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This is actually quite funny because this is
one of the keys towards how can we get so
much influence with just 4 % of the votes. In
Sweden there are two blocks. They’re always
quite tight in parliament, which means if a
small party would come in and put a wedge
in between the two blocks, that small party
would have the power of determinating who
would be the next prime minister. So that’s
our plan, we are getting in there, we have a
narrow agenda by design. So, we’re saying:
ok guys, here is what we want, whoever gives
us this will have our support on all other issues.
As I said, these issues are so peripheral
to the other politicians just wouldn’t care
about them. They would surrender them
in a heartbeat to get their budget, health
care, defence, school policy and so on and
so forth. So this is key to how we can be so
influential with just 4 % of the votes, just one
in 20 voters for us, even less. In the meantime,
now in between the elections, we are
talking a lot, as much as we can, to the other
parties. What’s important for us is that the
questions are coming to parliament, that
the issues are understood and either that we
educate the other politicians about them, or,
failing that, that we carry the issues there
ourselves, which is our current chain of
thought. The issues must get into parliament
and right now we are trying as much as we
can to talk to other politicians in other parties.
For instance, the youth leagues are very
understanding all our issues, they are fully
on board.
The subtitle of the “Next Step Politics!?”
event held in June in Vienna was “Pirates
to Brussels 2009?!”. Will it happen? Do
you expect to see Pirate Party in European
Parliament in 2009?
Oh, it’s going to be tough. It’s definitely going
to be tough. But then again, everything
that we have done so far has been hard bor-
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dering on impossible. So that’s almost kind
of our signature. Do I believe that we can do
it? Yes. Do I believe it’s going to be an easy
sail? Not at all, it’s going to be very tough.
But we are having the plan of getting there
and I think it’s realistic.
In the statement on PP web site you said
that because of the very particular issues
the Pirate Party stands for, which are
copyright, patent abolition and privacy
concerns, you cannot be placed on the
traditional political scale of left to right.
Are you a trans-ideological political
party?
This was actually explained to me by a Danish
guy, it was kind of funny that he came
and explained to me the historical perspective.
At the dawn of democracy there were
conservatives and liberals who were opposed
to each other, there was nothing else.
And so when socialists arrived on the stage,
conservatives and liberals both became
sort of the guardians of the present, with
the socialists being the radicals, being the
reformers, being the opposition, being the
other pole. So it was the old conservatives
and liberals versus socialists, who were new.
And at that point the differences between
the conservatives and the liberals didn’t really
matter anymore. Just a few decades ago
the greens came on stage. At that point the
guardians were the old, conservatives, liberals
and socialists against greens, who were
the radicals, who wanted to introduce new
values into the debate. And so, could you
place the greens or just the ecology movement
as such on a left or right scale? Well in
some countries they picked up a position on
the left-right scale, in other countries they
didn’t. In other countries yet you have two
green parties, one on the left and one on the
right side. What we’re seeing now is that now
we’re trying to make a fuzz, now we’re try-