Jean Ziegler 1934-2026
Keystone / Salvatore Di Nolfi
Sociologist and former Swiss politician Jean Ziegler died on Wednesday in Geneva at the age of 92 from complications related to Parkinson’s disease, his family told Swiss public broadcaster RTS.
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A leading intellectual figure of the Swiss left and a tireless critic of neoliberal globalisation, Ziegler left his mark on political and academic life for more than half a century.
At 90 years old, Ziegler published yet another book. Its title, “Where is hope?” was a plea for resistance in the face of global crises and contemporary disasters such as wars, famines, and inequalities.
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The avowed Marxist and opponent of the neoliberal capitalism of our democracies – which he always considered to be “the source of all the world’s misfortunes” – called for the awakening of consciences for a better future.
He saw moving beyond a “system based solely on the principle of profit” as a necessity, because it operates in “the total absence of public, parliamentary or state control”.
Ironically, for this man of the left, his peasant grandfather founded the UDC at the beginning of the 20th century.
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In 1964, at the age of 30, an encounter would change his life. A communist activist, he was tasked with accompanying Che Guevara, who had come to Geneva to represent Cuba at the first Sugar Conference. When the Cuban leader had to leave, Jean Ziegler decided he had to follow him to South America.
Inside the system
But the revolutionary advised against it. “While in Geneva, we saw all sorts of advertisements for the big banks, insurance companies, and jewelers,” Ziegler recalled on the program #Helvetica. “He told me, ‘It’s here, at the heart of the system, that you must fight, because that’s where the monster’s brain is.’” He became convinced that everyone must fight where they were born.
“He saved my life. Without military training, I would probably have ended up buried in a mass grave in Guatemala or Venezuela,” added Ziegler, who believes that Che primarily gave him a strategy for his struggle: subversive integration. In other words, “using one’s position within the system to change it. That’s what I’ve tried to do all my life.”
In 1997, he published “Switzerland, Gold and the Dead”. In interviews about his book, he did not hesitate to say that Swiss bankers played the role of “Hitler’s receivers” throughout the Second World War.
His vehement stances – on this subject, but also on so many others – earned him as much admiration as opposition.
In 2016, Geneva filmmaker Nicolas Wadimoff directed a documentary about the renowned sociologist – a figure who evokes strong reactions in Switzerland – whose political commitment has remained unwavering for decades. “Jean Ziegler, l’optimisme de la volonté” (Jean Ziegler, the Optimism of the Will) successfully avoids being a damning portrait or a hagiography.
Unmasking the man
He appears sincere, endearing, very consistent, but blind and sometimes self-absorbed: “He annoys me sometimes, but I respect him a lot,” explains the director, who was his student for a few months at the University of Geneva. “I wanted to unmask this man who is constantly performing.”
Wadimoff followed the 82-year-old with his camera in his Geneva home in Russin, at the United Nations, in Munich, and especially in Cuba, the revolutionary island he is particularly fond of. There, Jean Ziegler sometimes makes very funny and quite questionable remarks, such as when he says he approves of propaganda or that he doesn’t give a damn about freedom of the press.
“The public needed to question his remarks, his blindness, but the rest of his thought had to remain audible,” notes the documentary filmmaker. “I don’t believe that Jean Ziegler is completely fooled by the Cuban revolution. He has this romantic vision. He wants to believe in it, and he believes in it because it is beautiful,” he said at the time of the film’s release.
Ziegler was born in Thun on April 14, 1934.
At the age of 18, he moved to Paris and taught at the Sorbonne.
From 1967 to 1983 and from 1987 to 1999, he was a member of the National Council for the Social Democratic Party.
Between 2000 and 2008, Ziegler worked for the UN as Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food and was a member of the UN Task Force for Humanitarian Aid in Iraq.
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Adapted from French by AI/mga
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