The 'National Conservatives': An Urbane Publisher Becomes the Populist Voice of Switzerland

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Köppel's subsequent career is closely aligned with Blocher's. Before the 2003 Swiss National Council election, Köppel, by then the editor-in-chief of Weltwoche, endorsed Blocher, who went on to win. Blocher, Köppel once wrote, is a "nuclear fusion of (former British Prime Minister) Margaret Thatcher, (former US President) Ronald Reagan and (former conservative German politician) Franz Josef Strauss." When he is accused of writing only what Blocher wants to read, he compares the politician to Diego Maradona. "There's no point in writing anything bad about Maradona," he says. "He still remains the outstanding football player of our generation."

Köppel spent two years as editor-in-chief of the German newspaper Die Welt in Berlin, until Swiss financier Tito Tettamanti offered to help him acquire Weltwoche, where he would serve as editor-in-chief and publisher. Köppel put his entire savings into the purchase and took out loans, offering Weltwoche shares as collateral. He says Blocher was not an investor, as critics often claim. Tettamanti expected Köppel to keep the publication staunchly to the right of center.

Since his return to Switzerland, Köppel has been more politically unforgiving than ever before, and although Weltwoche's circulation of 81,000 is significantly lower than that of the leading daily newspaper, Köppel is better known than any other Swiss editor-in-chief.

He is now 44 and feels he can do as he pleases. He has fired employees at Weltwoche who refused to toe his conservative, right-wing line. The publishing company is his laboratory, and the employees still working there serve as trusted companions, whose job is to sharpen his theories. "I need qualified contradiction," he tells them when no one says anything. As a boss he answers to no one except his own economic success -- a situation he loves.

The Swiss Love of Freedom

As a child, Köppel had to fend for himself at an early age. Both his parents worked. His father owned a building company; his mother managed the books. When his parents were divorced, his mother was given custody. She died when he was 13, and he moved in with his older brother. It was not an easy life, he says, but it never threw him off course.

His editorial offices occupy the 5th floor of an office building in the somewhat drab northwestern section of Zürich. The Springer Group leases the rest of the building. Köppel sits at a long oak table in the conference room, meeting with department heads. It is Wednesday, the first day of planning for the next issue. "Who was that famous German banker under Bismarck?" Köppel asks. He wants to relate an anecdote, but he needs the name first. What was his name again? The question is also a test. He wants to see if anyone knows something he doesn't know. No one in the group can think of the name, but, as it turns out, he knew it all along. "It's the man Fritz Stern wrote about," says Köppel. "Gerson von Bleichröder," he says, and everyone nods, impressed by how well-read he is.

It is the way he prefers to see the world -- as a place where everyone else has to discover the things he already knows, and where he is always at least one thought ahead of the rest.

The same attitude is apparent when he brings up the next item on the agenda. A company that makes Basler Leckerli, a type of gingerbread, wants to run an ad campaign in Weltwoche that would feature the names of the editors. For instance, an ad might read: "Roger Köppel, stop bragging." He asks the editors whether they agree with the format. "Does anyone categorically object to his or her name being used?" No one says a word. "Okay, well I don't have a problem with it," he says.

For Köppel, everything is ultimately a question of how things are defined, and of developing the right argument. If the Swiss are opposed to minarets, it isn't xenophobia but love of freedom, and if they favor keeping the country's banking secrecy laws, it isn't an endorsement of tax evasion but, again, love of freedom.

In his weekly editorial on the third page of Weltwoche, he puts his thoughts, cursory fragments of his worldview, to paper. "Why are women so left-wing?" he asks in November 2007. Then he concludes that it must be because "women don't have to worry about making a living in a market economy as much as men do. Like the left in general, women are adept at spending money others have earned first." He describes feminism as the "revenge of the not-so-attractive women against men with attractive wives."

A 'Consistent Attitude'

When he was in school, says Köppel, he suffered because others were able to speak more eloquently. Children who said clever things intimidated him, and he hated the self-important secretiveness of people who felt that they were better than everyone else. Today he is a wunderkind, not exactly known for his modesty. When he describes the arc of his career, he likes to quote Hegel: "The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk."

Köppel has also been known to flip-flop, as he did a year ago, when he initially wrote that banking secrecy should be abolished for foreign tax evaders. A week later, he wrote the opposite, and since then he has defended banking secrecy at every turn. "I was simply wrong," he says today. "I misjudged things at first."

It wasn't the first time. During the financial crisis, he described the Swiss bank UBS as being fit for the future. A week later, UBS announced that it needed a government bailout.

Köppel wants to enlighten people in the name of the country's right-wingers, who, as he says, are not taken seriously by other media outlets. He says that a "consistent attitude" is important to him. One could call it conservative or "national conservative," he says, even though he knows that the term is meant to be derogatory.

He wants to offer ideological orientation and arguments to those who have not dared to speak their minds until now -- the middle class, threatened by decline. He wants to show people that it's possible to be an enlightened Swiss citizen and support conservative, right-wing ideas at the same time. He sees himself as the conqueror of an intellectual no-man's land.

Jokerman

After leaving his office, Köppel drives to a cinema in downtown Zürich, where he and his wife are meeting another couple to watch the film "Avatar." The two women are already waiting at the theater. Köppel, in high spirits, orders 3-D glasses for the group, and then he mentions his taxi ride, which he believes is worth mentioning because the taxi was a Toyota -- in other words, one of the cars that was recalled because of problems with the gas pedal. "I'm early today," he calls out to his friend as he walked into the theater. "I was faster. I came in a Toyota."

His friend laughs loudly. He works in the car industry, where Köppel's joke is naturally amusing. Nevertheless, being so loud about it may not be kosher, so he quickly lowers his voice. The friend reminds Köppel that problems with Toyotas have led to deaths in the United States. "We shouldn't joke about that," the friend says.

And Köppel just stares. That, he seems to think, was rather the point.

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• Part 1: An Urbane Publisher Becomes the Populist Voice of Switzerland
• Part 2: 'Why Are Women So Left-Wing?'