In 2023, the 11th Congress of The Pirate Party of Greece approved a major update of its Statutes, taking significant steps towards clarifying our party’s ideological identity and giving it a clearly progressive direction. Among the amendments approved by the party’s Congress was the removal, from both the Statutes and the Founding Declaration, of the historically and politically illiterate reference that we do not place ourselves on the “obsolete” Left-Center-Right axis. This reference is a maxim that has hobbled the entire Pirate Movement since its beginning, as it still enjoys a fatwa-like status for most Pirate parties. Most Pirate parties’ leaderships still believe it gives them some sort of “flexibility” regarding the policies (especially fiscal ones) they will endorse in each political context, citing their desire to have a “context-dependent appeal”.
This, however, has been proven to be a misguided approach. For starters, as has been repeatedly pointed out to us, both by outside political analysts and by party members familiar with European political history, this maxim is suspiciously similar to the French slogan “ni droite, ni gauche” (neither left nor right). This slogan was adopted and used prominently by the infamous and conniving French neo-fascist politician Jean-Marie Le Pen for his own party, the Front National, later rebranded as Rassemblement National. For many years, there were ample warnings by knowledgeable political commentators that this common element between our movement and the French fascist party would be harmful, not only regarding how our movement would be perceived by progressive citizens, but also regarding what elements it would attract. Indeed, we saw prominent Pirates resign from their national Parties and abandon our movement citing their leaderships’ unwillingness to tackle the incursion of Holocaust deniers, Gamergaters, racists, homotransphobes, alt-right grifters, islamophobes, and so on. In some cases, these elements managed to take over the parties they infected and turn their vile agenda into official party line.
By prioritizing this ill-conceived “flexibility” over the universal humanitarian, egalitarian, and democratic values the Pirate Movement ostensibly espouses, the Pirate parties that have chosen to cling to the “ni droite, ni gauche” slogan like limpets to a rock injected the venom of neo-LePenism into the Pirate Movement. This is how the aforementioned far-right factions managed to hijack various national Pirate parties. Once they had achieved this, they could derail he Pirate Movement from the progressive hacker ideals that were born in 2600: The Hacker Quarterly and spawned the Free and Open Source Software movement. These factions turned our movement’s official declarations of adherence to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, and the European Convention on Human Rights into empty, meaningless words, drowned by a cesspool of anti-feminist, anti-diversity, anti-equity, anti-inclusion, racist, genocidal, pro-Apartheid, pro-censorship rhetoric, taken from notorious sources of neo-fascist messaging and disinformation, like “Dr. Maalouf”, Peter “Sweden” Immanuelsen, Viségrad24, and Radio Genoa.
One might point out that the “ni droite, ni gauche” slogan was also used by “centrist” French President Emmanuel Macron in his campaign, but this does nothing to overshadow its most (in)famous use. As a matter of fact, it only adds fuel to the fire, as Macron is notoriously averse to democracy. He is well-known for his violent crackdown on protests against his neoliberal fiscal policies; we Pirates remember his horse-trading with the German government to pass Articles 15 and 17 (formerly 11 and 13, respectively) that was uncovered by Felix Reda, the best politician our movement ever had. More recently, we remember him for how he caused a snap election, citing the dangerous rise of the fascist Marine LePen. And then, he conspired with Le Pen to install an unpopular, obsessive, and incompetent electoral loser as Prime Minister, sidestepping the popular vote, which favored the Left. If anything, the use of this particular slogan by Macron makes him a neo-LePenist; it does not make the slogan less politically repulsive.
Contrary to what has been shamelessly claimed by some, the Pirate Ideology is not a vague, nebulous concept that can somehow be made compatible with sexist, patriarchal, alt-right, white supremacist, neo-colonialist, anti-woke policies. It is a concrete ideological framework that promotes democracy, the rule of law, equality, equity, inclusion, freedom, social justice, peace, and safety for everyone, regardless of skin color, place of birth, religion, financial status, or political beliefs. To stay focused on these goals, we need to keep our political vision perfectly clear. Thus, we must close once and for all the backdoors that allowed the far right’s venom to find its way into our movement, and this is precisely what we did in 2023.
True to the Pirate ideals, we are not going to stop there. Instead, we intend to continue our work to clarify and re-establish the vision of the Pirate Movement and restore its relevance and credibility. The Pirate Movement is inherently and innately progressive, democratic, egalitarian, and grassroots. Its true place is with the global progressive forces, from center-left and beyond; not with anti-democratic, reactionary forces like the European People’s Party and its far-right crutches. We know there are many Pirates around the world who share our desire to rebuild and recalibrate our movement. We cordially invite them to come with us so we can fight to curb the neo-fascist menace that threatens to undo every conquest in the field of human, civil, social, labor rights and freedoms, that threatens to destroy any sense of rule of law and, any notion of democracy.
