I just came back from the victory party in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany’s northernmost state. The German Piratenpartei has done it again, and entered its third state parliament.
With 8.2% of the votes, the pirates take six out of the 69 seats. This causes problems for the existing coalition in Schleswig-Holstein, as a new constellation is needed.
(Germany consists of 16 states, each roughly equivalent in size to a smaller country in Europe.)
But more interesting is the German Pirate Party’s now-demonstrated ability to deliver again and again and again. People are starting to expect that the pirate platform is a permanent part of policymaking in Germany. That is certainly a huge change from just six months ago, from before the entry into the Berlin state parliament.
It is only one week to go before elections in Germany’s largest state, Northrhine-Westphalia. A lot of media spotlights and politicial analysts are tuning their antennae to the outcome of that election, on May 13. Recent polls place the pirates at 8-10 percent there, well above the five-per-cent hurdle needed to enter that parliament too.
Next year, there are going to be elections to the Bundestag – Germany’s country-wide parliament. That’s when real change starts to happen.
In the meantime, the community of worldwide pirate parties (over 50 of them) learn from these successes and do what we do best: we observe, we copy, we remix, we reuse.
Congratulations, Piratenpartei. See you at the Düsseldorf victory party in a week.
UPDATE – here’s the magic moment on video, when the exit polls arrive:
[youtube w03EUjw59eE 621 376]
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The more I hear from the continent the more tempted I am to pull my wigwam up and pitch it in Germany. The pirate movement looks like a steam roller right now. 🙂
Now all we hope for is that Swedes start waking up also.
It IS tempting isn’t it? Alas, I’m now only moving from the land of one party to the land of two….
But go German Pirates! What an inspiration. The dominos had to start falling somewhere.
Yes. As many have mentioned there has been a very large buildup of pro-civil rights sympathies for some time now. And that dam has started cracking.
It’s not too surprising that this happens in Germany. I went to school there when I was 9 and I distinctly recall that even in that age, children were taught about the third reich and what happens when government overreaches.
That, and those selfsame children then lived next to the wall and saw closehand the effects of mass surveillance.
In germany my own generation full well knows the price of that. In most of the rest of the “free” west that selfsame generation has instead become spoiled rotten. I even heard a parliamentary representative here in Sweden declare that mass surveillance like that performed in China was OK as long as the “state was good”.
I have never heard of anything such as a “good” state so that statement by a high-ranking politician scared me a more than a thousand frothing terrorists throwing bombs in the streets ever could.
Not to forget the upcoming January 2013 elections in Lower Saxony, before Bundestag elections!
From station to station
back to Düsseldorf City
Meet Iggy Pop and David Bowie
That is most awesome! Now I’m holding my thumbs for Nordrhein-Westphalen next wochenende. 😉
As much as I hope for other Pirates around the globe to copy this success, one has to keep in mind that the German PirateParty somehow was the right idea at the right time. It might be hard to replicate this as easily as some may hope.
Firstly, Germany was missing a credible party that represents the interests of the younger generation. For decades now, Politicians of all couleur were addressing an ageing population with ever more pleasing what we called the “Generation 50+”. Young people (= everybody younger than 50) felt increasingly alienated.
Secondly, Germany was missing a protest movement. Let’s face it: most people don’t vote “for” us, they vote “against” the other parties. They did so in the past by either abstaining (most) or for one of the radical parties on the Left or Right. The latter often with a bad conscious, as the parties on the extremes have other issues. The PirateParty is now offering a democratic alternative for those who are discontent with the existing parties.
Let me add at this point that I am extremely proud of the German Pirate Party that they managed to draw people away from radicals and non-voting towards a strong democratic position. But I digress.
Finally, I must praise the excellent people we have managed to get. People you can send into the lion’s pit of a political talkshow with four or five experienced opponents all trying to patronize and/or attack them, and they still come out on top. As shown yesterday by Johannes Ponader or earlier by Martin Delius and others. I don’t know where they keep finding people like that, but they keep making other parties appear rather old…
But to turn this around: many countries already have some kind of established “protest” parties, many places have a political system that makes it very hard for smaller parties to be heard at all, or it is so easy that your voice drowns in the crows of micro-parties (see Greece).
But no obstacle can’t be overcome. See the UK, where the once-Duopol of two political powers is now broken. But it will be a lot of hard work.
Hard work, I said – let’s better get started!
/s.
Well.. all parties start out as “protest parties”. It was the same for the greens, the socialists and the liberals. Politics is about wanting to change things. If you have nothing to protest against, then you simply don’t become a politician – then you do something else, like start a beer brewery, invent a new sport or maybe a new iPhone app.
I agree that Germany is the perfect place for a pirate party. But I think it runs quite deep. Germany’s been having totalitarian surveillance regimes with DDR and Stasi. Not only the “young” internet generations, but also those 40+, who were old enough to live with a divided Germany and have friends and relatives who knew what could happen in a surveillance society like that of DDR.
This is great news. While some may continue to dismiss the Pirate Party as simply a political movement for those who like to download music, the reality is the Party stands for things such as transparency and openness in governments.
With the ACTA being shoved down everyone’s throat, or the various manifestions of SOPA coming out with different names, openness is being surrendered in the name of protection. To quote Jesse Ventura: “whenever governments say they’re going to protect you, watch out, because you’re going to lose your rights”. How true.
Continued success of the Piratenpartei, we in North America are watching and learning.
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