Even before the 2024 European Elections, which were an unmitigated disaster for the Pirate Movement, reading the Flaschenpost, the official news apparatus of the German Pirate Party’s (Piratenpartei Deutschland – PPDE)’s Politburo, confirmed what we suspected from reading the X (formerly Twitter) posts of several prominent members and officials of the party. What primarily gave the game away was a collection of “analyses”, written by the party’s intelligentsia and several like-minded scribes, full of context-free, laced with islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism, justifications for the genocide against Palestinians and the theft of their lands committed by the Israeli Apartheid. The arguments put forward were grotesque in their similarity to those employed by collaborationist newspapers in countries occupied by Germany in WW2 in order to justify the wholesale massacres of entire villages in “retaliation” against resistance militias.
In our previous statement[1], we spoke of a shameful incident during a meeting of the Board of the Pirate Parties International (PPI) that was staged by two delegates of the German Pirate Party (Piratenpartei Deutschland – PPDE) and the Russian Pirate Party’s delegate (PPRU) against then PPI chairwoman Ms. Florie Marie.
Back then, we wrote that we believe this dirty war against Ms. Marie could not have been waged without the PPDE’s leadership knowing about it. The fact that the two PPDE “mutineers” remained in the party and, when the “undesirable” Ms. Marie resigned from the PPI and left the Pirate Movement altogether, they were upgraded in the next PPI Board is solid proof. They were rewarded for their little “putsch”: Sebastian “Bastian” Krone became PPI treasurer, while Utz became a regular member[2]. We also wrote that this is highly suspect and stand by our position. Unfortunately, it seems that behaviors like these are not a new phenomenon.
In the minutes of the meeting of the Board of the Pirate Parties International (PPI) that was held on 24-5-2023 we see an attempted “coup” against its then chairwoman, Florie Marie, by a group of Board members[1]. The “stars” of this “coup” were regular member Alexander Isavnin (Pirate Party Russia – PPRU) and, from the Pirate Party Germany (Piratenpartei – PPDE), Mia Utz (alternate member at the time) and Sebastian “Bastian” Krone. Krone was upgraded to PPI treasurer, while Utz became a regular member of the Board[2].
On 20 December 2024, the European Pirate Party (PPEU) endorsed a citizens’ initiative called “Stop Killing Games” to protect gamers’ rights[1]. This initiative came about in response to Ubisoft’s decision to abruptly cut paying customers’ access to a game titled The Crew. We obviously support and endorse this initiative, but we do find it addresses only one of the many factors that are killing videogames: the violation of gamers’ rights as consumers. Videogames, however, are more than mere consumer products. Like movies and books, they are forms of artistic expression and, through their narratives, tropes, and symbolism, they reflect the artistic, mental, social, political, and emotional landscape of their creators and players. As interactive cultural artifacts though, they do not just reflect all these aspects, but they influence them, as the interactivity of the medium makes them extremely powerful influence tools.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.pirateparty.gr/2025/01/the-pirate-party-of-greece-on-the-stop-killing-games-initiative-a-few-modest-proposals/
