Frank A. Meyer – column: class struggle

class=”sc-cffd1e67-0 fmXrkB”>

The future of Zurich is being developed with academic meticulousness by nine ETH faculty members, also known as Gender Equality Professors. They plan to transform Zurich, which is already left-green, into a truly left-green, car-free city: “First of all, we want to create an image in people’s minds of a cycling city.”

In the tone of the Politburo they dictate what the citizens of Zurich should think about in the future. Riding a bicycle is good, driving a car is bad, although this need not be emphasized since the professors’ plans speak for themselves: bicycle streets, tree-lined avenues, pedestrian paths with one-way streets between them, one-way traffic. One way streets, one way streets…

Where do all these one-way streets lead? Through the park into the park that is still called the city – the car-spoiled Zurich as we know and love it. Can the planned structure also be called a left-green vegetable garden?

The head of research for the E-Bike City project cheerfully explains in advance how he feels about criticism of his anti-car campaign: “We’re ready to be offended now.” It’s very simple: when citizens rebel against professorial plans, it is nothing more than insults.

In Basel-Stadt, voters just rejected the “good air initiative,” which would have turned 240,000 square meters of street space into green space. Ranting citizens in a bad mood defend themselves in favor of the car.

Where environmental religion has entered politics, a devil is needed: the car. Once the annoyingly loud and smelly car is gone, humanity will start walking and biking on heavenly eco trails.

These days, the weather is just right for such messages of faith from the hallowed halls of ETH: it’s drizzling or snowing, the street is wet, even frozen, icy gusts of wind are whistling around the corners of houses – who wouldn’t want to feel inspired to get on a two-wheeler, go to school with children in front of a truck?

What a happy team – and what a vacation for the professorial creators of a brave new urban world!

What is it about a car that ordinary people just can’t resist? Is this an expression of aberration in the sad and destructive phase of human history, also called capitalism and, since the time of Marx, which has had a reputation for being evil in itself? Or a freaking four-wheeled Fossil race car that races or sits everywhere, perhaps something more?

What’s more than a car?

A car is more than a car!

This is freedom! Because means of transportation when I want and where I want. Yes, the car lives up to its name: it is itself.

What am I.

Thus, it advocates a free society, a world in which not only are the mind allowed to roam as it pleases, but people are also allowed to travel quickly and safely across the city, the country and the world in their cars – whether just for fun or to carry out everyday responsibilities.

Who exactly abuses a car that the professors don’t approve of? For example, a working person for whom public transport is too inconvenient, who may not have a tram, bus or S-Bahn nearby, but who has to quickly get to work and then go shopping after work or spend the evening with his wife to a concert or I want to have a movie – and from an inexpensive three-room apartment away from the city.

Of course, the green city that is hostile to cars is not for ordinary people either. This should be a gazebo for greenies and their comrades. You live in the center because you are well off, whether as a professor, a priest, a civil servant or a recipient of public goods, from culture and politics to NGOs and the media.

A new aristocracy arises, which begins to shape society in its own way, based on an elitist approach to knowing what is good for the citizen, and, above all, what is not. Battle for the car:

Class struggle.

Source: Blick