I posit that an analytical framework to better understand the current global backlash against internationalism, immigration, free trade and open societies – essentially, the entire post-WWII international order – is incomplete without understanding that it is also a backlash against cities as an organizational form of human existence, against the values that broadly characterize today’s great cities: openness, tolerance, the peaceful coexistence of every creed and color known to man.
It is no accident that Donald Trump didn’t carry most major U.S. metro areas – New York, Los Angeles and Chicago are all a deep solid blue, as are Houston, Dallas, Miami, the Twin Cities, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. and so on – as little as did the Brexit campaign, which in its turn lost decisively in London, the Home Counties (traditionally, the commuter belt of counties surrounding the British metropolis, Essex, Buckinghamshire, Kent and so on), Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester and Belfast. Conversely, Brexit won as soundly in middle and northern England as Donald Trump did in the Midwest and Great Prairies and with broadly comparable demographics.
Elsewhere, a similar pattern holds. The weakest region electorally for France’s Front National – the rightwing extremist party headed by Marine Le Pen – is the Île de France, roughly the greater Paris metropolitan area; its strongholds lie in rural and exurban areas in northern and eastern France straddling the Benelux and German borders, as well as in Le Midi, the South of France along the Mediterranean coast. The Front National does not govern even one of France’s major cities, not Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux, Marseille or Strasbourg.
Italy’s Lega Nord, the Euroskeptic regional party strongest in the northern parts of that country, follows a similar pattern; aside from Padova/Padua, the ancient university city, it does not govern a single major Italian city, not Rome, Milan, Torino, Florence, Naples or Genoa.
Something of an exception to this pattern is Vienna, the capital of Austria, where the hard right euroskeptic Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (Freedom Party Austria) took thirty percent of the vote in the last election, roughly double the vote share captured by Alternative für Deutschland – a similar party in Germany – in the most recent local elections in the German capital city of Berlin.
By contrast, that country’s poorest, least urbanized state, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern – the northernmost slice of the former East Germany roughly along the Baltic coast from the outskirts of Hamburg to the Polish border – gave that party over twenty percent of all votes, more than the party of chancellor Angela Merkel received.
Both results, in Berlin as well as in the provinces, have cast a pall of dread over the coming elections in Europe’s leading economy, in a country that has not seen this level of open right extremist support since the defeat of the genocidal Hitler regime in 1945. But it is again in the cities, in Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt and Düsseldorf where the tide is being stemmed.
I believe there are lessons and opportunities here, certainly if you believe that the post-WWII era of democratic governance, collective security and international cooperation are worth fighting for.
As an aside, I don’t mean to infer that dwelling in a large city automatically confers the virtues of tolerance and empathy or guarantees a liberal viewpoint, nor conversely that living in the broad expanse of what is – unkindly – known to some as flyover country predicts the inverse. Manhattanites like Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly or – vomit – Donald Trump should suffice to make that point, or conversely the many Kossacks fighting the good fight in places as variegated as Kansas, North Carolina or Montana.
But the fact remains that even in the current electoral map, disquieting as it is, the nation’s metropolitan areas are and must be the redoubts of progressive governance. They are already leading the opposition to the incoming Trump administration; just as one example, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco and more have stated that they will not aid or abet Donald Trump’s squalid “deportation force”, whatever horror that may turn out to be.
Cities and progressive states are raising the minimum wage; $15 an hour in New York by the end of 2018, in California, by 2022.
There are more measures that could at least somewhat mitigate what promises to be an unqualified disaster for the country, even the planet. On climate, cities and regions worldwide can continue to drive progress; in fact, they are doing precisely that. I’d also see great potential value in cross-border and international city partnerships on cultural and economic issues, such as exist between New York City and London or Los Angeles and Berlin.
And there are some delicious ironies there; I mean, if you can think of a bigger Fuck You to Trump than the fact that the newly elected progressive mayor of London is a Muslim with immigrant roots, I’d love to hear it.
Certainly as individuals, we can and must continue to fight for and live the values that make us who we are; tolerance, curiosity, empathy, kindness.
Ted Cruz – yeah, that asshole – whinged something during the primary about Trump New York values blah blah blabbity blah, not that anyone cared. Thing is, the prince of toads got it wrong; our values aren’t Trump’s. Just for starters, most of us aren’t racist neanderthals.
In fact, my guess would be that most Americans aren’t. Let’s show Tiny Hands what this country is really about, and make America great again.