The historian and political activist Howard Zinn wrote a book about his life experiences called “You Can’t Be Neutral On A Moving Train.”
Switzerland is famous for a few things: chocolate, clocks, and neutrality—neutrality being the most impactful historically. But having caught the transcontinental hot potato that is Roman Polanski, Switzerland recently found itself on a moving train.
The Swiss government will not turn Polanski over to the United States to face the music on a decades-old rape charge. And their reason for deciding so seems to be a “fault in the American application for his extradition,” according to the New York Times. “He’s a free man,” Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf proclaimed earlier today.
If “fault in the American application for his extradition” sounds like a technicality, you’re not alone. The main reason the Swiss offer for their decision is that “American authorities declined to provide confidential testimony from a January 2010 hearing on Mr. Polanski’s original sentencing agreement.”
That is, Polanski’s was freed not based on the alleged crime itself, but on some legal proceedings from last year. Which is a thinly veiled way of saying that the Swiss took a side—Polanski’s side.
Avoiding conflict is a natural enough human intuition. The “can’t we all just get along” instinct is a powerful one. Sometimes, however, we can’t. Take sex crimes, or, say, World Wars, for example. There’s precious little gray area in these instances and and even less room for neutrality. You’re either going to harbor an alleged sex offender or you’re not. Switzerland’s World War II stance of “armed neutrality” was basically consent to be ruled by the terms of whoever ended up winning the continent—which is a tacit acceptance of Nazi world order.
And don’t get me wrong, I love Polanski’s films The Pianist (which took place in Polanski’s native Poland, where his newly-adopted Swiss countrymen were not fighting in World War II) was one of the finest films of the last decade. I’ll keep watching the movies, eating Swiss chocolate and buying Swiss Army knives. But from today on, I’m counting the Swiss on the same moving train as the rest of us. The Swiss should take a cue from the French, who clearly have no problem taking sides. “The French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner,” reports the Times, “said he was ‘delighted’ and deeply relieved by the Swiss ruling.” Point Polanski. Now that’s choosing sides!
