This paper tackles the failure of two projects to establish a second national park in Switzerland, developing a discursive analysis of newspaper articles and letters from readers and a of series of interviews with the opposing groups’ leaders. Defining populism as a discursive frame rather than an ideology, this paper analyses the discursive violence that characterised the public debate before the vote on the two projects and puts forward hypotheses on the causes that might explain it. The paper concludes that where social reality is experienced in ways which are too disparate, this generates what can be defined as discursive asynchrony: a rupture of the discursive plane that prevents the possibility of constructive debate. It concludes that to avoid these situations, it is necessary for the governance system to be as plural and open as possible, recognising the various actors and providing them with adequate cultural and material conditions, so as to foster the emergence of a shared political common ground.