CHRISTOPHE BLOCHER - THE SWISH SWISS

Published on March 3, 2014

Culture

Since 1992, he has been com­pared to the French­man Jean-Marie le Pen and to the late Aus­trian Jörg Haider. But Christoph Blocher is more than just a top spokesman for ex­treme-right Eu­ro­pean pop­ulism. In a few years full of media ma­nip­u­la­tion, each one dodgier than the last, he has be­come the very model of suc­cess.

"I look at your face and I feel like I'm look­ing at my coun­try from an en­tirely new angle," says Bron in voice-over. Para­dox­i­cally, in his fight against the EU, Blocher also shows us one of the many faces of Eu­rope. The film takes us on a tour of the of­ten-wor­ry­ing pre­sent day, which seems to be re­liv­ing the dark past of 1930s Eu­rope. It's a dif­fi­cult and con­tro­ver­sial com­par­i­son, but it feels like it is done in the hope of sal­va­tion.

"A CEN­TRAL FIG­URE IN OUR COL­LEC­TIVE UN­CON­SCIOUS"

Jean-Stéphane Bron brings up the sub­ject by think­ing about myths, con­sid­er­ing Blocher "a cen­tral fig­ure in our col­lec­tive un­con­scious". The 1992 ref­er­en­dum on Switzer­land's ac­ces­sion to the Eu­ro­pean Eco­nomic Area marked the birth of his po­lit­i­cal suc­cess. Brocher gave over 200 speeches, ral­ly­ing thou­sands of Swiss cit­i­zens around con­cern about loss of sov­er­eignty. The un­ex­pected 'no' vic­tory made him a ver­i­ta­ble celebrity. In scenes you al­most can't be­lieve, peo­ple com­pare him to a me­dieval king, to Mozart, or even, in one meet­ing, to God. Noth­ing is too ex­trav­a­gant. 

Jean-Sté­phane Bron at­tempts a dou­ble psy­cho­analy­sis, fo­cus­ing on the at­trac­tion of this new­comer and his hum­ble be­gin­nings, whilst try­ing to get in­side his head. A sim­ple pas­tor's son, he stud­ied agri­cul­ture. But lack of land forced him out of his first job. The prim­i­tive need to de­fend your home­land is the basis of Blocher's po­lit­i­cal stance, and the key that links him to the cheer­ing crowds.

A FI­NAN­CIAL SHARK

Going back to his roots al­lows us to dive into his li­a­bil­i­ties as a fi­nan­cial shark. Blocher the in­dus­tri­al­ist threw him­self into self-con­fi­dent cap­i­tal­ism, buy­ing chem­i­cal com­pany EMS-Chemie in 1983, and amass­ing an es­ti­mated for­tune of $2 bil­lion by 1999 in the process. He was part of the lob­by­ing group which did busi­ness with the South African apartheid regime of the 1980s. The same cyn­i­cal op­ti­mism can be found in EMS-Chemie's part­ner­ships with com­mu­nist China. 

Trailer for the Blocher Ex­pe­ri­ence

It is his abil­ity to bridge the huge gap be­tween high fi­nan­cial cir­cles and his pop­u­lar sup­port base which brings Blocher suc­cess at the head of the Swiss Peo­ple's Party (SPP). Para­doxes were no prob­lem: he de­fends Swiss salaries against com­pe­ti­tion from for­eign work­ers, but he is also known as a slave dri­ver and the ar­chi­tect of many a busi­ness re­struc­tur­ing, not to men­tion re­dun­dan­cies. There is an un­de­ni­able fas­ci­na­tion in watch­ing him suc­cess­fully use dem­a­goguery to dodge even the most com­plex al­le­ga­tions.

"MAY 1968 FROM THE OTHER SIDE"

His mas­ter­ful abil­ity to play the media al­lowed him to make the SPP the largest Swiss party, in 1999, be­fore en­ter­ing gov­ern­ment in 2003. He has de­voted him­self to a media cir­cus which, in his own words, con­sists of "being in­creas­ingly provoca­tive to get so­ci­ety talk­ing about some­thing". Start­ing with scape­goat­ing.

Xeno­pho­bic poster cam­paigns fol­lowed, even going as far as call­ing for­eign crim­i­nals the 'black sheep' of the coun­try. It's even more pop­ulist than it ap­pears at first glance, given that most im­mi­gra­tion in Switzer­land is Eu­ro­pean, from France and Ger­many. Blocher, who likes to de­scribe him­self as hav­ing "ex­pe­ri­enced May 1968 from the other side", stirred up such ten­sions in Swiss so­ci­ety that he was de­s­e­lected from the cab­i­net in 2007, in a his­toric re­ac­tion by the Fed­eral Coun­cil.

It turns out that the 2011 elec­tions were a new per­sonal fail­ure. But, as Jean-Stéphane Bron points out, it should not hide the fact that there was a more pro­found vic­tory in terms of cer­tain ideas be­com­ing more com­mon­place in Swiss so­ci­ety. The proof is in the suc­cess of Feb­ru­ary's pop­u­lar ini­tia­tive "against mass im­mi­gra­tion", which Blocher an­nounces at the end of the doc­u­men­tary. 

l'EX­PE­RI­ENCE BLOCHER IS IN CIN­E­MAS FROM 19 fEB­RU­ARY

Translated from Christoph Blocher, suissesse story