German Pirate Party enters its 4th and largest state
wahlarchiv.tagesschau.de
wahlarchiv.tagesschau.de
Also Angela Merkel's CDU suffered a crushing defeat at only 26%, despite her "heir apparent" Norbert Röttgen running in the state. The state will now be governed by a leftwing coalition of SPD and greens. In all, this is a good day for the national opposition in germany. Germany is shifting to the left, along with the rest of europe.
When compared to american politics... pretty much every german party except maybe the FDP can be considered "leftwing" or even "socialist".
In the NRW elections, between the Linke (which are a lot more popular in the eastern part of Germany), the Pirates and the Greens there's 21.6% that's arguably further left than the SPD which, given that and the fact that it's got about 39% of the vote here, might well be considered centre-left these days when looking at the relative spectrum.
I mean... in a normal situation I'd consider these results very good progress, but given the absolute havoc the EU is in, I'd expect a stronger reaction to the status quo. But nope, the bipartisanship is rather solid still in Germany.
It takes Greece-style catastrophe to really shake things up, it seems.
Or more time. The pirates are growing, give them a few cycles. Considering that they never were in a parliament in the first place, 8% is impressive. The FDP, who have been existing for 60 years and have been parts of the goverment countless times, also didnt manage to get more than 8%, so 8% is perfectly fine. The greens are oscillating around 5% for 30 years now.
The Pirates once again get the chance to work on their profile from the opposition. This is a very good constellation for the Pirate Party.
The word "liberal" over the past century has experienced so much meaning drift in the US that it is basically antithetical to the original meaning. Places where it has experience less drift will thus have an opposing meaning to the US meaning.
This is not a criticism. Meanings change over time, it's what they do.
(Incidentally, this is why it's very silly to either attack or credit political parties in the US with things they did more than about 30 years ago, or perhaps even 20. The parties have shifted around a lot and traded a lot of issues. They're dynamic coalitions of convenience, not great, century-spanning statements of ideological purity.)
Liberal topics; social: allowing nudity, gay marriage, hacking, etc, fiscal: lower taxes, less red tape, more corporate freedom.
Authoritative topics; social; outlawing nudity, gay marriage, hacking, etc, fiscal: more taxes, more red tape, more corporate control.
It's not unusual for people to have hybrid positions. eg an person can believe that hacking should be banned and believe in paying lower taxes.
Or a person believes hacking shouldn't be banned and believe in paying higher taxes.
It doesn't mean that authoritative laws are bad, really. Some laws are mildly authoritative (anti-littering) to heavily authoritative (anti-terrorism). People's positions tend to be relative to the country they're in. For example, a fiscal-centre-liberal person in USA could be seen as a fiscal-far-liberal person in France.
According to polls >70% of the Pirate Party voters are pure protest voters who don't care what the party stands for. Well, except that they aren't Nazis or socialists (the only other anti-establishment options). Most people don't care about copyright laws at all, that's why the Pirate Party is a "safe" protest vote.
People are at least vaguely aware of the pirate party's position, as much as there is one. If nothing else, I doubt people who are in favor of more expansive copyright would vote PP. And arguably, any anti-establishment vote, if you want to call it that way, is bound to be a vote in favor of copyright reform.
Mass protests (ala OWS) were never really a focus of the Pirate Party. They were always about direct political participation (i.e. competing in elections). That’s not so realistic in the US where majorities are necessary to win seats and offices.
The Pirate Party very clearly represents a minority and has no realistic perspective of ever representing a majority. They are also not very geographically clustered. In democracies with proportional elections that’s not so much an issue.
The Green Party in Germany very clearly also represents a minority and has no realistic perspective of ever representing the majority, nevertheless it has been phenomenally successful during the last decades, not only as a opposition party but also as a party with government participation, both on the state and federal level. (The Greens were Gerhard Schröder’s coalition partner on the federal level.)
In the US, much of this has to happen inside existing parties with a realistic perspective (consequently, parties in the US are quite a bit less organized and there is much more fierce competition inside parties). Ron Paul tries to be different within the pre-existing framework of the Republican Party. The Tea Party Movement tries to be different within the pre-existing framework of the Republican Party.
Also, remember that this is only happening in Germany. A very special set of circumstances seems to have conspired there to create that success. This isn’t even happening elsewhere in Europe (at least not yet), not even in countries with political systems very similar to that in Germany. It seems like Germany is the special case here, not so much other places.