My first encounter direct with the German Pirates Party was in 2011, when they were part of a huge demonstration in Potsdamer Platz, 10 years after 9/11 when some of the participants distributed various leaflets with toxic conspiracy theories about the events.
Long before this moment, when I've hear about 'Pirates', it was in the middle of the international crisis of the real pirates from Somalia and was almost sure that it should be a party supporting the right of those people to be the Robin Hoods of the 21st century.
However, I was almost close of this idea: as I found out from Martin Haesler book about the German Pirates Party, when they are not fighting for the freedom of the net, they are against the capitalism as we all know it. A powerful force of the new hippies that won places in local parliaments and in the European Parliament. In Germany, they are also against the political parties that supported the Balkan Wars. Freedom of the Internet is cool and ACTA is not the smartest thing in the world, but as far as I remember from the political science classes, the aim of a party is to be in power and thus, I wonder what a pirate can say about the fiscal policies and foreign relations.
The book is explaining the history of the German Pirates, their success and say something about some of the members situated in the hip area of Friedrichshain and are very much connected with the famous hacker group Chaos Computer Club. All the parties are part of the global network of Pirate Parties International - long time ago, only the communists were honoured to be party of the International, but nowadays, the Liberals are proud members too.
The author tries to be neutral and to simply expose the main recent historical facts, the results at the last elections and some short interviews with 'famous' pirates, as well as some programs presented at the end of the book.
For someone fluent in German and curious about the Pirates, it is an useful lecture.
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