[pp.int.general] "interesting" Spiegel piece this week

[Justus Römeth]

On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 6:48 PM, Andrew Norton <ktetch at ktetch.co.uk> wrote:

> I think it's important to take criticisms as criticism. It's all too
> easy to take negative comments as 'attacks; which will just lead to a
> victim complex.
>

I agree in principle. However, if the media constantly repeats that you as
a party want to abolish all copyright (or rather authors' right, which is
the correct translation of *Urheberrecht*) and do not have a big political
or election programme or no programme at all even though this is not the
case, certainly less so than with parts of the other parties you can call
it biased reporting, or a media shitstorm, if you allow. Furthermore, the
current discussion about Nazis: I am sure the other parties have the same
structural problems, it just does not come to light because the unfortunate
racist, sexist or revisionist statements by members of other parties are
not made on the Internet usually but at their weekly pub-meeting sort of
shows that too. Instead of trying to analyze those facts and then report on
them the media just asks 'do the pirates have a problem with Nazis'?
Instead of saying: 'hey, we have this problem in our society, and possibly
in other parties as well, the transparency of the Pirate Party just
exemplifies it' they question whether we are fit to lead the country.

It does not help of course that some of the party members that were elected
into important positions reveal rather troublesome statements, not because
those statements are wrong (most of them are not, at least not if you are a
free-speech maximalist (which I am not, however, but I try to understand
what and why they say it here), but because those statements will be
misunderstood and misinterpreted by the media and society at large, which
understandably is particularly sensitive with these topics in Germany.
Overall, we need to learn on how to get better at this kind of stuff, and
those that hold positions like Carsten Schulz (candidate for Hanover center
for the 2013 state elections here who is an advocate of absolute freedom of
speech and unfortunately chose the holocaust as the yard stick to measure
it with and had his candidacy taken away because of that) need to present
their positions in a much more sober way that makes it clear why they have
that position. Doing so as a candidate for a political mandate certainly
will not help then. The same goes for what HaSe, the chairman of the Berlin
Pirates, wrote. The problem is not that we have people like them in the
party. The problem is that they do not know how to present their ideas in a
way that can not be misunderstood, and the problem is that they were
elected in positions that make it seem like those positions are shared by
many or most German pirates, which they most certainly are not.
You should keep in mind that in the 50s (which is when FDP, SPD and CDU/CSU
were born) most of German society had some history with the nazis, as the
whole country was nazified, and only a few German antifascist actually made
it out of the continent. Even the Greens had problems with right-wing
extremists at their very beginning, and the left party's communist GDR
history hardly is that much better.

I do not think the people that held offices but were revealed to have been
members of the NPD (neonazi party) before and subsequently resigned are
that problematic, and I am sure that Bodo Thiersen, who does not only call
for the right to deny the holocaust existed, but actually also holds that
very opinion more or less openly (which is illegal in Germany) will be
kicked out sooner or later, since he clearly does not belong into our party
(as opposed to Carsten Schulz, who does not deny the holocaust happened).

In that sense I just hope that we all learn how to deal with the media
better, that glimpses like Mr Delius' do not happen anymore by our
top-personal, and that people like HaSe either mask their opinions that can
be misinterpreted while holding office or just do not get into offices like
that anymore. The Pirate Party is no place for Nazis and holocaust deniers,
and we have to make that clear to everyone, especially media and the
public. We need to communicate our ideas in a way that they can not be
misunderstood (and we are learning how to do that, I hope).

The other problem regarding some media calling parties that are not ready
to form coalitions not fit to be elected to parliament: How do they think
democracy works? How is a new party supposed to learn and get ready for
taking the responsibility an actual government position brings with it if
not as part of the opposition?

I think we need to relax over this, just treat this a way we all treat
shitstorms all the time, do our things, stay calm, and keep on doing good
work. This includes improving our communication, both 'internally' and with
the media, so that we get misunderstood less.

-J


> If your first response is to call it an attack, or an attempt to play
> dirty, rather than dealing with the points raised, then you might have
> a future as a media coordinator for the US Republican party. That's
> their shtick - everything is an attack, an attempt to trick them into
> saying something bad, a 'gotcha question', etc. It's what you fall
> back on when you can't deal with the issues raised.I thought we were
> above this.
>
> Andrew
>
> On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 6:29 AM, Francisco George
> <francisco.george at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Well anyway it seems that Der Spiegel is the spear lance of coordinated
> > attacks as Lennstar said we are in phase III.
> >
> > http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,828588,00.html
> >
> > 2012/4/23 <pp.international.general-request at lists.pirateweb.net>
> >>
> >> Re: "interesting" Spiegel piece this week (Justus R?meth)
> >
> >
> >
> > ____________________________________________________
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> >
> ____________________________________________________
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