Thursday, September 02, 2004

Political symbolism

One of the fascinating things about living in a place where I don't speak the language is trying to understand political posters. Near as I can tell, the Swiss vote on just about everything under the sun, because a few times a year political posters pop up all over town and we try to figure out what they're about. Usually they're pretty subtle, but there wasn't much subtle about the poster I passed on my walk to work this morning. It was sponsored by the SVP, which I think is the far-right party here and which evidently makes immigration a big issue. I'm not sure what exact issue is being voted on, and I'm sure it's more complicated than I (or the poster) are presenting it, but the implication seems pretty clear---if they're not careful, Swiss passports will be handed out like candy (especially to dark-complected people--near as I can tell, the text means "mass naturalisation?"):



There's another poster at the end of our block (interestingly enough, also from the SVP) that probably has to do with some sort of welfare program--Gretchen's former line of work--because I think Staatskinder basically means "children of the state" and Mutterschaftsversicherung (gotta love those short German words!) means "motherhood insurance" (although since Ich spreche kein Deutsche, I could be wrong).