Henryk Broder Celebrates The Swiss Minaret Ban

The success of the Swiss popular initiative to ban the construction of minarets has energized the Islamophobes in Germany.  Henryk Broder, writing in the conservative daily Die Welt, is ecstatic at this victory of direct democracy,  Even more, Broder sees the Swiss vote as slap in the face of the liberal press he so despises:

Unabhängig davon, wie man das Ergebnis bewertet – nicht die Moslems
sind die Verlierer, die niemand in der Schweiz daran hindert, ihre
Religion zu praktizieren, es sind die Gutmenschen, die eine andere
Kultur immer verteidigenswerter finden als die eigene, die
Trittbrettfahrer, die schon immer für totalitäre Versuchungen anfällig
waren,(Regardless of how one interprets the results, it is not the Muslims who lost, since no one in Switzerland is preventing them from practicing their religion.  Rather it is the "do-gooders" who lost – those who would rather come to the defense of cultures other than their own, the freeloaders who are always tempted by totalitarian ideals.)

The winners in the plebiscite were the forces of fear and intolerance, the same forces that Henryk Broder always supports in everything he writes.  The right-wing populism that Broder nurtures is gathering steam in Europe and in the US.  If left unchecked, it will surely devour its champion, Henryk Broder

The New York Times outlines what is at stake here: 

First, xenophobic and, specifically, Islamophobic sentiment is much
more widespread than even the most pessimistic observers had thought.
Opinion polls in the run-up to the referendum consistently showed a
majority of voters to be opposed to the ban.

How wrong they
were. In the privacy of the voting booth, silent prejudices found their
voice. The situation is probably similar across Europe; the success of
far-right parties in the recent European Parliament elections certainly
suggests so. Indeed, the only surprise in Switzerland was how surprised
we were.

Second, the failure of civil society and the leading
mainstream political parties to campaign aggressively against the
referendum was clearly a big mistake.

The Times forgot to mention another failure, namely, the journalist Trittbrettfaher like Broder who misuse their pulbic platform to nourish the silent prejudices.