The Leadership of The European Pirate Party Casts Doubt on Pirates’ Right to Criticize Party Officials
The Pirate Movement is ostensibly a movement that stands for free speech, free criticism, free scrutiny, transparency and accountability of those in power, including party officials. Israel’s genocidal campaign against Gaza, however, laid bare the hypocrisy of the hegemonic powers within our movement. We witnessed some of the highest-ranking officers of the German Pirate Party (Piratenpartei Deutschland – PPDE) adopt and amplify far-right racist and bigoted rhetoric and conspiracy theories against the Palestinians and Muslims in general, as well as falsehoods against UNRWA and the International Criminal Court.
We witnessed in disbelief, dismay, and horror the deafening silence of the European Pirate Party (PPEU) and the Pirate Parties International (PPI) as this genocide unfolded, as tens of thousands of unarmed Palestinian civilians, with the majority being women and children, were massacred and maimed; as doctors, nurses, medics, rescue teams, humanitarian aid workers, journalists were murdered, abducted, and tortured; as foreign journalists, academics, artists, politicians who dared call for a ceasefire, who dared say that Palestinians are human beings were brutalized, defamed, cancelled, sacked from their jobs, arrested, harassed, exiled. Despite all the evidence, despite all that has transpired, the PPEU and the PPI chose to act as if nothing was happening or as if what was happening did not matter.
This is, of course, no coincidence. It is no secret that both entities are controlled by parties that are completely aligned with the far-right Israeli apartheid regime and have fully adopted its narrative. We Pirates love to boast that we are all about “evidence-based politics”. Yet, the powers that be in the PPEU and the PPI choose to disregard and dismiss the mounting evidence that the situation Palestinians have been placed in since the Nakba of 1948 is a brutal apartheid; that the occupation of the Palestinian territories is illegal; that the Palestinians are subjected to a legal system that treats them as second-class subjects and that they are citizens only in name; that Israel subjects them to arbitrary detentions and tortures them; that Israel’s government officials and prominent TV anchors call for a genocide, even for employing gas chambers[1] against the Palestinians.
This conduct of the PPEU and the PPI should come as no surprise; in the three-part “Quo Vaditis, Piratae?” series of official statements from our Governing Board, available in both Greek[2][3][4] and English,[5][6][7] we have documented, detailed, and highlighted a number of serious pathogenies and failings of our movement’s European and International bodies, as well as certain disgraceful incidents involving the PPEU’s “locomotive”, the PPDE. It must be noted here that, without the tolerance and – yes – complicity of other PPEU and PPI member parties, things would have been completely different. The sad reality is that none of the PPEU and the PPI’s Board members have had the rectitude and fortitude to take a stand. There seems to be a tacit agreement for Pirates to either stay silent in the face of unethical, unbecoming of a Pirate, behaviour and blatant deviations from humanitarian principles or resign.
Indeed, many high-profile, esteemed Pirates left the Pirate Movement because they could no longer tolerate behaviours like the ones we mentioned: Andrew Norton, Martin Delius, Felix Reda,[8] Florie Marie, Birgitta Jnsdóttir, Mikuláš Peksa, and so on. The ones who allowed, enabled, or even orchestrated the ethical and political decline remained and, infuriatingly, were essentially rewarded.
This brings us to the situation in Gaza and the rest of the illegally Occupied Palestinian Territories. The Boards of the PPEU and the PPI seem to treat the illegal occupation as legal, which is in and of itself a violation of resolutions of the UN General Assembly and UN Security Council. PPDE officials like Schoresch Davoodi even praised conservative German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’ intention to ignore the ICC’s arrest warrant against war criminal Netanyahu, shunning Germany’s obligations under international law.
As far as we are concerned, we did not stay silent. Furthermore, we filed a motion to the Council of the PPEU to condemn this genocide.[9] We were stonewalled with pathetic excuses, such as the claim that we cannot join the ever-growing throng of experts who speak of genocide, because Israel has not been convicted; or the notion that condemning Israel’s actions would somehow help Hamas, Iran or… Putin. And we are not even discussing the procedural abnormalities and violations that were employed by the Board of the PPEU to sabotage our motion. Frank Wijnans, the leader of the Dutch Pirate Party (Piratenpartij Nederlands – PPNL) and Mark Anthony van Treuren, its foreign policy officer, even went as far as to accuse us of “supporting terrorism” and “bullying” the European Pirate Party. They were duly called out for these actions on social media, by our own official account, i.e. by our Governing Board, not just by individual members. Later, on 12 May 2025, a group of PPNL politicians, led by Catharina Bethlehem and Matthijs Pontier, the PPNL ballot’s top candidate, moved to publish a statement condemning the genocide in Gaza and the silence surrounding it; this statement, however, had not been adopted as official party position.[10]
On 8 May 2025, we saw that Mr. Florian Roussel, chairperson of the PPEU, initiated a vote to refer one of our members to the PPEU’s Code of Conduct Committee for the “crime” of publicly calling party officials out for their public unethical behavior and for their public actions that have harmed the Pirate Movement, its reputation, and its credibility.[11] Mr. Roussel claims that public criticism of public behavior constitutes a “violation of privacy” and that it basically causes “emotional distress” to those criticized.
We have to inform Mr. Roussel and everyone in the PPEU’s Board and in the other Pirate parties of Europe that:
- alignment with a belligerent, racist, far-right regime is a violation of Pirate principles, even considering the neo-Lepenist “ni droite, ni gauche“[12][13] dogma that has played a pivotal role in the methodic and systematic ideological and moral derailment of our movement;
- alignment with a corrupt government that seeks, Orbán-, Trump-, Putin-, and Mitsotakis-like, to control and manipulate the judiciary is a violation of Pirate principles;
- alignment with an illegal occupation force is a violation of Pirate principles;
- alignment with an apartheid regime is a violation of Pirate principles;
- alignment with a government that imposes censorship of the Press domestically and internationally and, like Putin, proscribes, threatens, and persecutes its critics internationally is a violation of Pirate principles;
- adopting and amplifying racist, dehumanizing rhetoric and justifications for ethnic cleansing and genocide is a violation of Pirate principles;
- no one is exempted from criticism, private or public, for their public speech and actions;
- being mentioned by name for something one said in public and with their official capacity as a politician is no violation of their privacy;
- one can no longer expect to be taken seriously when they claim to be all about free speech, opinion and expression, when, in a vulgar display of anti-democratic, censorious, and unpirate attitude, they seek disciplinary action against Pirates, or even the general public, for criticizing violations and actions harmful to the Pirate Movement and/or incompatible with basic ethics, basic humanity, the Pirate Ideology;
- it is actions like the ones officially outlined by our party and individually by our members that reduced the PPDE to practical non-existence (0.03% in the 2025 German federal election) and cost the PPEU three of its four European Parliament seats;
- apartheid is Nazism, as Alpha Blondy had put it so succinctly – so is condoning, enabling, white/pinkwashing, justifying, and supporting it;
- accusing others of “supporting terrorism” because they recognize Palestinians (who seem to be viewed as Untermenschen by the Global North) as human beings whose rights must be respected is far worse than the fictitious “emotional distress” abusers suffer when others point out their public and well-documented failings;
- if someone is so thin-skinned, undemocratic, unpirate, and arrogant that, like Trump, Orbán, Putin, and Mitsotakis, they seek to punish, stifle, and censor criticism for what they say in public and for their public actions (especially with Mitsotakis-style passive-aggressive, gaslighting techniques such as claiming that criticism is “emotional violence” and “bullying”), they should stay out of politics altogether – and most certainly have no right whatsoever to be called a Pirate.
We, the Pirate Party of Greece, inform Mr. Roussel and the Board of the PPEU that the accusations he is referring to in his initiative are not made by “one member of the PPGR”; we unequivocally, unanimously, and officially call these officials out for their unethical and unpirate actions, as well as their fanatical support for a genocidal apartheid regime.
We inform him and the Board of the PPEU that we unequivocally, unanimously, and officially stand by not only our members who go out of their way to amplify our voice, but also everyone who is targeted for exercising their right to speak truth to power – Pirate or not.
What Mr. Roussel is doing here, violating every single democratic principle, is precisely this: an attempt to remove Pirates’ right to hold their leadership accountable. If Mr. Roussel wishes to force us, our members, and other Pirates into silence and make us Netanyahu’s accomplices, accomplices in war crimes and crimes against humanity, we refuse. If Mr. Roussel wishes to remove Pirates’ freedom of speech, opinion, expression, and criticism, we inform him that he is in blatant and clear violation of every single Pirate principle, and we unequivocally, unanimously, and officially condemn his censorious and dangerous initiative. On 1 June 2025, we are holding our 12th Congress. Mr. Roussel’s undemocratic, unpirate move, along with its implications, political, moral, and legal, shall be discussed there, along with everything we have witnessed so far in the PPEU and the PPI. Everything shall be laid bare before our members, who shall decide and determine our future relationship with the PPEU and the PPI – if there can be one. What is certain is that we are not going to follow Mr. Roussel and his supporters in this anti-democratic decline, or offer them any kind of legitimization.
We state that the Pirate Party of Greece has absolutely nothing to apologize or explain itself for. We consistently, unequivocally, unanimously, and in the most official manner stand for peace, human rights, democracy, transparency, accountability. We stand for a truly equal, rules-based international order. For everyone, regardless of color, race, origin or creed. We deplore and denounce those “Pirates” who are bringing infamy to the Pirate Movement by aligning themselves with racism and bigotry, with genocidal, dehumanizing rhetoric and far-right, totalitarian, Jim Crow-style regimes that pose an existential threat not only to populations whose lands they illegally occupy, but also to their neighboring countries. When even the conservative editorial board of the Financial Times condemns the West for its complicity in this genocide,[15] there are no excuses. There can be no spurious claims of “self-defense”, no amoral justifications derived from the obscene Realpolitik playbook that has plunged the world into a state of perpetual war, no Orwellian twisting of the meaning of words, and no daft theories about how “condemnation of Israel’s crimes would help Hamas/Iran/Putin”.
Furthermore, we have to remind Mr. Roussel, the Boards of the PPEU and the PPI, and everyone else that Pirates believe in diversity, equality, equity, inclusion, and social justice for all – regardless of color, race, origin, or creed. Pirates reject the notion of a racially and religiously homogeneous ethno-state. Pirates are not 4chan/8chan-grade trolls like the callous, racist, sadistic, and machiavellian “UK Lawyers for Israel” pressure group, who had the insolence to claim that Israel’s starvation of Gaza will “reduce obesity” among Palestinians.[15] Pirates do not apply double standards. Pirates do not accept the racist notion that any ethnic or religious group may be viewed as less worthy than any other. Pirates do not accept the notion that any genocide or ethnic cleansing can be excusable, justifiable, acceptable or tolerable, regardless of pretext. Pirates have always rejected the misanthropic cynicism of Realpolitik. Finally, if there is anything that the world ought to have learned from the Holocaust, it is that “Never Again” means “Never Again for ANYONE.”
Sources:
This statement was updated on 17 May 2025 to reflect recent developments, and on 1 August 2025 to correct spelling and add context on certain events.
