Outdoors the skatepark in Prague, on a scrubby patch of grass, Bartoš leans again into his deck chair as he tries to impress on me that Pirates should not your common stiff politicians. From the marketing campaign launch unfolding behind us, that’s fairly apparent. Sure, there are lengthy speeches and well mannered rounds of applause. However there are additionally gangs of shirtless skate boarders, a blue-haired rapper, rainbow banners exhibiting our solar-powered future, and references to the web boards the place get together members can vote on new insurance policies or demand new management.
He disagrees that the broadening of the Pirates’ focus has diluted its id. “We can’t be a single subject get together,” he insists. As a substitute, he compares the Pirates’ evolution to Europe’s Greens, which began as a grassroots motion constructed round a single subject: the surroundings. Now the Greens are making use of their authentic values to all the pieces from housing to vitality, as they sit in coalition governments in Germany, Luxembourg, Eire, and Austria. Though the Pirates “don’t preach” just like the Greens, he says, “we’re doing the identical journey they did some time in the past.”
The Czech department demonstrates the Pirates’ potential—how an internet-first ideology could be woven into nationwide politics—however it is usually a microcosm of the get together’s issues. Like different Pirates earlier than it, the Czechs endure from inner bickering, factionalism, and claims of sexual harassment. Former marketing campaign supervisor Šárka Václavíková has spoken publicly about her determination to depart the get together and her police grievance towards a fellow get together member for what she describes as stalking and psychological abuse. Over Zoom from her new dwelling in Italy, she says sexual harassment of ladies was systemic earlier than she left final 12 months—a declare the get together strongly denies. “Remoted incidents can, after all, occur, simply as in society or another get together. Nonetheless, if we had any details about such incidents, we might take rapid motion,” get together spokesperson Lucie Švehlíková instructed WIRED.
However Václavíková says she’s additionally disenchanted with the path of the get together as an entire. “There are two factions within the Pirate Social gathering,” she declares. There are the centrists, the individuals who wish to enchantment to everybody and are disowning the get together’s Pirate Bay roots within the course of. Václavíková says she recognized with the opposite faction, whom she calls “the true pirates.” “For us,” she says, “the ideology of clear coverage and privateness, and likewise human rights, are extra essential than simply gaining extra energy for our personal revenue.”
Thus far, Bartoš has prevented these points from tearing the get together aside. A part of why he has lasted so lengthy, surviving a collection of management challenges (together with from Gregorová), is as a result of he can clearly describe what makes the Pirates’ outlook completely different. Throughout Europe, different Pirates are nonetheless struggling to outline what a greater future—with extra know-how, not much less—would really appear to be. Once I signal right into a Zoom name with Tommy Klein, political adviser to the Pirates in Luxembourg, he’s sitting in entrance of a poster emblazoned with the phrase “Save Our Web.” Once I ask how precisely the web wants saving, he replies with out enthusiasm that the poster is previous. “It’s from the 2018 election,” he says.
Underneath Bartoš, nevertheless, the Czech Pirates have discovered a technique to articulate a utopian imaginative and prescient of a technology-infused future which means extra than simply lowering Large tech’s affect on the European web. Just like the Pirate Bureau 20 years in the past, the Czech Pirates even have a bus—actually extra of a camper van—that carries illustrations of their message. There’s a solar, with rays resembling web nodes. Wind generators and photo voltaic farms develop out of rolling pink hills. Slogans like “Lady Energy” and “Tolerance” hover over folks doing peace indicators and smiling by heart-shaped glasses. In Bartoš, the unique Pirate imaginative and prescient for an alternate technology-enabled future nonetheless lingers. “I consider that we will save the planet and society by know-how,” he declares from his deck chair. Whether or not that optimism remains to be relevant, 20 years later, is as much as the voters to determine.
