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

[Justus Römeth]

More information:

http://www.bild.de/politik/inland/piratenpartei/versinkt-die-piraten-partei-im-braunen-sumpf-23803046.bild.html

It is Bild, and therefore evil, but what is written is correct, and the
syntax should work well with google translate.

On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 7:26 PM, Justus Römeth <squig at dfpx.de> wrote:

> 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)
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > ____________________________________________________
>> > Pirate Parties International - General Talk
>> > pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
>> > http://lists.pirateweb.net/mailman/listinfo/pp.international.general
>> >
>> ____________________________________________________
>> Pirate Parties International - General Talk
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>>
>>
>
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