> The discourse on nuclear is still quite chaotic in politics in Switzerland
Does discourse from neighboring countries leak in as well? For example, German and Italian media's anti-nuclear sentiment versus French media's neutral to vaguely positive sentiment about nuclear.
French part of Switzerland is much more left leaning, so I can expect more anti-nuclear sentiment on this side. But the sentiment of nuclear depends purely on which party you vote for, I don't think the language itself has an impact.
But, Germany's decision after Fukushima to close down all nuclear reactors has had a strong impact on the 2017 votation that banned nuclear in Switzerland. So I guess the influence is there.
> But the sentiment of nuclear depends purely on which party you vote for, I don't think the language itself has an impact.
People aren't really partisan like that in Switzerland. They'll happily elect people from one party then vote against the party on specific issues in referendums or initiatives.
For something like nuclear, people who vote for green party might be mostly aligned with the party because it's a key issue for them while people who vote for center or right parties won't really care what the party recommends.
I'd see a lot more "nuclear no thanks" stickers in swiss German side than Romandie.
I'd expect the strong anti movement from Germany to have some impact.
> the sentiment of nuclear depends purely on which party you vote for
Unless you personally agree with whatever your preferred party's line is on everything and generalize that sentiment, I'm not sure how to get to that conclusion.
I am member of the SP in Switzerland and I am pro nuclear.
I don’t know why we put people in political buckets. It’s good to disagree. I am probably the weird guy but so be it.
So French Swiss or German Swiss aren't going to be consuming French or German news media? If so that's refreshing compared to Canadians and Brits who constantly try to butt into American media and culture wars (eg. Rebel News, UnHerd) and vice versa (eg. X)
Switzerland's multilingual situation might look primed for a balkanized culture war, especially if you are coming from a place where that is common. But 1) it's a country of 10m people and 2) the national identity is centered around being unified despite language differences.
Of course people make jokes and remarks about "those people" who speak a different language. But "those people" are probably 1h away by train, are probably coworkers, and their language was taught in your school (even if some didn't bother to learn).
We have national media (German: srf, French/Italian: rts, Romanche: rtr), people consume that, and a few medias that have multiple language versions like 20minutes.
We also have a few language specific medias (German: NZZ, Tagesanzeiger, Blick, ..., French: Le Temps, 24 heures, La Liberté, ...), but I think most people consume Swiss media, especially when Swiss politics and local afairs are absolutely not covered by French and German medias.
The funny thing is that people know more about what is happening in the neighbouring countries than in the other parts of Switzerland. The "national" media is very divided and only covers French-speaking regions in French, German-speaking in German, etc. as if they were local media.
Switzerland is like that. I remember asking (in my best German) the person manning a ticket counter at Zurich train station if they spoke French once, if a look could kill I'd be dead, lol.
It gives the strange feeling that although they decided to create a country together they don't want to interact with each others unless absolutely necessary.
That's not it. Everyone in Zurich studies French at school, if you speak slowly to them in French, it's pretty likely that they will understand a lot of what you say (if they are familiar with the context of course). Similarly, if you speak slowly in German to a French-speaking Swiss, it's pretty likely that they will understand a lot of what you say (again, if they are familiar with the context).
It's just harder to speak in another language than to understand it, so if you ask someone to speak...
Next time, ask them if they understand French :-).
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