions. And we said she would be smashed by
Speaker 1: what we translated as a metaphor at this initiative. She
Speaker 1: will be smashed by a wrecking ball, this statue of
Speaker 1: modern helvets that will be wrecked. And you did memes
Speaker 1: of that, yeah, exactly, and the video and so on afterwards.
Speaker 1: That's a special group or entity of volunteers we have.
Speaker 1: They're called online warriors. They basically are really active on
Speaker 1: social media and they're basically fighting back trolls and like
Speaker 1: fake news, which are spread online. They actually go there
Speaker 1: and engage the trolls into a debate, and they do
Speaker 1: it under their personal private account as citizens online with
Speaker 1: their real names, right, they debate there and what we
Speaker 1: see actually and that's the fantastic effect of it, that
Speaker 1: we can actually change debates online and that we can
Speaker 1: effect also the level of you know, factfulness and so on.
Speaker 1: So that's a really that's a really important change that
Speaker 1: we can see. I really think you can be popular
Speaker 1: without being populistic, you know, and you can. Actually you
Speaker 1: need to find ways in this media society that we
Speaker 1: live in. You need to find ways to say things easier.
Speaker 1: To give you another example, if we can pain we
Speaker 1: don't need to go to the noyetial Titung, which is
Speaker 1: like the liberal leading newspaper that any anyway people read
Speaker 1: too who are convinced already, you know, But we need
Speaker 1: to go to the Tontig Minutant twenty minutes, which is
Speaker 1: a newspaper that people read every day a quarter of
Speaker 1: the Swiss population when they commute. If you get to
Speaker 1: this newspaper, which is really short, really easy and so on,
Speaker 1: you need to be able to say your message in
Speaker 1: one picture and five words. That's all you get, one picture,
Speaker 1: five words. Can you give me an example of the
Speaker 1: campaign that you won, because you've now won several campaigns,
Speaker 1: several referendum campaigns. Right, So the one I was mentioning
Speaker 1: about the expulsion of criminal foreigners, that was really unexpected
Speaker 1: because we turned from sixty six percent in the first
Speaker 1: polls who were in favor of this initiative, we turn
Speaker 1: it into sixty percent refusing it. And that was a
Speaker 1: super important moment in Switzerland. I remember that day after
Speaker 1: the vote when I walked through Swiss streets and you
Speaker 1: could really feel how people felt relieved that that was
Speaker 1: for the first time that the seventy percent that don't
Speaker 1: vote the SPA PAY, that didn't vote SA PAY four
Speaker 1: months before in the elections, that they realize that they're
Speaker 1: actually the big majority. Right that even though the writing
Speaker 1: puppeties managed to dominate the public discourse for years with
Speaker 1: their initiatives, with their propaganda, I must say by setting
Speaker 1: the themes that all the other parties need to discuss about.
Speaker 1: Because they're just the richest party, and because they're the
Speaker 1: best organized party, we must say, and because they are
Speaker 1: the ones who know how to communicate in media society.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden that was someone who could counter this,
Speaker 1: and we felt that we are the seventy percent. And
Speaker 1: that was such an important moment in Switzerland where we
Speaker 1: managed to break this sovereignty of interpretation over what Switzerland
Speaker 1: is and what Switzerland could be. Is there a longer
Speaker 1: term goal? Is that right now you're fighting referendum by referendum,
Speaker 1: but what happens next, So definitely that's only the first step.
Speaker 1: You know, that's important to know about Switzerland. When you
Speaker 1: win referend us, then you gain street credibility. You're the
Speaker 1: one who manages to convince the majority of the Swiss
Speaker 1: and so through this you gain a certain importance in
Speaker 1: the public discourse. But of course there we still didn't
Speaker 1: actually affect elections because that's where laws are made in
Speaker 1: the parliament. That's where we see that we still need
Speaker 1: to improve our influence so that because by now we
Speaker 1: only always get in in the last possible moment, you know,
Speaker 1: to somehow prevent Switzerland from accepting some initiative. But what
Speaker 1: we actually want is to go over from this reactive
Speaker 1: mode into a more active mode. It comes down to
Speaker 1: this one thing that I would say, how do we
Speaker 1: manage that people see the real need of institutions that
Speaker 1: guarantee their freedom. How do we make sure that hope
Speaker 1: is an emotion just as strong as fear, because that's
Speaker 1: what I see is the biggest problem these days, that
Speaker 1: of course fear is a super powerful tool, but what
Speaker 1: we need and that was always a challenge to the rules.
Speaker 1: The future is unknown, So how can we promise a
Speaker 1: vision or like a future where people understand where they
Speaker 1: want to go to where they feel at home, Because
Speaker 1: that was always, you know, part of the emancipational process,
Speaker 1: that there was something tangible close by, something which seemed
Speaker 1: to be an improvement of the actual situation. And in
Speaker 1: a globalized world now where many values seem under pressure,
Speaker 1: I see that people aren't that sure whether the future
Speaker 1: will be brighter or will be more positive than it
Speaker 1: is today. And that's that's what I mean also by
Speaker 1: the mood or like the atmosphere that I want to
Speaker 1: touch her to change here in Switzerland, that people somehow
Speaker 1: are confident about the future bringing them a better life,
Speaker 1: that they're looking forward to the year twenty and fifty
Speaker 1: where they want to live with their families and good
Speaker 1: jobs in this country. How can this model help others?
Speaker 1: And you know you've you've created a movement inside Switzerland.
Speaker 1: It's got it deals with a very specific form of
Speaker 1: Swiss politics, name these referenda that you have periodically, and
Speaker 1: you've you've organized yourself around these referenda. But do you
Speaker 1: think there's a way that your way of thinking, in
Speaker 1: your way of operating could work in other places? I think?
Speaker 1: I mean if I look back on how we started,
Speaker 1: and you know, we were total amateurs. We had no
Speaker 1: clue about what we were actually doing right, but there
Speaker 1: was this this passion, this will of we want to
Speaker 1: tackle the problem. And that's really a question of you know,
Speaker 1: what's your attitude? You know, and here I maybe I
Speaker 1: always say you need this kind of reality distortion field
Speaker 1: of I don't know if you're fans of Star Trek,
Speaker 1: but there's La menagerie. I mean, imagine the Safe was
Speaker 1: the strongest party in our country. That's not as it
Speaker 1: is in other countries these days. Oftentimes they are still smaller,
Speaker 1: maybe even more writing populous parties. Okay, but in Switzerland
Speaker 1: take the dominant force for the twenty five years that
Speaker 1: I grew up in. You know, I have no I
Speaker 1: don't know any other system. I don't even find it brave,
Speaker 1: but we just had to imagine a different system. You
Speaker 1: need to believe in what you do and where you
Speaker 1: want to go. And this doesn't mean that you have
Speaker 1: to believe in your own propaganda. That's the worst you
Speaker 1: can do. But you need to be really convinced by
Speaker 1: where you want to go. And that brings me back
Speaker 1: to this vision that you need for your country, where
Speaker 1: you want to go to, and I think that's really
Speaker 1: what we're lacking off in many countries that politically just
Speaker 1: don't really provide a vision where people feel that they
Speaker 1: can feel at home there. So there's a there's a
Speaker 1: kind of template. You know, this is what you do?
Speaker 1: Could you could you name five things that people wanting
Speaker 1: to create a similar kind of movement should do. What
Speaker 1: I find interesting is to think about likely and unlikely allies.
Speaker 1: You know, who is out there, who do you know,
Speaker 1: who do you don't know? And with whom could you
Speaker 1: collaborate in this mission? You know, that's maybe an interesting
Speaker 1: strategically including allies, for example, conservative allies. Yeah, exactly, because
Speaker 1: you know you might be surprised to some people. But
Speaker 1: get out there, talk to people, get a common understanding
Speaker 1: about what really matters you, and that when I mean
Speaker 1: what really matters to you. I also want to stress
Speaker 1: the difference between civil society organizations and their possibility to
Speaker 1: actually stress what unites us, you know, not as much
Speaker 1: as parties. Parties have to stress what divides us right
Speaker 1: for their political means. Civil society organization we can actually
Speaker 1: stress what unites us, what kind of values we want
Speaker 1: to strengthen in our society, and how we want to
Speaker 1: build a closer society in a way less polarized about
Speaker 1: the more like the tactical side of it. I would really,
Speaker 1: of course recommend to work with very modern tools, but
Speaker 1: also more traditional tools. Really to go out there to
Speaker 1: together with people, to discuss with people, to get like
Speaker 1: a real human contact, you know, because that's what I
Speaker 1: at least this is my experience. You can have the
Speaker 1: most evil troll who you know, who texts you on
Speaker 1: social media, but once you meet him, usually you you'll
Speaker 1: find a common ground and you can humanly discuss about things.
Speaker 1: So meet people in real life. That's another piece of advice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what about what kinds of tools do you use? What
Speaker 1: kinds of messaging? So of course I mean you always
Speaker 1: go with the newest strengths. So if you if it
Speaker 1: is Instagram, it's Instagram. If it's Twitter, it's Twitter, and
Speaker 1: you can. The most important is that you somehow manage
Speaker 1: to translate your complex message, maybe your argument, into an
Speaker 1: understandable message so people can actually take it. And I'm
Speaker 1: not saying this because I think people are stupid. We
Speaker 1: have to do the work. We need to approach them
Speaker 1: and to explain it, you know, So that's thing, to
Speaker 1: explain it in a in a fast and easy way,
Speaker 1: in the ways that people find most accessible. So yeah,
Speaker 1: and whatever it is, commuter tabloids, right or internet me
Speaker 1: and maybe even a fun way. Right. You mentioned the memes,
Speaker 1: the short videos, something which is fun that people love
Speaker 1: to look. I mean people love to look cat videos,
Speaker 1: so and they are only twenty seconds long, so we
Speaker 1: you know, that's do you make cat videos? We already
Speaker 1: worked with cat videos. Yes. Is there somebody who inspired you?
Speaker 1: The most inspiring figures were always resistant fighters, for example,
Speaker 1: who fought the fishist regimes in the twentieth century. That's
Speaker 1: why I do what I do. I don't want us
Speaker 1: to go that far because we've seen what human beings
Speaker 1: can do to our society to meet start at a
Speaker 1: different point where we really need to figure out what
Speaker 1: are the basic elements of a society. And to me,
Speaker 1: this really is personal contact. This is neighborhood, this is family.
Speaker 1: Maybe this is just some close relationship to other individuals
Speaker 1: which are not only like minded. Maybe I think this
Speaker 1: is something that has changed a lot, at least how
Speaker 1: I perceive it, and we should really make sure that
Speaker 1: we reach out to people who have a different mindset
Speaker 1: or different vision of the future. Flavia Kleiner is the
Speaker 1: co founder of Operation Libero, an organization that promotes liberal
Speaker 1: patriotism and fights populism in Switzerland. Next week, Solvable is
Speaker 1: taking the week off. We're going to be focused on voting.
Speaker 1: We're hoping it will be among the highest turnout elections
Speaker 1: ever through mail in voting, in person voting or early voting,
Speaker 1: and drop off balloting. Listen to Deep Background and other
Speaker 1: Pushkin shows to hear immediate discussion after the election of
Speaker 1: what it all means. Solvable is brought to you by
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. Our show is produced by Camil Baptista. The
Speaker 1: senior producer is Jocelyn Frank, Catherine Girardot is our managing
Speaker 1: producer and our executive producer Via Lobell. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Heather Sane, Eric Sandler, Carle Migliori and Cadijia Holland. I'm
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg.