[pp.int.general] Why Members left .... was: Stances on different ideologies

[aloa5]

Hello Kaj and others,

I left the PPD after the last convention. Want to know why (rhetoric)?

Aim of the PP´s has to be: political success. Political success goes 
hand in hand with a lot of voters what for Germany has to be more than 
5%. You can nearly *never* have any political success without seats in 
parliament (on the long run - history tells us.. some years about 0,x% 
and a political movement is dead).

A voter will have priorities and other questions. Asking you - what 
about nuclear power, what about social things, labour, whatever.

*Example:+
"What will you decide in case of any nuclear power decision in parliament"

*Options:* (and this *before* having any seat in parliaments and any 
need for decide yes or no)
A) "we will every time say *no*" (green stance; after the last BPT 
Pirate Party Germany stance)
B) "we will every time say *yes*" (? stance)
C) "I can not tell you what we will do - *maybe yes or no*" (your stance)


So - I go with you Kaj as far as you say that with options A) and B) 
(before elections/seats) you will have parts of voters and members wich 
will say no to the party. But: why? Because they take care of that point 
and *the priority in our core issues is not enough for him/her*.

And this ist the point you did not thought over (enough). This persons 
will *also* not be very happy about a "maybe". Because *no* answer can 
be a "really yes" or a "really no" to nuclear power or to anarchism or 
to communism. The voters does not know. And because of this they will 
not vote for the PP´s. So the Option C) will not exclude against-A) *or* 
against-B) voters but will perhaps exclude against A) *and!!* against-B) 
voters in a great amount.

And because of this I give you the answer D) for wich I fighted (without 
success) in the PPD:
D) "Dear voter - we think that a world without nuclear power and with 
"clean" energy is a better world. In the future are concepts as desertec 
(solar energy) or perhaps nuclear fusion the better way. They are not 
only mor clean but will also be cheap. We will have a look to ensure 
that we force such clean technologies and help easily (and cheap) 
spreading knowledge (copyrights) over the world for example over 
patent-rules."

And you could be sure - this would not exclude but *inbclude* A) and B). 
Only radicals of A) (greens) and B) (don´t know - libertarians?) would 
be "excluded"... but they were never included (would anyway not vote for 
the PP´s).


The Germans failed to choose this way D). Without this, without even 
*understand the need of* forming a vision of a better future for the 
voters, you will never get a chance to form anything - no seats, no 
success, no influence on the long run.

And because of this - not only because of choosing a single "wrong" 
point (wich would sooner or later be fact anyway - also with C) ) - I 
left the German PP. And so will most voters do.

This is what you and people like Rick should *really* think over again 
and again and again. This is what political intelligence is about.


Greetings to you
ALOA<- not a PP member









Kaj Sotala schrieb:
> On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 4:26 PM, Max Moritz Sievers
> <m.sievers at piratenpartei-hessen.de> wrote:
>> Gagis wrote:
>>> Get education from Swedes or Finns on how to include different
>>> ideologies in a single unified Pirate Party.
>> Is there educational material about this in English or German?
> 
> The reasoning of the Finnish Pirate Party has been roughly the following:
> 
> The pirate ideology is one that cuts across the whole political
> spectrum. We have the potential to get all kinds of supporters, from
> young kids that are active file-sharers to older people who have a
> true appreciation for concepts such as privacy and freedom of speech.
> At the same time, however, each of them is bound to have political
> opinions about things not related to the pirate agenda. Exactly
> because our cause is such a broad-ranging one, it'd be foolish to
> expect that we can expect to arrive at a consensus about such issues.
> If there was an immense correlation between the pirate ideology and
> e.g. libertarianism, then libertarian views could possibly be
> incorporated to the agenda without fear of trouble. I say possibly,
> because if this were the case, then we'd need to be active in outreach
> and try to spread our thoughts beyond just libertarian circles in
> order to gain a noticable influence.
> 
> Fortunately, however, that isn't the case. We have the potential to
> awaken, not just libertarians, but everyone - or at least everyone in
> the generations that are now reaching voting age. In doing that, we
> need to realize that every political stance we take will scare
> somebody away. If we decide that we are socialist, we'll drive away
> our capitalist voters; if we decide that we are capitalist, we'll
> drive away our socialist voters. It's not just a question of
> attracting outside voters - as we have seen, taking unnecessary
> political stances will also threaten to split the party leadership
> apart. Unless the parties stay strictly neutral to all such matters,
> the pirate scene will become splintered. Instead of having the Finnish
> Pirate Party or the German Pirate Party, we will have the Finnish
> Socialdemocratic Pirate Party, the Finnish Communist Pirate Party and
> the Finnish Libertarian Pirate Party. No Pirate Party can survive that
> - our resources are spread hopelessly thin as it is.
> 
> And the great thing is - we don't even *need* to take stances on
> economic issues - or drug-related issues, or foreign policy-related
> issues, or whatever - in order to be successful. If we needed to, we'd
> be doomed. The traditional parties have built themselves entirely
> around those issues: we have no hope of trying to sway voters who've
> already chosen their party allegiance according to those issues. What
> could we give to them that the traditional parties don't? If we tried
> to face them on their own terms, we'd surely lose - they have much
> more experience and expertise about these matters than we do.
> 
> If there are pirates who are truly passionate about a certain, say,
> economic issue, they'd do better joining one of the traditional
> parties. I'm not saying this as an insult, for that can be valuable
> work as well. Join the traditional parties, take advantage of their
> existing organization and supporters, and work to sway them to our
> views from the within. It might not feel as glorious as contributing
> to a rebel independent pirate party, but in the long run, we need to
> persuade them as well. Stealing their voters is one way, but
> persuading them from the inside is another, and it is one that is just
> as needed.
> 
> But for those who aren't interested in that option... instead of
> trying to sway voters who are deeply committed to specific economic
> ideologies, we can work to establish the Pirate ideology as one
> entirely orthogonal to the traditional issues. The seeds for that
> ideology were sown many years before Rick founded the first Pirate
> Party, back when the Open Source movement was born, back when people
> started using the Internet and found an environment where culture and
> knowledge were truly free. Our core issues are the freedom of culture
> and knowledge, freedom from Big Brother schemes, freedom from big
> artificial monopolies. That is a flag we can rally people under, a new
> ideology that none of the traditional parties have an existing
> foothold on.
> 
> And for as long as we don't incorporate into it unnecessary elements,
> it will eventually spread to *all* the traditional parties.
> Historically, that happened with the movement for abolishing slavery
> and with the women's rights movement, and it is to a certain extent
> happening today with the Green movement. Today, you won't find many
> parties (at least in the West) who'd advocate slavery or reducing
> women's rights, and the traditional parties are increasingly becoming
> more environmentally aware. Eventually, the Pirate ideology will be
> found in every part of society - very few people will explictly name
> themselves as its supporters, as the general assumption is that all
> people are.
> 
> While I do not think that progress can be easily stopped - at least
> not in democratic, non-fascist nations - it can certainly be delayed.
> Pirates taking stances on questions outside the pirate ideology will
> slow it down. Pirates who label themselves anarchists or socialists
> will make outsiders associate anarchism or socialism with the pirate
> ideology, and reject it because they reject anarchism or socialism. We
> don't want that.
> 
> So let's make the Pirate Parties about the Pirate Ideology, and leave
> the rest to the other parties.
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