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A pirate in German parliament

Just two weeks after the Swedish Pirate Party won a seat in the European Parliament, the German Pirate Party scored their own seat in the German government, too.

Just two weeks after the Swedish Pirate Party won a seat in the European Parliament, the German Pirate Party scored their own seat in the German government, too. Pirates are tiresome in movies, as a movement, in real life on the water, on the internet, and as any kind of fashion iconography of any sort… but in the actual for-real government? That's maybe kind of interesting.

Sure, we all know that Germany has got their own history when it comes to political fuck-ups, but most of the weird parties that ever tried to establish themselves in German politics failed. Lucky us! Just imagine being ruled by people referring to themselves as the “Anarchist Pogo Party Germany” (these guys like wearing shirts that say “WORK SUCKS”, or even smarter, “AGAINST PEOPLE”).

Well, there was that one weird party that actually succeeded back in the 1930s but we all know how that went down. So since then Germany is blessed with a democratic system that’s actually worked out quite nicely for the last 60 years, even if our government passes insane laws like the Internet Censorship Law, which is designed to stop child pornography, but actually just makes it so we can't watch or listen to anything online without fear of getting arrested.

That’s where the Pirate Party comes in and stands up for our right to use technology to ignore copyright and surf the grown-up porn and talk about people we love and hate – without being immediately thrown into some reincarnation of a Stasi dungeon. So politician Jörg Tauss left the SPD (Germany’s mainstream liberal party) a couple days ago over concerns about the Internet Censorship Law and boarded the Pirate Party. I could make a pirate joke here to end this story but I won't. Instead I will just say that if pirates can make a comeback, there's possibly hope for vampires too.