OUTSIDE A bar in Berlin’s alternative neighbourhood of Kreuzberg, over 200 young men – and the occasional woman – are deep in conversation.
A sign on the wall reads: “7.30pm Pirate Meeting. 9pm Atari video games on the big screen.” Three months ago the Pirate Party, a loosely-bundled European political movement, won a European Parliament seat in Sweden.
Now the German branch hopes to win over the digital generation in Sunday’s election with its call to fight the erosion of citizens’ rights online.
The German party has, in a few months, attracted over 8,000 members with a manifesto demanding greater online data protection and the reversal of a recent law allowing the government to block access to websites at will.
They want abolished the new practice of storing phone records for six months, greater direct democracy and a rethink of intellectual property rights for the digital age.
The Kreuzberg meeting has attracted a fair share of overweight computer programmers. But here, too, are dentists, university professors and goldsmiths.
“People try to discredit us as spotty computer nerds, but we’re a broad mix of sensible people,” says spokesman Axel Kistner.
He got involved in the party in frustration after Berlin agreed a new internet censorship law. As a computer programmer, he calls the proffered explanation for the law – to block access to child pornography – a lame pretext.
He fears the real intention of the law is the potential for political control of the internet. “Online rights are being hollowed out and history shows us that, on matters like this, politicians are not to be trusted,” he says. “The Stasi could only dream of this.”
In just a few months the Pirate Party has turned on its head an assumption that people are increasingly turned-off by politics.
It is winning over disillusioned voters from all walks of life, in particular that hard-to-reach demographic: educated men under 35.
“We’ve never felt represented before by any of the other parties so for me the Pirate Party is a welcome alternative,” said student Steffen Burke at a rally in the eastern city of Magdeburg.
In a recent nationwide poll of under-18s, the Pirate Party won 9 per cent support; in the June European election it won 0.9 per cent.
To clear the five per cent threshold for Bundestag representation, however, the Pirates need a major increase on the party’s European election result.
Political commentators doubt that will happen this time around. But after that? The party is already drawing comparisons to the Green Party. Its dungaree-wearing members were mocked by the political establishment, even after winning its first Bundestag seat in 1983.
Just 15 years later, the Greens entered government.