Children of Marx and Microsoft | Presseurop

This is an excellent read for anyone interested in European politics.

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Only in two things do the voters of the city of Berlin, which breaks down so distinctly into several different ‘milieus’, seem able to agree: no one likes the FDP, which even in the middle-class western districts pulled in no more than three percent of the vote – and the Pirates lie well above the five-percent threshold in all parts of the city. In some corners they are ahead of the Greens, in others even ahead of the CDU. The prefabricated blocks of flats of Marzahn-Hellersdorf and the bourgeois avenues of Berlin-Steglitz, however, are so far removed from such young digital bohemians that the voter base of the pirates cannot be reduced to some form of sworn ‘net community’. The emphatic concept of freedom put forward by the Pirate Party appears throughout all society to be more realisable than the hair-gel-and-tie-liberalism of the FDP.

The party principles and the electoral programme of the Berlin Pirate Party, including points such as free public transport and the right to an unconditional basic income, were tagged as ‘radical left’ by commentators on election night. The hoodie-wearing habits of some members might reinforce such an impression. But the basic values ​​of the Pirates escape classification according to the classic right-left split.