Back in the 1960s and 1970s young progressive Germans gravitated towards the Social Democrats; in the 1980s and 1990s it was the Green Party. But today the SPD wants to imitate the CDU, and the Greens are the party of affluent, aging baby boomers. Now young people are flocking to the Pirate Party. Coming off impressive showings in state elections in Berlin and Saarland, the Pirates are surging in popularity: recent polls put them at 12% – ahead of the Left Party, and far ahead of the hapless Liberals. There is a good chance they could achieve representation in the Bundestag. What does it mean? Are the Pirates just a "protest party" – a flash in the pan that will quickly fade? Or is this Green Party 2.0 – a Tea Party-like movement that changes the German political landscape?
Understanding the Pirate Party's policies and platform is a challenge. The party eschews hierarchy so "official pronouncements" are sometime contradictory. The Pirate Party Web site offers some clues, and here is a quick summary:
- The Pirates are the first Internet party. They promote access to the "digital economy" and free open-source software. They aggressively oppose any attempt to regulate or censor the Web.
- The Pirates view patents and Intellectual Property law as a barrier to economic develop. Especially software patents are seen as "unnecessary".
- The Pirates insist on "transparency", and oppose backroom secretive political dealing. How this will function once they are in the government remains to be seen.
- On social issues, the Pirates are generally left-liberal: they are pro-immigration, they support a minimum wage and some sort of minimum guaranteed income.
Is a focus on an open Web policy enough to build a self-sustaining political movement? Probably not. The younger members of the SPD and especially the Greens are working like mad to make these technology issues their own. But the established parties have much to learn when it comes to using the latest technologies, crowd sourcing and social media to attract and organize voters:
"No other movement has applied the technical possibilities of the Internet to politics as quickly and thoroughly. The decision to hold new elections in North Rhine-Westphalia had hardly been reached before the Pirates, using Twitter and Mumble (a platform for voice conferences), began preparing for the next campaign.
Other parties would hire an advertising agency, set up a campaign headquarters and give their general secretary the final say on logos. The Pirates, on the other hand, develop their campaigns on the Internet in a collaborative way, as if they were jointly writing an article on Wikipedia."
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The whole is more than the sum of its parts, I think. In general, the motto of the Pirate Party is “Yes we can”, while the bigger people’s parties like CDU, SPD and, in East Germany, the Left Party, just would say “Interesting point, but no majority issue. No, we can’t (risk a debate).” Examples: Prohibition of drugs and online gambling. Though it doesn’t work and never has, billions are wasted instead of implementing legalization and taxation. We have some 5 million criminalized pott smokers and also as much online poker players in Germany. That could be 10 millions votes for any party, theoretically. Plus, we have 35% of the population that are non-voters, because they have lost any faith in the political establishment.
Now, we have a non-extremist alternative to vote for. The big parties can’t do nothing more than to mock them as a fun-party that can’t be taken serious, themselves also running “a homepage” with “bits and bites and click and clack” (Seehofer/CSU).
The Pirates stand for change. Yes, Germany can!
I personally hate all European politics. Politics are governed by generations, just as mentioned in this article: babyboomers are said to vote for the Green Party, and each party is sectioned off to growing pains within various generations.
I find this repulsive, especially when Europeans try to apply the same thing to American politics. For instance, I heard that in the USA the green party was NOT supported by the baby-boomers. But to the retarded European view, all individual choice has to be removed.
Europeans dislike free choice, preferring movements of masses and groups to explain any single person’s preferences.