No to Bergier and his psychological stranglehold

A.B. Jean-François Bergier is a historian. But instead of presenting historical facts, he has forced a psychological stranglehold on Switzerland, which he is not authorized to do in his function as president of a state commission.

The ‘re-emergence of repressed guilt’ …

On Tuesday 9 April, Bergier was invited by the Institute for International Studies to speak in Zurich University’s main lecture hall on his ‘Final report: results and experiences’ con-cerning the role Switzerland played during the Second World War. Bergier said that with this ‘opus’ produced by his commission, what had been formerly suppressed will return to Swiss consciousness—their anti-Semitism during World War II. In a conspicuously adept and smugly condescending manner Bergier presented his theory, squashing in his ‘spin-doctor’s’ grip any objections made in the discussion that followed. For instance, a labourer who had served during the war and who wanted to know why today neither the Social Democratic Party nor the trade unions were prepared to see that justice was at least done to those who had supported them in that period was brushed aside in exactly the same manner as the fellow American historian, an expert on the economic interconnections between American companies and Hitler’s Germany, who wanted to know why Ber-gier was repressing the positive figures of all those refugees helped by Switzerland; objections which, in Bergier’s view, were only another proof of the ‘re-emergence of repressed guilt’. He also made it very clear that he was in no way willing to enter into honest debate.

… and the resistance against it

Anyone who studied history in the 60s knows that it was then that the Allies finished investi-gating all the World War II documents, having examined the role of every single country and government, and then locked away the documents in the United States. In the whole abysmal debate attacking Switzerland in the last few years, not one single new fact has come to light. On the contrary, only sham depictions, negative impressions and omis-sions have been added to produce a distorted image, which a cool-as-you-please Bergier is now selling to the country and the world. This is professional psychological warfare. It is the sequel to ‘Switzerland on bended knees’, her bowing before today’s economically and politically dominant powers. Anyone who protests against this distorted image, only shows, according to Bergier, that he is still repressing his anti-Semitism and is in need of further ‘treatment’.

This is the psychological stranglehold: either the Swiss people swallow Bergier’s warped theory, and admit to their ‘repressed sense of guilt’, or, they try to resist and dem-onstrate with their resistance that he is right. The smug bravura with which Bergier dug into the treasure chest of Freudian psychology served to reveal the face of a ‘spin-doctor’ that no longer has anything to do with sci-entific or historical research. If Bergier were a psychologist and used such a stranglehold to force bogus theories and conjectures upon his clients, he would be violating the ethical guidelines of every association of psycholo-gists and would be immediately expelled. Such methods are simply unethical.

It is common knowledge nowadays, and as any textbook on media studies will tell you, that the art of political manipulation has incorporated the findings of social sciences and psychology. The Stasi headquarters with its faculty of psychology (and whose teach-ing staff members have all received honour-able posts in the united Federal Republic) is only a small part of it. Since the seventies, media studies at American universities have been supplemented by all the research of the social sciences, and this has given rise to a new branch called ‘spin-doctoring’: the art of governing by manipulating the media. Reality is supplanted by the virtual world of the media. Bergier will probably never disclose who his mentor was in this whole affair. Like many others who have helped slander Switzerland’s reputation in the world, he will disappear again into the background with some sizeable sum of money. The former Federal Councillors Koller, Cotti and Ogi are possible models. The dirty work of slander, using the world media to spread his results, can be continued by the hundreds of journalists from the same ‘corporation’.

The application of such a stranglehold, which would be forbidden in psychological consultation, on Switzerland as a country is utter nonsense. And to surround it with the nimbus of a state commission, makes it even worse. It is the duty of the Federal Council and Parliament to put a stop to this nonsense.

Since the attacks on Switzerland and her attitude during World War II started, it has become crystal clear that common Swiss people and especially the generation that expe-rienced the war period, are far more knowl-edgeable about the historical context of this period than our country’s present bowed rep-resentatives. The limited historical knowledge among representatives of Swiss banks is far less disturbing since they stem from another faculty and pursue a different profession. But this is also precisely why negotiations in this matter should not have been left to them. It is quite pathetic that the Federal Council and Parliament do not assume responsibility in a more qualified way. This only proves that more mechanisms to influence and control direct democracy need to be developed via a petition for a referendum.

Perhaps all those upholders of moral stand-ards setting themselves up as the judges of wartime Switzerland should be urged to guar-antee first of all the maintenance of human rights. There is enough to do in our world today, especially in the Middle East, and in addition it would be a contribution towards bringing about peace in the world.