SOS Pirates – Foes or Friends?

The boarding of the Berlin Parliament by no less than 15 Pirates, has put the Greens in an awkward position. They lost a considerable part of their electorate to newcomers who are shaking up the political landscape just like Die Grünen did in the eighties. Has the party lost touch – or found a new ally?

With their hoisted sails and inseparable laptops, the Pirates – who boarded the city Parliament with 8,9 percent of the votes, make an impression much like that of the long-haired, knitting world improvers who made their entrance in the Parliament of Bremen in 1979, as the TAZ of September 19  pointed out. Both talk of themes that are new to most representatives of the older parties: environment and feminism then, internet rights and civil liberties now. The Pirates claim to ‘do politics differently’, just like the Grünen once did. And the Pirates’ demands – absolute equality of homosexual partnership and marriage, a contemporary drugs policy, and an inclusion of citizens in all decision making, could easily be taken from a Green manifesto from the early days.

“Pirates are Post-feminists”

Only one difference stands out: the Greens emphasise a women’s’ presence of at least 50 percent on all levels, whereas the Pirates have clear surplus of male. But that might far better reflect reality: whereas the Greens’ surplus of women on elected positions contrasts with the men making up more than 60 percent of the membership, the male dominance in the Pirate group is no different from that within the internet community in which they were born. Or, as a TAZ-reader comments: the Pirates are post-feminists.

An analysis of Infratest dimap shows that the Pirates drew their votes either from people who previously voted for marginal parties (22.000) or didn’t vote at all (23.000), or from the left-wing parties, of which former Grünen voters (17.000) are represented best, and that they are most popular among the young and educated, just like the Greens.

Logo Facebook group of internet activists in Bündnis 90/Die Grünen

No wonder the party top feels a little nervous. According to Jürgen Trittin, co-chair of the Greens in the Bundestag, it “is structurally the most difficult of the problems of this election result”. According to IPS News, Renate Künast, the other co-chair and former top candidate in Berlin, had said during a breakfast event that she considered a possible coalition with the Pirates “to pull them a little closer to the bourgeoisie, so they will not run again and come through on the next Berlin elections. Also Pirates can be resocialised.”

“Pirates can be resocialised” Quite positive on the other hand responded the Internet specialists in the party. Spokesperson on the issue in the Bundestag Konstantin von Notz wrote in his blog Grün Digital that he has a “great respect’ for what they achieved with very little money, and “looks forward to future cooperation, not only in the European parliament, where Pirates and Greens already are fighting together” but also to joint initiatives in Berlin “on issues like civil rights, the promotion of free knowledge, and transparency”.

“Instrument of a badly understood security policy”  In Freitag he calls, together with member of the European parliament Jan-Philipp Albrecht, for a European movement for digital civil rights. “Net policy has too long been the instrument of a badly understood security policy: a policy of preventing and restricting that didn’t recognize the potential and opportunities of the Net, nor use and promote them.”

Although having been organized in mail lists, wikis, on Twitter and many other social media, they write, the internet communities still cannot compete with the powerful billion-euros lobby organizations in Brussels.’But that is changing. From 17-19 September, EU capital Brussels saw the reconstitution of the European movement for digital civil rights Freedom not Fear, determined to put its demands on the EU agenda.