Calling out the rightward swing in European Piracy
I only recently became very active in the Pirate Party in the United States, but I’ve been a fan of Pirates for years. When I first heard about Pirate Parties, I started by finding and reading the works of Rick Falkvinge. As the literal head of the movement, I was inspired by his Pirate Wheel and wholeheartedly believe that all of our governing decisions should be made with the empowerment of all individuals involved in mind. I followed other figures, but to say Falkvinge loomed large in my mind from the beginning was a bit of an understatement. That is until I actually got involved in volunteering for the Pirate Party here in California.
We don’t have many members here so I took it upon myself to network and connect with other pirates. A large part of this was building the Twitter following of the California Pirates. I went about following all these major figures and was at first excited because Falkvinge tended to tweet a lot. This quickly turned sour when I read his tweets.
I am a big proponent of Free Speech. I fully respect anyone’s right to say anything they want, as long as they are unashamed about being publicly seen saying it. I say this as a result of being a transplant from Georgia in the Deep South to California. You see, in Georgia, there are a LOT of racists. It’s everywhere. You can’t throw a rock without hitting a racist. And if you want to avoid racists it’s pretty easy because they fly a flag to identify themselves. While California has fewer racists than Georgia, they still exist. But the only way you can spot it is if you talk to them because they don’t fly flags here. This is why I am a free speech advocate – if folks don’t say anything, how can you know to avoid them?
Folks, Rick Falkvinge is a giant racist.
I don’t say that lightly. I am fully behind the Palestinian people who just want to live where their family has lived for generations. Being a history buff has never made me a fan of the government of Israel, knowing that the entire government only exists because Menachim Begin bombed the King David Hotel in 1947. I do not support Hamas, and I do not support Israel. My concern is always for the least in society, the children, the elderly, and the oppressed. I could not square the brilliant insight that ALL LAWS SHOULD COME FROM EMPOWERMENT OF THE INDIVIDUAL with this unhinged Twitter account repeatedly calling Palestineans animals, and immigrants to his country terrorists, and emphatically calling for the state of Israel to… well, do exactly what the state of Israel is doing.
So I unfollowed him.
It’s easy to separate the “art” from the artist, especially when the “art” is a well-drafted political theory. We do it here in the United States ALL THE TIME. Consider the phrase “All men are created equal” – which is Thomas Jefferson’s way of saying that all laws should come from the empowerment of the individual. Maybe this is a novel idea in Sweden, but I can’t say it because I’ve never been there. Thomas Jefferson and I are separated by 250 years, and I decided a while back to just devote my attention to the words he committed to paper rather than the fact that he had so many children by his slaves that they still have reunions, or the fact that he should have said “all PEOPLE are created equal”. Believe it or not, Thomas Jefferson is closer to a normal person today than the oligarchs we have in charge now, and he worried about people like them. But I still believe his words will eventually conquer these oligarchs because more people believe in those words. Experiencing all these emotions when I first learned all about Jefferson’s faults 40+ years ago made it easy to say “Eh, Falkvinge can go piss up a rope”.
But he’s by no means alone in European Piracy. The current Pirate Party of Germany is an unabashed Zionist organization, which dismays me. And this is tolerated by the International Pirate Party organization, again to my dismay. The US is riddled with conspiracy theories and disinformation so I can’t help but think part of this is an organized push by those who like to divide and conquer to get us all fighting each other.
What is occurring in Gaza and the West Bank is an unequivocal genocide. The US and Israeli governments are using the entire region as a testing ground for new and terrifying munitions like indoor assassination drones, AI kill lists, and tactics like playing the sound of crying babies to lure people into kill zones. They bomb ambulances. They kill children. And a lot of people everywhere that I used to think were anti-war cheer this on. All this because a small force of maybe 500 Hamas terrorists did their worst on one day two years ago. The thought that Pirate Party International and Pirate Party DE consider this the party line is not only offensive to me, it inspired me to write this to denounce them. It takes a lot for me to mutiny but here we are. I draw the line at murdering kids, unlike Rick Falkvinge.
Currently, the US Pirate Party is planning our national convention for early July. I hope that we have the convention here in San Francisco – we’ll announce it very soon no matter what. If we do have it here in San Francisco, I invite Pirates worldwide to join us in San Francisco or virtually in an International Mutiny against Racism. We welcome all Pirates, especially the ones who rail against individual empowerment for the “animals” and “trash” on Twitter. I want to look some folks in the eye while they say some of these things before I set them adrift on the high seas to let Poseidon deal with them.
While the Pirate Party is a “syncretic” party that concentrates on what works rather than left or right culture war issues, there is NO place for authoritarian racism masquerading as right-wing thought. I hope that the California and US Pirate Parties can be the leaders that spearhead this movement to recenter ourselves around individual empowerment and chastise and shame those in our ranks who cheer on the murder of children. We have enough problems to deal with right now on a global scale without giving the authoritarian right-wing global movement a toehold in our international Pirate Party. I’m calling for a mutiny. Who’s with me?
Calling out the rightward swing in European Piracy
I only recently became very active in the Pirate Party in the United States, but I’ve been a fan of Pirates for years. When I first heard about Pirate Parties, I started by finding and reading the works of Rick Falkvinge. As the literal head of the movement, I was inspired by his Pirate Wheel and wholeheartedly believe that all of our governing decisions should be made with the empowerment of all individuals involved in mind. I followed other figures, but to say Falkvinge loomed large in my mind from the beginning was a bit of an understatement. That is until I actually got involved in volunteering for the Pirate Party here in California.
We don’t have many members here so I took it upon myself to network and connect with other pirates. A large part of this was building the Twitter following of the California Pirates. I went about following all these major figures and was at first excited because Falkvinge tended to tweet a lot. This quickly turned sour when I read his tweets.
I am a big proponent of Free Speech. I fully respect anyone’s right to say anything they want, as long as they are unashamed about being publicly seen saying it. I say this as a result of being a transplant from Georgia in the Deep South to California. You see, in Georgia, there are a LOT of racists. It’s everywhere. You can’t throw a rock without hitting a racist. And if you want to avoid racists it’s pretty easy because they fly a flag to identify themselves. While California has fewer racists than Georgia, they still exist. But the only way you can spot it is if you talk to them because they don’t fly flags here. This is why I am a free speech advocate – if folks don’t say anything, how can you know to avoid them?
Folks, Rick Falkvinge is a giant racist.
I don’t say that lightly. I am fully behind the Palestinian people who just want to live where their family has lived for generations. Being a history buff has never made me a fan of the government of Israel, knowing that the entire government only exists because Menachim Begin bombed the King David Hotel in 1947. I do not support Hamas, and I do not support Israel. My concern is always for the least in society, the children, the elderly, and the oppressed. I could not square the brilliant insight that ALL LAWS SHOULD COME FROM EMPOWERMENT OF THE INDIVIDUAL with this unhinged Twitter account repeatedly calling Palestineans animals, and immigrants to his country terrorists, and emphatically calling for the state of Israel to… well, do exactly what the state of Israel is doing.
So I unfollowed him.
It’s easy to separate the “art” from the artist, especially when the “art” is a well-drafted political theory. We do it here in the United States ALL THE TIME. Consider the phrase “All men are created equal” – which is Thomas Jefferson’s way of saying that all laws should come from the empowerment of the individual. Maybe this is a novel idea in Sweden, but I can’t say it because I’ve never been there. Thomas Jefferson and I are separated by 250 years, and I decided a while back to just devote my attention to the words he committed to paper rather than the fact that he had so many children by his slaves that they still have reunions, or the fact that he should have said “all PEOPLE are created equal”. Believe it or not, Thomas Jefferson is closer to a normal person today than the oligarchs we have in charge now, and he worried about people like them. But I still believe his words will eventually conquer these oligarchs because more people believe in those words. Experiencing all these emotions when I first learned all about Jefferson’s faults 40+ years ago made it easy to say “Eh, Falkvinge can go piss up a rope”.
But he’s by no means alone in European Piracy. The current Pirate Party of Germany is an unabashed Zionist organization, which dismays me. And this is tolerated by the International Pirate Party organization, again to my dismay. The US is riddled with conspiracy theories and disinformation so I can’t help but think part of this is an organized push by those who like to divide and conquer to get us all fighting each other.
What is occurring in Gaza and the West Bank is an unequivocal genocide. The US and Israeli governments are using the entire region as a testing ground for new and terrifying munitions like indoor assassination drones, AI kill lists, and tactics like playing the sound of crying babies to lure people into kill zones. They bomb ambulances. They kill children. And a lot of people everywhere that I used to think were anti-war cheer this on. All this because a small force of maybe 500 Hamas terrorists did their worst on one day two years ago. The thought that Pirate Party International and Pirate Party DE consider this the party line is not only offensive to me, it inspired me to write this to denounce them. It takes a lot for me to mutiny but here we are. I draw the line at murdering kids, unlike Rick Falkvinge.
Currently, the US Pirate Party is planning our national convention for early July. I hope that we have the convention here in San Francisco – we’ll announce it very soon no matter what. If we do have it here in San Francisco, I invite Pirates worldwide to join us in San Francisco or virtually in an International Mutiny against Racism. We welcome all Pirates, especially the ones who rail against individual empowerment for the “animals” and “trash” on Twitter. I want to look some folks in the eye while they say some of these things before I set them adrift on the high seas to let Poseidon deal with them.
While the Pirate Party is a “syncretic” party that concentrates on what works rather than left or right culture war issues, there is NO place for authoritarian racism masquerading as right-wing thought. I hope that the California and US Pirate Parties can be the leaders that spearhead this movement to recenter ourselves around individual empowerment and chastise and shame those in our ranks who cheer on the murder of children. We have enough problems to deal with right now on a global scale without giving the authoritarian right-wing global movement a toehold in our international Pirate Party. I’m calling for a mutiny. Who’s with me?