Defenitely not true. Wouldn’t consider switzerland the most right leaning or even right leaning (though this might be a question of perspective).
Yes, the largest party in our country is right-winged BUT this is, IMO, largely due to the left being more fractured into smaller parties with minute differences whereas the range of opinions in the SVP is night and day.
However, we have to admit that switzerland can be a piece of work especially when it comes to “social innovation” as people seem to be stubborn.
Switzerland is not the conservative, extreme right paradise the internet likes to pretend it is. It is a very politically diverse country. We have a broad spectrum of politics, and even though I have my own preferences, I wouldn’t want there to be only one or two parties in power.
Well, the liberals here are a slightly right leaning party, so I guess we’d have two very similar countries.
On a more serious note: neither pure leftism nor pure rightism will produce a fantastic country. It’s important that the two balance each other out.
If you would judge a country on how progressive it is by its city biking infrastructure there would be no one arguing that Switzerland is not conservative as fuck 😀
Seriously – driving a bike in Zurich feels like the street planners want you to get hit by something -_-
Sweden is gonna become worse and worse with time as the welfare system collapses under itself
Honestly this is a quite uneducated take. Just because the biggest party in the parliment is the SVP, doesn‘t mean Switzerland is far right tf. Even that aside, whoever wrote this is clear bias about the left/right.
Quora never fails to come up with the dumbest answers imaginable. Switzerland is supposed to be the most right leaning country in Europe? Has that guy never heard about places like Poland and Hungary? Everything else he’s saying is utter nonsense too.
Edit: How tf does the original post have almost 7k upvotes?
I think there this a big misunderstanding coming from confusing “right” as conservative/authoritarian and “left” as libertarian, while it is also used to indicate “right” as free market / capitalism and “left” as socialist.
In Europe, most countries fall on the socialist part of the spectrum from an American perspective. Even Switzerland has strong worker rights (not as much as other EU countries but still), it has a free market for health care but it’s heavily regulated, it has mandatory pension scheme and social welfare instruments. So no, if you take American conservatives and put them in a country you don’t get Switzerland, and if you take American liberals you don’t get Sweden.
Switzerland the most right-leaning? Lol, what?!
American (and British) politics are polar. It’s either one or the other, no nuance, no middle ground, no compromise.
What makes Europe in general and Switzerland in particular a MUCH nicer place to live than the US is the compromises between left-leaning and right-leaning, socialist and capitalist, progressive and conservative, optimism and pessimism, religion and free thinking, etc. Because there are far more options than “all left or all right”, the compromises and arrangements tend towards guiding a country towards the centre, not just between “left” and “right” but on every topic under the sun.
In UK/US, the two parties constantly push their country to the extremes in a bid to stay in power or to prevent the other party from having power when they win the vote. And every item of discourse becomes a civil war, where each party takes a stance and defends it regardless of how wrong the party might be. Gerrymandering, political stunts to deprive “undesirables” of their vote, can’t happen in a state with numerous parties. But it can, and does, happen in countries with only two parties.
Multiple parties prevent the extremism of US/UK politics and keep a country stable. Regardless of if it’s a mostly conservative country like CH or a mostly leftish country like Sweden, a liberal one like NL or a anti-authoritarian one like FR, the requirement for compromise and the inability for political leaders to decide who gets to vote is what saves us from sliding down into a failed democracy the way the US is doing and the UK appears to be copying.
I’m very happy to see that basically every answer here shoes that this guy on Quora doesn’t know shit about fuck.
Switzerland is probably one of the best countries you could wish for to be born into
I have to agree about Sweden. But Switzerland most right leaning country in western europe? BS! Just look at Italy, they just elected Mussolini 2.0!
In my opinion Switzerland is somewhere in the middle, we have far right (SVP) and also far left (SP, Grüne) parties. And I think we have a very good and balanced political system.
They both start with Sw
What a lot of people might forget is that the SVP is the biggest party here. So by that metric we’re probably the most right.
However, while I personally dislike the SVP, they fulfill an important role in keeping the right a lot more moderate than in other countries like France or Italy.
From someone who has lived in both countries: Switzerland is simply much more well run. Sweden used to be a place, similar to Switzerland, where everything just works. It isn’t anymore. The “new left” (together with neoliberals) have ruined the country in the last 15-20 years.
If you don’t believe me you can check the latest election results. If only young people were allowed to vote, the conservatives would have a clear cut majority in Sweden. The greens, left and social democrats don’t even gather 35% of the votes in the age bracket 18-21. The media has been pushing this idea of “generation Greta”, but in reality the biggest concern for young people in Sweden is crime and safety. I think that says a lot about the development of the country.
edit: So people are arguing in this thread that it is not a good comparison because Switzerland is not right wing? It is without a doubt more right wing and conservative than Sweden, so the comparison is very much valid.
Diversity and compromise is what works best… And it’s exactly what Switzerland is… That’s also why we have one of the most productive country in the world.
Of course there are extremists and racists… Like in any country. But at least we don’t have ghettos like in France or USA where we park poor folks with no chance to make it out…
A lot of BS in that post.
A couple of things I’ve noticed:
For some reason people keep comparing Switzerland to the US, which is not even mentioned by the Quora poster (and the poster isn’t American).
Also, people underestimate the impact of a decentralized system. Many Europeans do not understand decentralization to the extent that it exists in Switzerland. They probably construe that with right-wing, as it is more traditionally libertarian.
Switzerland is safer
Right politics top
As a queer ausländer. I agree. Sorry not sorry. Switzerland is racist and sexist as fuck.
That article is absolute bs. Even though SVP as our right-conservative party has the largest voter base, Swotzerland is very balanced thanks to more than one party being in charge and having a say. Even SVP is not considered far-right by US standards I think – hell, I couldn’t imagine almost any Swiss wanting to live with US social standards, as right-wing as they may be here.
I think if you want to compare to a far-right country, you’d need to take Hungary or Poland as examples, definitely not CH. Even England and Italy would be better examples.
I mean, why take seriously someone that says that restrictive immigration policies = racist, especially considering the percentage of immigrants living here, which excludes the ones who ended up becoming Swiss themselves.
Also, I didn’t know we didn’t want women to have careers? Where does that come from?
Strååt failed spectacularly. Using sweeping overgeneralisations with no definition of frame, cherry picking, huge unsupported claims…
People shouldn’t try to write like poets if they do not have the capacity to properly condense language. This guy should have written at least triple the length of this for the statement he set out to make.
Switzerland is not racist and it’s not the most right leaning. It’s xenophobic, maybe, but it also has close to 20% foreigners. If it were so racist, those numbers would have to be lower.
The internet exaggerates things as always, Switzerland has a very big right wing presence, but I wouldn’t describe the major parties as extremists, and there are also left wing parties, plus a plethora of other ideologies. Describing Switzerland (or any other county in Europe) as libertarian of conservative is a bit reductive
24 comments
Defenitely not true. Wouldn’t consider switzerland the most right leaning or even right leaning (though this might be a question of perspective).
Yes, the largest party in our country is right-winged BUT this is, IMO, largely due to the left being more fractured into smaller parties with minute differences whereas the range of opinions in the SVP is night and day.
However, we have to admit that switzerland can be a piece of work especially when it comes to “social innovation” as people seem to be stubborn.
Switzerland is not the conservative, extreme right paradise the internet likes to pretend it is. It is a very politically diverse country. We have a broad spectrum of politics, and even though I have my own preferences, I wouldn’t want there to be only one or two parties in power.
Well, the liberals here are a slightly right leaning party, so I guess we’d have two very similar countries.
On a more serious note: neither pure leftism nor pure rightism will produce a fantastic country. It’s important that the two balance each other out.
If you would judge a country on how progressive it is by its city biking infrastructure there would be no one arguing that Switzerland is not conservative as fuck 😀
Seriously – driving a bike in Zurich feels like the street planners want you to get hit by something -_-
Sweden is gonna become worse and worse with time as the welfare system collapses under itself
Honestly this is a quite uneducated take. Just because the biggest party in the parliment is the SVP, doesn‘t mean Switzerland is far right tf. Even that aside, whoever wrote this is clear bias about the left/right.
Quora never fails to come up with the dumbest answers imaginable. Switzerland is supposed to be the most right leaning country in Europe? Has that guy never heard about places like Poland and Hungary? Everything else he’s saying is utter nonsense too.
Edit: How tf does the original post have almost 7k upvotes?
I think there this a big misunderstanding coming from confusing “right” as conservative/authoritarian and “left” as libertarian, while it is also used to indicate “right” as free market / capitalism and “left” as socialist.
In Europe, most countries fall on the socialist part of the spectrum from an American perspective. Even Switzerland has strong worker rights (not as much as other EU countries but still), it has a free market for health care but it’s heavily regulated, it has mandatory pension scheme and social welfare instruments. So no, if you take American conservatives and put them in a country you don’t get Switzerland, and if you take American liberals you don’t get Sweden.
Switzerland the most right-leaning? Lol, what?!
American (and British) politics are polar. It’s either one or the other, no nuance, no middle ground, no compromise.
What makes Europe in general and Switzerland in particular a MUCH nicer place to live than the US is the compromises between left-leaning and right-leaning, socialist and capitalist, progressive and conservative, optimism and pessimism, religion and free thinking, etc. Because there are far more options than “all left or all right”, the compromises and arrangements tend towards guiding a country towards the centre, not just between “left” and “right” but on every topic under the sun.
In UK/US, the two parties constantly push their country to the extremes in a bid to stay in power or to prevent the other party from having power when they win the vote. And every item of discourse becomes a civil war, where each party takes a stance and defends it regardless of how wrong the party might be. Gerrymandering, political stunts to deprive “undesirables” of their vote, can’t happen in a state with numerous parties. But it can, and does, happen in countries with only two parties.
Multiple parties prevent the extremism of US/UK politics and keep a country stable. Regardless of if it’s a mostly conservative country like CH or a mostly leftish country like Sweden, a liberal one like NL or a anti-authoritarian one like FR, the requirement for compromise and the inability for political leaders to decide who gets to vote is what saves us from sliding down into a failed democracy the way the US is doing and the UK appears to be copying.
I’m very happy to see that basically every answer here shoes that this guy on Quora doesn’t know shit about fuck.
Switzerland is probably one of the best countries you could wish for to be born into
I have to agree about Sweden. But Switzerland most right leaning country in western europe? BS! Just look at Italy, they just elected Mussolini 2.0!
In my opinion Switzerland is somewhere in the middle, we have far right (SVP) and also far left (SP, Grüne) parties. And I think we have a very good and balanced political system.
They both start with Sw
What a lot of people might forget is that the SVP is the biggest party here. So by that metric we’re probably the most right.
However, while I personally dislike the SVP, they fulfill an important role in keeping the right a lot more moderate than in other countries like France or Italy.
From someone who has lived in both countries: Switzerland is simply much more well run. Sweden used to be a place, similar to Switzerland, where everything just works. It isn’t anymore. The “new left” (together with neoliberals) have ruined the country in the last 15-20 years.
If you don’t believe me you can check the latest election results. If only young people were allowed to vote, the conservatives would have a clear cut majority in Sweden. The greens, left and social democrats don’t even gather 35% of the votes in the age bracket 18-21. The media has been pushing this idea of “generation Greta”, but in reality the biggest concern for young people in Sweden is crime and safety. I think that says a lot about the development of the country.
edit: So people are arguing in this thread that it is not a good comparison because Switzerland is not right wing? It is without a doubt more right wing and conservative than Sweden, so the comparison is very much valid.
Diversity and compromise is what works best… And it’s exactly what Switzerland is… That’s also why we have one of the most productive country in the world.
Of course there are extremists and racists… Like in any country. But at least we don’t have ghettos like in France or USA where we park poor folks with no chance to make it out…
A lot of BS in that post.
A couple of things I’ve noticed:
For some reason people keep comparing Switzerland to the US, which is not even mentioned by the Quora poster (and the poster isn’t American).
Also, people underestimate the impact of a decentralized system. Many Europeans do not understand decentralization to the extent that it exists in Switzerland. They probably construe that with right-wing, as it is more traditionally libertarian.
Switzerland is safer
Right politics top
As a queer ausländer. I agree. Sorry not sorry. Switzerland is racist and sexist as fuck.
That article is absolute bs. Even though SVP as our right-conservative party has the largest voter base, Swotzerland is very balanced thanks to more than one party being in charge and having a say. Even SVP is not considered far-right by US standards I think – hell, I couldn’t imagine almost any Swiss wanting to live with US social standards, as right-wing as they may be here.
I think if you want to compare to a far-right country, you’d need to take Hungary or Poland as examples, definitely not CH. Even England and Italy would be better examples.
I mean, why take seriously someone that says that restrictive immigration policies = racist, especially considering the percentage of immigrants living here, which excludes the ones who ended up becoming Swiss themselves.
Also, I didn’t know we didn’t want women to have careers? Where does that come from?
Strååt failed spectacularly. Using sweeping overgeneralisations with no definition of frame, cherry picking, huge unsupported claims…
People shouldn’t try to write like poets if they do not have the capacity to properly condense language. This guy should have written at least triple the length of this for the statement he set out to make.
Switzerland is not racist and it’s not the most right leaning. It’s xenophobic, maybe, but it also has close to 20% foreigners. If it were so racist, those numbers would have to be lower.
The internet exaggerates things as always, Switzerland has a very big right wing presence, but I wouldn’t describe the major parties as extremists, and there are also left wing parties, plus a plethora of other ideologies. Describing Switzerland (or any other county in Europe) as libertarian of conservative is a bit reductive