Franca Schaad is a PhD candidate in the SNF project «Counter Media: Periodicals of the New Left and New Right» co-conducted by the University of Fribourg and Bern Academy of the Arts HKB. Her dissertation focuses on masculinities in the periodicals of the New Right in the Federal Republic of Germany and German speaking Switzerland (1960–1980).
Swiss Far-Right Entrepreneur Emil Rahm and His Political PR Network
Emil Rahm (1930–2015) was a Swiss entrepreneur and publisher, best known for his family business’ patented alcohol-free sparkling wine. As head of marketing and communication, Rahm played an important role in the winery’s commercial success. His ambitions in PR, however, were not limited to the company’s products. He also self-published the Bulletin Memopress, distributing conservative, evangelical, conspiratorial, and antisemitic ideology to a few thousand – at times up to 40,000 – Swiss households from the 1960s to the 1990s. Later, he went digital with the website of the follow-up publication Prüfen und Handeln.
Rahm was active in the national campaign against the introduction of women’s suffrage in 1971, as well as in many other political debates on both local and national levels. In 1994, he became a prominent figure in the referendum on the anti-racism penal norm, reframing the campaign as a battle over free speech rather than a measure against hate propaganda.
Examining his PR strategy and his embeddedness in local communities, national politics, and cross-border publishing networks highlights, first, the specificities of the Swiss political system, where strategic use of referendums on issues of racism and migration served attempts to normalize far-right positions. Second, it shows how Rahm, with his Memopress, acted as a forerunner: using moderate economic power, bypassing mainstream media in the role of an obscure ‘lone wolf’ publicist, while at the same time influencing public discourse through political campaigns and frequent letters to the editor in larger conservative publications. His career exemplifies how the connections between local conservatism and far-right activism, combined with the structures of Swiss direct democracy and the tactical use of populist free-speech frames, facilitated the integration of radical actors and the normalization of exclusionary ideology – developments that have since inspired right-wing movements and parties across Europe.