Nazis Infiltrating Germany’s Pirate Party

 

COMMENT: In the long For The Record series on Wik­iLeaks, Pirate Bay and the Arab Spring, we not­ed that the Pirate Par­ty milieu ^[1] in Europe has been the foun­da­tion of Wik­iLeaks’ pres­ence in Swe­den and Europe.

Osten­si­bly “anaarcho/Utopian” in their out­look, the Pirate Bay/Pirate Par­ty milieu has man­i­fest­ed strong fas­cist and Nazi con­nec­tions ^[2], despite its avowed phi­los­o­phy.

It now devel­ops that the Ger­man Pirate Par­ty itself has been infil­trat­ed by for­mer NPD mem­bers. (The NPD is Ger­many’s top neo-Nazi par­ty.) Both had reached posi­tions of rel­a­tive influ­ence with­in the Pirate Par­ty.

It is note­wor­thy that this comes to light as the “Anony­mous” hack­ing milieu (which over­laps the Pirate Par­ty) has tar­get­ed neo-Nazis ^[3].

This rein­forces the line of inquiry devel­oped in the Wik­iLeaks series. Far from being the “anarcho/Utopian” enti­ty most of its adher­ents believe it to be, the Pirate Party/WikiLeaks milieu is far clos­er to the polit­i­cal out­look dear to Carl Lund­strom, the fascist/Nazi mon­ey man ^[4] who under­wrote Pirate Bay.

“Two Pirates Exposed as For­mer NPD Mem­bers”; The Local; 10/12/2011. ^[5]

EXCERPT: Germany’s upstart Pirate Par­ty is fight­ing off accu­sa­tions that right-wing extrem­ists may have infil­trat­ed its ranks, fol­low­ing reports that at least two promi­nent mem­bers once belonged to the far-right Nation­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty.

Valentin Seipt, a Pirate Par­ty dis­trict chair­man in Freis­ing, Bavaria resigned ear­li­er this week after the accu­sa­tion emerged. Matthias Bah­n­er, who is a Pirate Par­ty dis­trict coun­cil mem­ber in Greif­swald, Meck­len­burg-West­ern Pomera­nia is still in his posi­tion, although the par­ty has said it will dis­cuss the issue this month.

The rev­e­la­tions are con­tro­ver­sial because the NPD is wide­ly seen as a racist par­ty sup­port­ing extreme right-wing stances.

In con­trast, the Pirate Par­ty, which recent­ly made big inroads in Berlin’s state elec­tions and is win­ning increas­ing sup­port nation­wide, por­trays itself as a par­ty based on free­dom and the pro­tec­tion of civ­il rights. Recent polls have shown surg­ing fig­ures, with up to nine per­cent of Ger­mans sup­port­ing the Pirates.

Accord­ing to the Süd­deutsche Zeitung news­pa­per, Seipt was an NPD mem­ber from at least 2007 to 2009 and was, for a time, a deputy dis­trict chair­man for the NPD. . . .