Pirate Residuum

Hard to believe that only four or five years ago the Pirate Party (PP) were enjoying a German honeymoon, winning large numbers of votes and entering four regional parliaments. In the Berlin election in 2011 their results were so strong that they did not have enough candidates to fill all the seats won; candidates who ran with with little hope of getting into district assemblies were instead elected to the major-league Senate – the citywide parliament. But this unexpected triumph was to be their zenith, thereafter the party formed a circular firing squad.

During the five years of the Berlin Senate the PP parliamentary group had five chairs and co-chairs, of these four are no longer members of the party (although all continue to sit as part of the Pirate group) – Alexander Spies is the last of this band carrying a party card. Two of these former chairs were among  35 former Berlin Pirates who published an open  letter in January announcing their defection to Die Linke (the Left party) while another flirts with joining the SPD. Three other PP members elected to the Senate have also departed. This means that having started the Parliamentary session with 15 representatives, they now have 8.

A further twist to the current Berlin election is that former national chairperson of the Pirates, Bernd Schlömer, is running as a  leading candidate for the FDP (Liberals) having joined them last October. This is less surprising that it may seem as both FDP and Die Linke (as well as the Greens and the Pirates) once participated in the Freiheit Statt Angst! (Freedom Not Fear!) demonstrations, an annual field day of the forces opposed to mass surveillance/social control which used to take place in Berlin each September.

Pirate Party poster campaign against CDU law and order minister Frank Henkel

Berlin Election 2016

Polling currently puts the PP on 3%, well below the 5% threshold required to be allocated any seats in the Parliament. As in 2011 they are running an eye-catching campaign focused on issues where they have campaigned effectively: housing, the investigation into the billion euro airport scandal, against racism. But the nature of their public meltdown both at national and local level after 2012 has wrecked their credibility.  (If one wants to vote for a neo-Dadaist anti-party Berlin already has one, die Partei, who also have a European MEP!)

The departure of former members for other parties also undermines their position as  self-appointed interpreters of the magic powers of technology. This should not be underestimated: until 2012 they were effectively identified as the ‘party of the internet’, the people who wanted to usher in a streamlined tomorrow, the epitome of progress and forward thinking. But this stranglehold on the tech-dream is over.

Posters satirising the language of  danger zones ‘gefahrengebiet’ and highlighting local scandals around rising rents, the endless saga of the new Berlin airport etc…

The Berlin PP was regarded as representing the party’s left-wing and some of its votes will now return to Die Linke or move to the Greens. Meanwhile, populist discontent has shifted decisively right after the controversy over refugee policy met the gunpowder of the sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year’s Eve. electorally this means pay dirt for the Alternative fur Deutschland (AFD), a toxic brew of xenophobes, alienated conservatives, economic liberals and populists, who will almost certainly enter the city Parliament this month.