[Infowarrior] - Pirates, Democracy, and the Digital Revolution

[Richard Forno]

Pirates, Democracy, and the Digital Revolution

By Roslyn Fuller

NOVEMBER 7, 2017
		
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/pirates-democracy-and-the-digital-revolution/

AS AMERICAN DEMOCRACY seems to take another downward bend in its own death spiral with each passing week, the United States might learn a few things from the international Pirate movement, whose Czech wing recently took third place in national elections, and which has become perhaps most known in recent times for its continued presence on Iceland’s political stage.

Iceland, a tiny island nation in the North Atlantic, provides perhaps the best prism through which to understand the rise of the Pirates. The country is perhaps best known as the picturesque backdrop to the colder bits on Game of Thrones, the home of unpronounceable volcanoes that periodically threaten to ground the entire European air fleet, and the birthplace of singer Björk. But despite these natural and cultural claims to fame, politics on the island are not so rosy. The Icelandic political and financial establishment has become synonymous with cronyism and shady dealing, a sentiment incited by two recent revelations: a 2009 Wikileaks document that exposed the Icelandic bank Kaupthing’s lending practices, and the Panama Papers leak of 2016 that revealed the off-shore banking activities of several high-profile individuals, not least Iceland’s then–Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson.

Gunnlaugsson quickly resigned, but in the October 2016 elections that followed his departure it became clear that Iceland’s increasingly internationalized and tech-savvy population would not be content to simply vote in a new face on old politics. Instead, it seemed that the population was increasingly open to seeking political alternatives in previously uncharted territory.

Iceland, of course, is in no way alone in this tendency, as dissatisfaction with the political and economic status quo of the last 40 years has been in steady decline in the Western world for some time. In Europe, where forms of proportional voting are common, this had led to increasing success for both new parties, like Podemos in Spain and the Five Star Movement in Italy, and slightly older ones that previously occupied niche territory, such as Syriza and Golden Dawn in Greece, the National Front in France, Sinn Féin in Ireland, and the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands. In the United States and the United Kingdom, where the first-past-the-post system makes it difficult for small parties to gain proportionate representation in parliament, the desire for change has been funneled through the main establishment parties, most notably on the “right” by Donald Trump’s takeover of the 2016 Republican Party presidential campaign, and on the “left” by Jeremy Corbyn’s transformation of the British Labour party, despite unprecedented pushback from the party’s own top brass.

But while the left-leaning like Corbyn and Podemos could be described as progressive (certainly more so, than say, Golden Dawn, whose flag is, shall we say, hard to get past), when it comes to globalization and technological development, no one seems to have taken the bull by the horns to quite the same degree as the Pirate Party.

Perhaps this willingness to rock the boat partly explains some of the hostile coverage the Pirates received from American media in the run up to the 2016 Icelandic election. “Iceland’s Pirate Party Loves Hackers, Drugs & Revolution” The Daily Beast proclaimed with the subtitle “Iceland’s anti-establishment Pirate Party — led by a ‘poetician’ who worships Julian Assange — looks ready to win the country’s national election”. The Washington Post described the party as “a renegade movement” and “a radical movement of anarchists and hackers.”

This made it all sound pretty wild, but a year after the election, in which the Pirates emerged as one of the most successful parties with nearly 15 percent of the popular vote, Iceland didn’t seem to have been plunged into chaos. A brief perusal of the news site Iceland Monitor revealed that at a recent protest over immigration a sign was broken and one protestor pinched another.

Yes.

Pinched.

With their fingers.

Americans, no doubt, will be appalled.

In other highlights, the police have had to interfere twice with tourists who persist in watching the Northern Lights instead of the road while driving, and someone went skinny-dipping.

In short, the months of prolonged coalition talks that followed the 2016 election, parts of which were conducted by these very “anarchist hackers” don’t seem to have rocked Iceland half so much as, say, the Panama Papers did. And while the Pirates ultimately went into opposition, they are now firmly on the map as political players — tied for second place with the Left-Green Party in terms of number of parliamentary seats in 2016 and remaining firmly on the dash with over nine percent of the vote share in Iceland’s 2017 snap election. Moreover, the Icelandic Pirates’ success is only part of a quiet global trend that has seen the Pirate movement slowly catching on the world over, and often proving popular among younger voters when it fields election candidates.

So what does the Pirate Party really stand for and could American democracy learn anything from it?
 
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Far from representing an anarchic menace to society, Pirates are searching for the way forward in an exciting, perhaps even revolutionary time. Their solutions may not always prove durable or palatable to everyone, but progress depends on people’s willingness to think outside the box and take a chance on new ideas. In fact, perhaps American democracy could do with a few more Pirates.


Roslyn Fuller is the author, most recently, of Beasts and Gods: How Democracy Changed Its Meaning and Lost Its Purpose.