Patrick Breyer, a staunch defender of digital rights, laments the Pirate Party’s exit from the EU Parliament as a blow to online privacy.
Fuck, this is seriously bad news
I always expected us to never address our ecological destruction or climate change in any meaningful way, and instead devolve into some techno-feudalist, fascist dystopia before the civilisation collapses into a death spiral… But man… I’ve never wanted to be wrong more in my entire life.
Watching the EU regress in unison, back down the auth path, is not how I expected it would go down.
“Cyberpunk was a warning, not an aspiration.” – Mike Pondsmith
Kinda alarmist tone.
I always expected for the irrational opinion of people in many Western countries that they can get anything by voting for it to meet the hard cold reality, but it never was anything like “end of the world”.
I’m hopeful. A certain kind of evil people have felt their power and are slowly becoming complacent, which means that the European societies will get a shot at getting rid of them, for the time being. And then there will be a dawn after this sunset.
Though that “allowing the snake to raise its head” thing should be done carefully, so that you’d still be alive when the opportunity to crush that head arises.
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I managed to convince my brother and a friend of mine to vote for them. This is really disappointing. Over half the votes in Germany were for right-wing parties this time, over 16% were for the right-wing-extremist party AFD. Germany really wants history to repeat itself ig.
But at least France is holding its hand this time! 🙃
I voted for him. Sad to see him leave. It doesn’t seem like we have many advocates for digital privacy in the parliament.
e: typo
Die Linke voted similarly on many issues to the Pirate Party.
I had somewhat hoped that my fellow countrymen in Germany would not fall for the obtuse populism of the right, but that is exactly what has happened.
I’m afraid there’s nothing left to counter this, because voters obviously no longer care about rational arguments and don’t even want to acknowledge the real problems of our time. They make it easy for themselves and just blame everything on illegal migration or whatever - just as the right-wingers tell them to do.
In this reality characterized by stupidity and false attributions of blame, it is hardly surprising that important but somewhat abstract topics such as data protection are no longer of interest to the masses. It’s enough to make you cry.
As an American, it’s really sad to see the EU fall into this trap.
The saddest thing about this is that the Europeans and especially the Germans should really know better. But no, all the lessons from our dark history seem to have been forgotten - or they are simply ignored so that one can once again live in the comfortable world of simple explanations where there is always some minority to blame.
Tagesschau has a graph showing AFD being the highest % voted party all over eastern Germany and second highest voted nearly everywhere else, following CDU/CSU. You really only see green or red in the larger cities.
The second highest voted thing is mildly misleading because left parties are a lot more fractured, especially in EU elections. The afd could have 11% while 9 left wing partirs have 9.8% and be the most voted party, but that would be a better result than we have now with it being the second most voted.
The results are bad, but 16% is at least nowhere nesr a majority. I’m honestly more concerned about the CDU moving closer to the afd and still ending up with 30%, seems almost like many people don’t like the afd because they’ve been told afd bad, but still agree with much of their ideology.
German cities and counties by annual household income (4 year old reddit post)
It’s not surprising though, the EU has been wanting to become the United States of Europe for a long time…
In the whole bad times lead to strong people, which leads to good times, which leads to weak people, which leads to bad times, we’re in the weak people leading to bad times stage. Now things need to get bad enough to start making strong people.
Only problem is the fascists are smarter this time and are pushing everywhere, so this time might not have nation states on the good side.
Why are you repeating that fascist “strong men create good times” bullshit?
While I’m not surprised if fascists use it, I don’t think it is disinformation if they do, seems like more of a human thing where people generally just want to live their lives but asshole control freaks want to take power and gradually do while most just focus on their own things until the control freaks cross too many lines and people decide the best way to live their best life involves removing them from power.
It all depends on how you define “strong people” and “good times”. The fascist version of this isn’t quite in sync with the one I believe in.
obtuse populism of the right
Don’t fall for propaganda either. Left and right are two buzzword used by rulers to manipulate public opinion and always stay in power.
I would gladly vote left, I like social democracy, I don’t mind paying taxes for government services, what makes it impossible for me to vote left is that I completely and utterly disagree with the migration policies that have been in place.
They are insane, completely insane.
We need to enforce the EU borders and fundamentally change the asylum process, the current system encourage refugees to take extreme risks by crossing the sea in shit boats, the current system also encourage braindrain from poor countries preventing them from gettng the skilled workers they need to develop their economies.
Restricting the right of asylum will severely cut back on the human trafficing organization’s proftis and reduce the ammount of death and injury in a dangerous ocean crossing.
It will also allow us to sped less money supporting people here, and do much more for them in their own home countries.
I am sure I will get downvoted massively, but this is the explanation as to why I won’t vote left unless they show that they are serious at cutting migration.
there is good hint of xenophobia in your comment
you probably need to meet some people foreign of your country and learn they are humans just like youIt will also allow us to sped less money supporting people here, and do much more for them in their own home countries.
tax rich people/companies
these are taking your money away for a good cause for everyoneThat is fair, I can see how my comment might seem xenophobic to people who don’t know the real me.
I absolutely believe that the rich pay too little tax, it is a global problem, that has a veey simple solution, but extremely difficult execution.
Taxing the rich isn’t the be all end all solution, integration is, I am a Swede, and we have absolutely failed with integrating migrants. We see that with migrant gangs in Sweden.
I could write more, but this is not the forum for that discussion.
Talking like this is exactly why the right is on the rise. As soon as anyone mentions that “hey maybe unlimited migration isn’t working” they’re immediately labeled as racist and xenophobic.
This alienates a lot of people in the middle that like leftist ideas but don’t buy the immigration policies.
I don’t understand how anyone can think that migration policy is the EU’s main problem. And I really don’t get why someone should vote for a party that does not share their own convictions because of EU migration policy.
Bait and switch.
Immigrants = bad. Just focus on immigrants being bad, while I line my own pockets and/or gather power while you are distracted.
But just remember: immigrants = bad!
Pull effects aren’t real. Help eradicating the reasons why the people are fleeing in the first place if you want less refugees.
Not as if the EU would want that, though. There’s continents to exploit and money to be made, after all.
I partly agree, which is why I mentioned spending resources more effectively in the countries.
Pull effects are absolutely real, ignoring them is idiotic.
Pull effects have never been empirically shown. You’re repeating the right’s talking points.
Have they been empirically disproven?
You can’t prove a negative.
It’s an outdated model and not really taken seriopsly in academia.
Fair point, but that still gives me room to doubt the claim that pull factors have no impact on migration, I must appologize to my overly confidant commwnt earlier in the thread
Restricting the right of asylum will severely cut back on the human trafficing organization’s proftis and reduce the ammount of death and injury in a dangerous ocean crossing.
Prohibition creates black markets. Restrict asylum and you’ll increase human trafficking.
That is fair point, I have myself made the argument of legalizing drugs to remove power and influence from gangs.
When I wrote my long reply I didn’t consider that.
Quick reminder that in a liberal democracy, social movements are more important for progressive change than electoralism.
Join a union. Be it trade union, housing union, or whatever (or even any affinity group). And get active.
Complaining about election results achieves nothing, but sow despair.
Also: voting is important because it lets you choose your enemy. Progressive liberals and social democrats won’t fight against you as hard as conservatives and fascists.
Putting this here because some people might read this and think “Voting doesn’t matter.”
Voting doesn’t really matter, though.
Edit, clarification: at least compared to bottom-up social movements.
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The US supreme court isn’t even a democratically legitimized body. Why do you want to take the high road if reactionaries clearly don’t care for the rules?
Go to your local library and read a book. Any book.
“Hey guys, plowing this field won’t feed you, we should just gather.”
It absolutely does though. You can’t elect worker ownership of the means of production but you sure can elect anything from fascists to social democrats. I for one don’t want fascists to control my government
But media controls people
If progressive policies were ever put into place by an elected body, it was always merely a by-product of already established social consensus formed by bottom-up politics.
I fully agree. But people get better things. Not voting means they don’t. Not voting means the people who want worse things get what they want
With electoralism, people get complacent with watered down reforms and become politically alienated.
If it doesn’t matter, why are so many people afraid when the right wing parties take control? If it’s not important why are people so concerned about the supreme Court? Why are women so scared of anti abortion legislation? You vote the legislative and they can simply take the power away from your social movements. So in the end, it does matter.
Voting should not be the main strategy to fight for liberty and progressive change, since the cards in electoralism are way too stacked in favour of the already powerful minority. That’s what I meant with “voting is not important”.
When Trump lost the last election, MAGA-heads were ready to take up arms against what they considered an injustice. Why aren’t progressives ready to do so? How does the “vote blue no matter who” crowd prepare against another Jan 6th situation?
“Progressive” change will only take you further away from liberal democracy and free society.
surpassing liberal democracy is a good thing. I disagree with the free society bit. What definition of “free society” are you referring to?
I’d argue that a progressive country like Denmark with its universal healthcare and universally available college-level education is substantially more free than a freedom-touting country like the United States that limits access to these basics to those with substantial resources.
There are more parties who defend internet privacy then just the pirate party. Won’t matter much tho with the current rightwing majority.
They have been very active fighting the chat control proposals that keep coming, haven’t really seen others being so active about it besides them. This is really bad.
Is the incoming majority particularly anti-piracy? I thought they were more fixated on leaving the EU, gutting the “woke” public sector, and rounding up all the immigrants for deportation.
Just to make things clear, the pirate party isn’t directly related to piracy. There are ongoing efforts to render end-to-end encryption illegal in Europe as we speak. Dark times are coming
There are ongoing efforts to render end-to-end encryption illegal in Europe as we speak.
I can’t imagine how you stop all end to end encryption across a continent while you’re exiting the continent-wide governing body.
Who’s exiting? They will just ban any non-compliant messaging app
They whom? Is every country going to have it’s own national firewall, complete with highly sophisticated SMS-only encryption detecting service?
The EU plans to do so and as such every member must follow it.
And once encryption is criminalized, it can be trivially detected - or at least assumed to be encrypted if your message is sufficiently random.
The EU plans to do so
A bunch of these alt-right parties are anti-EU
By law, simply making it illegal as is being worked on.
Just to make things clear, the pirate party isn’t directly related to privacy. Also, there are efforts to render end-to-end encryption illegal right as we speak in Europe. Dark times are coming
Last I checked they didn’t have the majority though?
Technically… maybe. Here’s a calculator, EPP+ECR+ID+a chunk of the non-attached and non-assigned might make it over the 50% mark, and then there’s renew which has neoliberals in it.
But that’s not coalition material as the EPP is not eurosceptic, also, that coalition would reach so far right that a good chunk of the EPP would definitely not be on board with it. The populists might also be opposed on reasons of preferring stoking anti-Brussels sentiment over surveillance, and there’s plenty of opportunity for rifts, like the RN saying “The AfD is in favour so we’re opposed”.
Do note than in the EP factions have fuck all when it comes to faction discipline. There’s no whip, all there is is plenty of negotiating.
Does the average voter just not care at all about anything actually important? What is even going on here?
We just had a vote for government officials along the EP vote. Less than 60% turned up which means the most common vote was a vote for nothing. The average voter doesn’t care.
At least voters who don’t turn up are harmless. If all the people who voted for EPP-affiliated parties just didn’t turn up instead, we’d face far fewer problems.
What a load of bullshit, Voters that don’t turn up are the most dangerous of them all, because it lowers the percentage and skews the votes. If 40% go voting and make their vote invalid, those 40% still get counted, meaning the percentage for other parties is overall lower.
Brexit in the UK happened because most didn’t vote, meaning a small percentage of voters had over-inflated influence.
More and more the average voter earns minimum wage, has to pay increasing rent, increasing food prices, has shit education, degrading public healthcare, etc… last thing on their mind is voting and when they do they follow what the (not independent at all) media feeds down their throats.
These results are just a drop in the bucket in relation to the grim state of German election results and overall societal discourse.
There’s not much room for optimism right now. Very dark skies ahead and things may get much worse before they will become better.
Same in Belgium, how is this the new reality seemingly everywhere???
Mass propaganda and some reeeeeaaaaalllly stupid people.
MAGA has entered the chat.
The parties in power are failing to address the problems ordinary people are facing. Problems like the excessive immigration of people from Asian countries, the insane housing prices, rising cost of living etc. People are looking for alternatives.
These extremists know exactly what the problems are and how to talk about them. They also know better to meet people where they are, like on social media. To most people who are ignorant of politics, these parties seem to solve all their problems.
And let’s be real, half the population is below average intelligence. Way too many people don’t realize or even worse, don’t care, about what these parties are really about.
Pretty much the same propaganda “package” is being used all over the world.
Governments work hard and spend billions of public money to try to stay in power, they spend these in modern and technological warfare too.
I have voted PP since their conception, and I think we have them to thank for a lot. Will continue to do so, probably forever. I don’t understand how these issues don’t get more attention these days. Tech related privacy, anti monopoly, ai safety etc is just a part but they have excellent values in other areas as well.
I don’t understand how these issues don’t get more attention these days
Who owns the media?
The rothschilds
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?
Rothschilds are diamonds and other crap,
It’s the Australian Rupert Murdoch
Although him and a Lord Rothschild have been involved in some fuckery with oil in Israel
I think the correct answer is some billionaire
Yeah it could be the billionaire family that runs everything. Maybe it’s them.
Or it could be something else like aliens I guess?
Great now I need my tinfoil hat
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I was considering voting for the pirate party, but they polled at less than 5% in France and it was not a useful vote, which was evidently needed.
I still voted for them, because I could.
And I’m sick of the useful vote thing, I did it last time in 2022 against Le Pen and all I got was a lousy President.
Better a lousy president than a fascist, hell, boring politicians is what we should aim for!
both macron and lepen are two corrupted fascists tricking you like a chicken into choosing a side and voting for them instead of “wasting your vote”
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No she isn’t? Macron is president until the next French presidential election in 2027.
Prolly their confusion is that Macron called for new elections, but unlike some parliamentary governments Macron isn’t selected by parliament.
Yes, I misunderstood how the system works in France.
Don’t expect a Le Pencil supporter to understand reason.
I am not a supporter, I just find very stupid to postpone the inevitable while proposing… nothing better?
I mean yes, Macron was dumb on this one, but he isn’t as dumb as that
Strategic voting is what you’re stuck doing depending on your local electoral process.
She’s going to become president in 2024, she could have become president in 2022 instead.
If a party won’t fix the serious issue to let me also vote for who I want, they’re not entitled to my vote.
You can deny the reality of the electoral system you’re stuck with all you want, at the end of the day you’re probably one of the people that will end up suffering the most because of it.
Voting for a party I don’t want is also suffering, though I doubt you’d believe that. Keeping the main parties in power via a rigged system ain’t ending this catch 22 cycle.
Eh, I’d much rather vote for a party that aligns with my values but might not get a seat, in hopes it will inspire more people to do so next time around.
Vote your conscience while you can. I’m pretty much stuck voting for slightly left of center candidates (in the US) because the opposition is to the right of Kim Jong Un depending on the issue.
Yeah, the greens had a risk of not getting 5% so it was much more worthwhile to vote for them.
You should be able to vote for both… 😮💨
There may be even better voting systems but 3-2-1 would be a nice change. This way strategic voting gets at least somewhat mitigated and might force people to actually invest some time and look at the agenda of some other parties too because they have to vote for 3 parties.
There are voting systems that completely prevent the need for tactical voting (e.g. instant-runoff voting, aka alternative vote) but if the system still trends towards having two main parties then not much has really changed.
A bigger issue is that a single candidate/party is not very good at representing an area in comparison to having more (3, 5, ideally more). If people vote 80% A and 20% B and A gets the single candidate then 20% are misrepresented. With 5 candidates then that could be split 4 to A and 1 to B, a perfect representation.
I would have voted for the Pirate Party if there was a ballot for them.
Didn’t print it beforehand so I couldn’t.
Last time I printed my own ballot they just didn’t count it and my vote was considered invalid. Even though I had the exact size required by regulations…
Wait, am I missing something here? Are there countries where you don’t have all options on the ballot, or at least an empty space?
Edit: Saw your explanation in another comment. Wouldn’t having to bring your own ballot also invalidate voting secrecy, since bringing your own indicates that you most likely intent to vote for an unlisted party (and, in reverse, anyone using the regular ballot voting for a party that’s listed)?
Concerning your edit, not sure about other countries, but I can speak about the process in France.
We get (normally) ballots with the programs in the mail before the elections, so we can also bring ballots from there. Then the way it works when voting is
- there’s a table with ballots from all lists that provided them (so missing the ones we’re talking about here) and you can take any number of them
- then you go isolate in a cabin where you put the ballot you want, or nothing, inside an envelope
- finally your identity is verified, your vote is counted and you put your envelope in a transparent box
So there’s not really a way to definitely know you’re voting for an unlisted candidate here.
It affects secrecy a bit but you still have to take at least two different ballots into the voting booth. Obviously you are bringing your own ballot and taking one already printed so it’s not really a secret.
Also there was taped garbage bags in the voting booth so that people can throw away their discarded ballots but that’s also a great way to show what every else has been voting before me…
I still think our voting system is quite ok but there are definitely flaws.
Same… I hate having to vote useful
You trust polls?
And I was right to; pirate party got less than 1% of votes, also due to the fact they couldn’t afford to have their voting paper in most places.
Polls are problematic in that they reinforce their own predictions. It’s especially frustrating in recent years when you’re bombarded with them even when there’s no election in sight. Problem is, governing parties are usually busy governing while populists are campaigning 24/7. Media has made a huge effort to reinforce the trend and get people used to living in a far right era. Polls are unhelpful and destort democracy to a dangerous degree.
Thanks for being part of the self-fulfilling prophecy, I guess.
Where do you live that you can print your own ballot?
France. The parties have to pay the government if they want their ballot already present at the election place. As a citizen, you may also bring any ballot you want (within some very reasonable rules), so the smaller parties instruct you to print your own to save on costs.
OMG. Here in Germany you sometimes get an entire booklet of ballot papers, if necessary. You wouldn’t even be allowed to bring your own ballot. Otherwise, one could secretly mark their own ballot in some way, thereby undermining the secrecy of the vote.
Yeah, this is one of the seasons the Pirate party is pushing for a unique ballot, because the current format is really unfavorable towards small parties that don’t have the means to print the ballots among other things
I wish I could actually vote for the pirate party. But I can’t here. Didn’t show up in the election list. They were 2 or elections ago
Sounds like you’re the new candidate.
I voted for them. Judging by the numbers, there must have been about three of us.
I was thinking the whole week if I should vote the greens or the pirates but due to the recurring campaigns to establish a surveillance state I did end up voting pirates. Incredibly disheartened they didn’t get a seat :(
and unfortunately czech pirate representatives dropped from three to one :(
God fucking damn it
Sad times.
