Why am I not sur­prised? The fas­cists will try to sub­vert & ruin any move­ment they touch if they think it’ll ben­e­fit them some­how.
There are, of course, plen­ty of decent ‘Pirates’ out there, but why can’t more of them speak out, and admit that they’ve got a prob­lem? Same thing has hap­pened with Lib­er­tar­i­an­ism and the New Age move­ment as well, and many oth­ers I can think of.

@Steven L.: You have to won­der if “Oper­a­tion Blitzkrieg” was some sort of pay­back for this (one can still hope!)

I would be more impressed how being informed, whether Opus Dei was infil­trat­ing the Pirate Par­ty ini­tia­tives. The Opus Dei spy ring, who have the vis­i­ble polit­i­cal utopia of Chris­t­ian Democ­ra­cy as their way of doing pol­i­tics, are the most pow­er­ful polit­i­cal par­ties in most Euro­pean gov­ern­ments, while using the Hegelian Dialec­tic to divide and rule left-wing or right-wing any oth­er polit­i­cal par­ty. In a defense against main­stream pro­pa­gan­da ways, that seem not to be dis­man­tled in the above arti­cle, reduc­tion­ism whether left-wing or right-wing is Jesuit­i­cal, divid­ing our defens­es. Hitler was a Social­ist, not Nation­al because not Ger­man but Aus­tri­an, but head­ed the Nation­al Social­ist Par­ty. Neo-Social­ists infil­trat­ing Pirate Bay area? If so, it is out of defense. While Microsoft runs most com­put­ers, Lin­ux form Swe­den is still an alter­na­tive hav­ing less spy-ware threats. An attack on Lin­ux? Would­n’t be the first attempt.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/new-german-party-has-its-eye-on-the-farright-torch-8430671.html

New Ger­man par­ty has its eye on the far-right torch
If author­i­ties suc­ceed in ban­ning the neo-Nazi NPD, its suc­ces­sor is ready and wait­ing

TONY PATERSON BERLIN MONDAY 24 DECEMBER 2012

Chris­t­ian Worch claims to be proud of his fam­i­ly’s far-right cre­den­tials. His father was a mem­ber of Adolf Hitler’s Waf­fen SS fight­ing force. His grand­moth­er is said to have helped the infa­mous Gestapo tor­tur­er Klaus Bar­bie – “The Butch­er of Lyon” – escape cap­ture. His grand­fa­ther was a devot­ed Nazi par­ty mem­ber.

Worch’s own track record is almost as dis­turb­ing. He has spent more than five years in jail for incite­ment to racial hatred and Holo­caust denial. He has cam­paigned for the return of the Nazi par­ty and attend­ed ral­lies where par­tic­i­pants bran­dished ban­ners with the slo­gan: “I am such a don­key that I still believe the Jews were gassed in the con­cen­tra­tion camps.”

The 56-year-old, the edu­cat­ed son of a doc­tor, is described in Ger­many’s author­i­ta­tive “Far Right Hand­book” as one of the “most expe­ri­enced neo-fas­cists in Ger­many”. Yet although he has been writ­ten off as a fig­ure with­out a fol­low­ing, Worch could expe­ri­ence his long hoped-for polit­i­cal break­through in 2013.

He is the founder and leader of Ger­many’s lat­est far-right polit­i­cal par­ty, Die Rechte (“The Right”). The name is a delib­er­ate play on the social­ist Die Linke (“The Left”) par­ty, which is an estab­lished fea­ture of the reuni­fied Ger­many’s polit­i­cal scene. Launched in the sum­mer, “Die Rechte” threat­ens to become the out­right polit­i­cal win­ner of a new legal bat­tle to impose a nation­wide ban on the vocif­er­ous­ly racist and anti-immi­grant Nation­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (NPD), which has been around for the best part of 40 years.

Ger­many’s upper house of par­lia­ment, which rep­re­sents the lead­ers of the coun­try’s 16 fed­er­al states, has begun legal pro­ceed­ings to ban the NPD at the con­sti­tu­tion­al court fol­low­ing the emer­gence of new data which alleged­ly expos­es the par­ty as fun­da­men­tal­ly uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, overt­ly racist and a threat to Ger­man democ­ra­cy.

Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel’s gov­ern­ment has said it will decide in March whether to back the fed­er­al states. Legal experts have said, how­ev­er, that the states can go ahead and attempt to ban the NPD with­out fed­er­al gov­ern­ment approval. If the ban is imple­ment­ed by the con­sti­tu­tion­al court it could be effec­tive ahead of Ger­many’s Sep­tem­ber 2013 gen­er­al elec­tion. Opin­ion polls show that about 70 per cent of Ger­mans are in favour of the ban.

But experts on the far right have lit­tle doubt that if the 6,000-member NPD is even­tu­al­ly banned, its mem­ber­ship will imme­di­ate­ly see Mr Worch’s Die Rechte as their new home. A fore­taste was pro­vid­ed by a region­al NPD par­ty near Frank­furt, which in ear­ly Novem­ber sim­ply switched alle­giance to Die Rechte.

Bernd Wag­n­er, a for­mer police offi­cer and one of Ger­many’s most expe­ri­enced observers of the far right, told The Inde­pen­dent: “Die Rechte is sim­ply wait­ing in the wings. If the NPD ban goes ahead, then it is a vir­tu­al cer­tain­ty that the par­ty will step in to replace it.”

Mr Wag­n­er main­tains that in a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety, the out­law­ing of one extrem­ist par­ty almost auto­mat­i­cal­ly means a replace­ment will form in its wake. “In this case Die Rechte has been set up before any ban has been imposed,” he said. “This makes it even more prob­lem­at­ic. The only answer would be anoth­er ban.”

Mr Worch him­self has cau­tious­ly admit­ted that any even­tu­al NPD ban could be “use­ful”. How­ev­er, he has delib­er­ate­ly sought to dis­tance his par­ty from the NPD.

Die Rechte claims on its web­site to be “less rad­i­cal” than its far-right sis­ter par­ty. It claims to ful­ly adhere to the con­sti­tu­tion and insists that its core con­cern is the “preser­va­tion of Ger­man iden­ti­ty”.

Crit­ics say such lan­guage is mere­ly an attempt to lend the par­ty’s essen­tial­ly racist man­i­festo a veneer of mid­dle-class respectabil­i­ty. Although Die Rechte casts itself as a ral­ly­ing point for all con­ser­v­a­tives to the right of Ms Merkel’s gov­ern­ing Chris­t­ian Democ­rats, it is strong­ly sup­port­ed by more rad­i­cal, mil­i­tant neo-Nazi groups which Mr Worch him­self set up in the mid-1990s.

Unlike the neo-Nazi NPD, which has won par­lia­men­tary seats in two east Ger­man states, Die Rechte has not had enough time to notch up any elec­tion suc­cess­es since its found­ing in May this year.

The par­ty would need to over­come Ger­many’s 5 per cent vot­er pop­u­lar­i­ty hur­dle if it were to stand any chance of run­ning in a gen­er­al or region­al state elec­tion.

But the same rule does not apply in elec­tions to the Euro­pean par­lia­ment which are due in 2014. Mr Worch says that the run-off will be Die Rechte’s first major pop­u­lar­i­ty test. If Ger­many goes ahead and bans its NPD bed­fel­low, Die Rechte may have enough will­ing can­vassers on hand to eas­i­ly replace its con­demned polit­i­cal pre­de­ces­sor.

A legal chal­lenge: The Nation­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty

Ger­many’s largest neo-Nazi par­ty has 6,000 mem­bers, seats in par­lia­ment in two east Ger­man states and more than 2,020 mem­bers on local coun­cils. Found­ed in the 1960s, it was par­tial­ly fund­ed by dona­tions from mem­bers of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi par­ty who went into exile in South Amer­i­ca after the Sec­ond World War. Its pro­gramme is overt­ly racist but the par­ty takes care to avoid dis­play­ing banned Nazi sym­bols to escape pros­e­cu­tion.

Gov­ern­ment attempts to out­law the NDP back­fired in 2003. The con­sti­tu­tion­al court ruled that evi­dence against the par­ty was inad­mis­si­ble because it had been col­lect­ed by “agent provo­ca­teurs” from the intel­li­gence ser­vice.

Ger­many’s 16 fed­er­al states have now launched a sec­ond attempt to ban the par­ty. Politi­cians are under pres­sure to take action because of a series of immi­grant mur­ders uncov­ered last year, car­ried out by a far-right ter­ror­ist group.

How­ev­er, sev­er­al lead­ing gov­ern­ment mem­bers oppose the ban. They argue that it could fail a sec­ond time at the con­sti­tu­tion­al court or in the Euro­pean Court of Human Rights and hand the NPD a major pro­pa­gan­da vic­to­ry.

@R. Wil­son:
Here’s a blast from the past regard­ing Chris­t­ian Worch...he’s been try­ing to replace the NDP for quite a while(note the pub­li­ca­tion year....also note the focus on eco­nom­ic col­lapse for recruit­ment pur­pos­es):

The Wash­ing­ton Post
April 22, 1979, Sun­day, Final Edi­tion
Hitler’s Grand­chil­dren

By Michael Getler; Michael Getler is The Wash­ing­ton Post’s Bonn cor­re­spon­dent.

HAMBURG — In a small, red-light­ed base­ment bar here called the “End­sta­tion”, a half-dozen young men, most­ly 18-and-19-year-olds, drink beer, strut around, laugh and swap sto­ries.
They look like neigh­bor­hood kids, some with soft faces, oth­ers a bit tougher — except they all wear black jack­boots, black leather over­coats and black caps. Their shirts are black, too, and embla­zoned with close fac­sim­i­les of the old Nazi SS dou­ble-light­ning-bolt and death-head insignia.
They are mem­bers of “The Action Front of Nation­al Social­ists,” one of 20 to 50 small bands of neo-Nazis that have sprung up in West Ger­many in the past few years — a tiny, ostra­cized, polit­i­cal­ly insignif­i­cant but uncom­fort­able blip on the hori­zon of this coun­try’s sta­ble post­war democ­ra­cy. They are, in effect, Hitler’s grand­chil­dren.

One 19-year-old leans a plas­tic shop­ping bag next to the bar and takes off his coat. In the bag is an axe and on his arm is a real swasti­ka. An old­er man, a sort of secret leader out of uni­form, orders him to get rid of the axe and arm­band, both of which can be grounds for arrest. The leader, para­dox­i­cal­ly, has a small pis­tol in his coat pock­et.
“Some of the young ones are dan­ger­ous and stu­pid,” the old­er man says. “you can takt that from me. They are nut cas­es. If you give them an order, even a stu­pid order, they will car­ry it out. That’s why lead­er­ship is so impor­tant. It would be dan­ger­ous to get the wrong man at the top.”
The man, who is about 40 and will not give his name, claims there is a secret “Fuehrer,” or leader, of all the neo-Nazi groups in Ger­many but that his iden­ti­ty must remain secret or he will be arrest­ed. Police, and in fact oth­er neo-Nazis, dis­pute this, some say­ing there is more rival­ry than cohe­sion in and between these groups.
Chris­t­ian Lochte, a direc­tor of the fed­er­al secu­ri­ty police in Ham­burg , esti­mates there are now about 20 such groups, an increase from the 17 report­ed last year, with about 1,000 mem­bers alto­geth­er, up from 900 in last year’s esti­mate. Of these, he says, about 200 are mil­i­tant, hard-core fanat­ics.

Warn­er Poelchau, a Ger­man jour­nal­ist, puts the mem­ber­ship at clos­er to 2,000.He believes there are more groups, still unknown to police, in small towns. Feb­ru­ary’s dis­cov­ery, in two small vil­lages near Dort­mund, of an armed, 13-man “Bat­tle Group East West­phalia,” which police described as the best equipped group yet uncov­ered, sug­gests the high­er esti­mate may prove cor­rect.
An Action Front leader here puts the fig­ure at under 1,000 nation­wide, but with per­haps 45 to 50 groups aver­ag­ing about 15 per­sons each. The largest group of 80 to 90, he says, oper­ates in the Han­nover-Braun­schweig area, with about 70 here in Ham­burg .
Wat­ev­er the pre­cise fig­ure, the total is tiny in a coun­try of 60 mil­lion. And, while the neo-Nazi move­ment is impor­tant sim­ply because this is Ger­many , it would be gross­ly unfair to por­tray West Ger­many today as sym­pa­thet­ic to such extrem­ism or on the brink of some neo-Nazi renais­sance.
But the mem­ber­ship, though tiny, is grow­ing slow­ly, and the gangs are becom­ing more brazen. The num­ber of crim­i­nal inci­dents in 1977-such as the smear­ing of swastikas on gov­ern­ment build­ings and Jew­ish graves — dou­bled to 616 from the year before and will be up again when the 1978 police fig­ures are released soon. Major inci­dents of vio­lence now num­ber more than 40 a year.
Most omi­nous­ly, the neo-Nazis are young, most­ly between 14 and 25, with a few old­er ones serv­ing as “bridges” to the aging and dwind­ing Hit­lerites of the World War II era.

A thirst for “action”

Thir­ty-four years after the end of World War II, why is there any neo-Nazi youth move­ment in West Ger­many — no mat­ter how small? Ger­many is pros­per­ous. Noth­ing like the eco­nom­ic chaos that allowed Hitler to frour­ish exists. There are no Ver­sailles treaties to humi­late Ger­mans and not many Jews left here to blame things on.

The police and the neo-Nazis agree on some of the answers. Youth unem­ploy­ment and a thirst for “action” are part of the prob­lem. Linked to this is a feel­ing among the young storm troop­ers that they can suc­ceed by being far more rad­i­cal than their old­er rel­a­tives in the Nation­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty.

The NPD is the old­est post­war repos­i­to­ry for the qui­eter ultra­na­tion­al­ists who once sup­port­ed Hitler’s par­ty. In 1969, the par­ty threw a scare into Ger­many and the West when it cap­tured 1.2 mil­lion votes — 4.3 per­cent of the total-and came with­in a hair of being rep­re­sent­ed in the fed­er­al par­lia­ment. Since then, the NPD has vir­tu­al­ly dis­ap­peared, with mem­ber­ship drop­ping from 30,000 in 1974 to 9,000 today. The neo-Nazis regard the NPD as hope­less­ly pas­sive.

“The neo-Nazis are much more direct­ly con­nect­ed to the real Nazi ways than the old NPD,” says Lochte. “They cheer Hitler direct­ly, are out­spo­ken­ly anti-Semit­ic and are fas­ci­nat­ed with the para­pher­na­lia and uni­forms,” an ober­va­tion easy to con­firm in the fan­ta­sy-land world of the bar here.

“Most of our group does­n’t have work or they haven’t fin­ished their appren­tice­ship,” says an Action Front Leader. “A lot of them have noth­ing bet­ter to do. We know that. So they are easy for us to get. Per­haps half of them are not com­mit­ted to the cause. But they know they can get action with us, bust­ing up Com­mu­nist Par­ty pro­pa­gan­da stands and things like that. His­to­ry shows what hap­pens if you give unem­ployed peo­ple some­thing to believe in. So we tell them we are not guilty of any­thing, that the whole world sat on its hands and did noth­ing for the Jews, but only we are con­demned.”

Though there is lit­tle ide­o­log­i­cal under­stand among the neo-Nazi rank and file, and the num­bers are very small, the leader says he is not pes­simistic. “How did the Third Reich get start­ed?” he asks. “Right now, we don’t have much of a chance, because con­di­tions are too good. But when the eco­nom­ic col­lapse comes, we’ll be ready, and at that moment the peo­ple will come.”

...
A new Fuehrer?

If the neo-Nazis have no intel­lec­tu­als, they do have some lead­ers, and police now are crack­ing down on those lead­ers, appar­ent­ly oper­at­ing on the cor­rect assump­tion that neo-Nazis, like old Nazis, remain trans­fixed by what Ger­mans call the Fuehrer-Prinzip — the need for a strong leader.
The young storm troop­ers in the bar this night are wait­ing for their dep­tuy leader, 22-year-old Chris­t­ian Worch, to arrive. But instead news comes that he and four oth­er Nazis have just been arrest­ed in Kiel , alleged­ly for plan­ning to assas­si­nate the gov­er­nor. The Nazis don’t believe the charge. They say it’s the police using excus­es to pick them up.

Their real leader, the man who comes clos­est to a new Fuehrer in the minds of young and old alike in the move­ment, is 23-year-old Michael Kuehnen. He was dis­hon­or­ably dis­charged from the West Ger­man army’s offi­cer corps in 1977 and has become per­haps the most dan­ger­ous neo-Nazi dem­a­gogue and anti-semi­te of the post­war era. Police arrest­ed him last sum­mer, charg­ing him with incit­ing vio­lence and racial hatred and with mas­ter­mind­ing a raid on a NATO weapons depot. He is still in jail, but his fol­low­ers get misty-eyed talk­ing of his pow­ers.

...

Ger­many’s fed­er­al court just changed its rules for the upcom­ing EU par­lia­men­tary elec­tions. Small­er par­ties now have a much big­ger chance at get­ting into the par­lia­ment:

Ger­many rules to abol­ish 3% thresh­old quo­ta on Euro­pean elec­tions
Andreas Vosskuh­le says entry hur­dle vio­lat­ed con­sti­tu­tion and had pre­vent­ed par­ties from get­ting a fair hear­ing

Philip Olter­mann in Berlin
theguardian.com, Wednes­day 26 Feb­ru­ary 2014 14.39 EST

The Euro­pean par­lia­ment could become a squab­bling ground for “loonies and lob­by­ists”, observers warned after a Ger­man court on Wednes­day ruled against a vot­ing thresh­old at Euro­pean elec­tions.

The pres­i­dent of the fed­er­al court, Andreas Vosskuh­le, ruled on Wednes­day that the 3% entry hur­dle vio­lat­ed the con­sti­tu­tion and had stopped par­ties from get­ting a fair hear­ing. The rul­ing will come into effect imme­di­ate­ly and apply to the Euro­pean elec­tions in May, where Ger­many will elect 96 MEPs for the next par­lia­men­tary term – the high­est num­ber of seats of all mem­ber states.

Six­teen out of 29 EU coun­tries, includ­ing Britain, have no thresh­old quo­tas for Euro­pean elec­tions, but the issue is an unusu­al­ly polit­i­cal­ly loaded one in Ger­many: a 5% hur­dle was intro­duced for the nation­al par­lia­ment in 1949 with a view to mak­ing the rau­cous par­lia­men­tary squab­bles of the Weimar Repub­lic a thing of the past.

Ger­many’s pro­por­tion­al sys­tem has encour­aged the cre­ation of an unusu­al­ly high num­ber of small­er par­ties. While the Pirate par­ty, the anti-euro Alter­na­tive für Deutsch­land and the far-right NPD are the three most promi­nent par­ties like­ly to gain from the changes, a num­ber of small­er splin­ter groups and sin­gle-issue par­ties will be hop­ing for seats in Stras­bourg and Brus­sels too.

The head of the Pirate par­ty, which is cur­rent­ly rep­re­sent­ed in the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment via its Swedish branch, said the deci­sion would guar­an­tee that cit­i­zens’ votes “would­n’t again fall under the table”.

The NPD, over whom the upper body of the Ger­many par­lia­ment is cur­rent­ly seek­ing a ban, called the court’s deci­sion a “phe­nom­e­nal vic­to­ry” and con­fi­dent­ly announced on its web­site that its entry into the Euro­pean par­lia­ment was now “not just like­ly, but a cer­tain­ty”.

At pre­vi­ous Euro­pean elec­tions, Ger­man par­ties had to over­come a 5% hur­dle, which the fed­er­al court had ruled unlaw­ful in 2011. Last year, the Ger­man par­lia­ment had pro­posed replac­ing the 5% hur­dle with 3%, but after com­plaints by 19 small­er par­ties this com­pro­mise too has been dis­missed by the courts.

...

The par­ty that will be affect­ed most direct­ly by the deci­sion to scrap the 3% hur­dle is Angela Merkel’s CDU. Until now, the Chris­t­ian Democ­rats have tried to counter the threat posed by the anti-euro par­ty Alter­na­tive für Deutsch­land by allow­ing their Bavar­i­an sis­ter par­ty, the CSU, to opt for a more euroscep­tic tone. But with the AfD feel­ing embold­ened by the court’s deci­sion, the chan­cel­lor’s par­ty may have to read­just its Euro­pean strat­e­gy.

“We have to live with the judg­ment and the fact that splin­ter par­ties and rad­i­cal ele­ments from Ger­many will be rep­re­sent­ed in the EU par­lia­ment,” said CDU MEP Markus Fer­ber. “That’s not a very pleas­ant sit­u­a­tion.”

A rise in the euro-skep­tic con­tin­gent of the EU par­lia­ment isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly a bad thing giv­en what a mess of the EU has become in recent years. The EU could use some new think­ing. But giv­en how things go these days that new think­ing prob­a­bly won’t be very thought­ful.