Photo: dpa/Xinhua/Guang Yu
New York CityThere really is everything in New York City. Even a district called Corona. Since the Second World War, this wonderful city has been the symbol of economic, social, cultural, religious and scientific opportunities, opportunities and challenges that only metropolises with their immense population density offer.
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New York City is today what Alexandria, Rome or Constantinople once were, later London, Paris and Berlin, what Shanghai and Mumbai would like to be in the future. But the danger is also part of the metropolis: In New York, around 40,000 people tested positive for the corona virus on Tuesday afternoon, and almost 1,000 people have died there from the consequences of Covid-19.
Metropolises as enemies
The failure of the federal government, which literally ignored the foreseeable catastrophe in New York until four days ago, is catastrophic. In a press conference, Governor Andrew Cuomo desperately asked the Americans for assistance – because this is not just about New York, but the United States as a whole, because otherwise the disease would spread across the country. Trump, however, sent some ventilators and now, with military pathos, a naval hospital ship that is much too small. Nevertheless, the approval rates for his rolling course are increasing in the USA.
His ignorance is not just, as is currently being psychologized, a narcissistic reaction to a New York that never really accepted the nouveau riche bankrupt and braggart, but now needs help. It is part of a political program: cosmopolitan metropolises like New York are systematically marked as enemies of the “real” nation and society by politicians like Trump or the Brazilian Bolsonaro, the Hungarian Orban, the Russian Putin or the Turkish Erdogan for tactical reasons.
Read here: Few tests, too much bureaucracy: Corona cases in the USA are increasing rapidly
Berlin as the “city where the crazy are”
Many of these politicians began their careers in the big cities and they often despise the flat country as an uneducated province. But in order to gain and retain their power – and with it access to the immense economic resources of the state – they rely largely on hostility to big cities.
This has a long tradition, at least in the western world: In ancient times, Christian preachers warned of immorality in Alexandria, in the Middle Ages the plague was seen as a disease of the cities. The great Thomas Jefferson imagined the USA as an anti-urban nation of yeomaners; in the 1920s, Berlin was the “city where the crazy are” for the rest of Germany.
Nazis and Stalinists jointly agitated against metropolitan “cosmopolitans”. Even in the 1980s, HIV and AIDS were characterized as urban epidemics of sexual minorities and drug addicts.
Sober calculation
Trump and co, on the other hand, present themselves as the representatives of the “clean”, religious, morally upright and primarily white society. This is rational in terms of election tactics: around 90 million Americans live in large metropolitan regions such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and New Orleans. But 140 million live in small and medium-sized towns, which actually include the suburbs of the metropolises. They are next to the rural communities of Trump’s electorate.
Read here: US Air Force withdraws into small underground town
So the sober calculation of the populists is: charitable aid is clear if it can be staged in a great way. But the catastrophe is only noticed when there is a threat to its own clientele, when the small towns also have to call for help. And then the unity of the whole people behind their government is demanded.
The populists know one thing: the metropolises are usually not the triggers, but they are certainly the stokers of the epidemics. And its residents will ultimately have to rebuild society. This is where the researchers, the entrepreneurs, the administrations and the many talents who rely on communication and the exchange of cultures sit. And there is the greatest experience in dealing with disasters collectively.
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