

Pirate Party falling out of favor across Germany - Smith_Frank
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/pirate-party-falling-out-of-favor-across-germany/

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ari_elle
They brought this upon themselves, so no empathy from me.

They are a disorganized bunch of immature young activists, who in a streak of
megalomania abandoned their strict focus on IT related topics and it just fell
apart.

Sympathetic face of Pirate Party stepped down due to stress, Party was too
slow to react to anything going on, Major Pirate Party Member faces drug
allegations, at the same time they try to create some sort of grand program
what they seem to not be able to achieve, and their views on political
subjects other than the Internet are unrealistic, to say the least (some smart
children wouldn't write such drivel).

So as somebody who has passively witnessed their decline:

Their fault! You could call their decline natural political selection :D

~~~
lumberjack
>They are a disorganized bunch of immature young activists, who in a streak of
megalomania abandoned their strict focus on IT related topics and it just fell
apart.

But isn't that the nature of the culture that they arose from?

I think it's more that conventional politics are incompatible with the culture
of the Internet where there are no well defined parties, everybody can think
for themselves and everything is disorganized and that's not a bad thing.

~~~
mhd
"Culture of the internet"? Theirs is actually a problem old as dirt. We're
talking about a broad, participatory democracy vs. elected officials and
representatives. Look at Switzerland, who are one of the few countries
actually getting by with a semblance of the latter. But mostly it's not
exactly considered an efficient alternative to current systems, something that
proponents would have to work on hard to disprove it. And Occupy hand signals
don't really help here. The Pirate Party needed to prove that their approach
is working internally before they make it a general policy, and it seems they
have failed.

And apart from the organizational chaos, it also seems to be a lack of
passion. There's no really grand unifying consensus for the party, beyond
"copyright is bad", which ain't something that really gets your blood boiling
(like basic human rights, saving the environment or making sure that God has
his rightful place etc.). A lot of the so-called "scandals" about party
members was mostly them showing that they're not willing to sacrifice too much
for the sake of the party, if I remember correctly.

If they want to emulate some internet access, they probably need a Linus
Torvalds. Right now, they appear closer to 4chan. Having a dedicated Brony
time doesn't really help that picture.

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mtgx
Just before the national election. Shame. They had a lot of potential with
things getting worse and worse in terms of copyright, patents and privacy
breaches by authorities in Germany.

