Indeed, I just wanted to correct what appeared to be an implication that the Pirate Party has shied away from ideas that are ‘politically incorrect’, when the reality is that it’s a case of ‘no one has bothered yet’ or ‘no one cares enough to bother’.
Ok, seems as we are being politically incorrect;
Religious freedom
Region really should be discouraged, it cant be stopped, because people can think what they want, but it should be taxed, and there should be restrictions on teaching it to children. (they need to learn critical thinking first)
I suspect a lot of religious people consider their god to be more important than the government, thats a bad thing, religion preach their own set of values and rules that are not always consistent with Australian law. It confuses the rule of law, it divides society.
I see religion as an early for of government, it had its time, but its just not needed in the modern world. Most of them are well intentioned and they do good charitable work, but they should be able to separate their charity work from the religious work.
Tax religion, dont teach it to kids.
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What drives people to the ideas behind Brexit, Trump and One Nation (The Liberal Party is well behind in the polls) is the loss of economic security that has come with casualisation, the reduction of tariffs and the general attacks on working conditions that have featured in the last 20 years of politics in the West. As Waleed Ali explains in ‘US election 2016: It’s not about racism or sexism, it’s about class warfare’ people have lost their full time manufacturing jobs with health insurance and decent pay for shitty casualised jobs for low pay. It makes it harder to get loans, to pay for your kid to go to college etc. For these people the future looks darker than their past.
This is what drives them to people like Trump, he offers someone to blame (immigrants). His criticisms of Clinton’s economic policies are otherwise spot on. Free Trade Agreements like NAFTA gutted the US manufacturing industry and Clinton was likely to sign the TPP (which we have opposed) this promised more pain to those who had already suffered under NAFTA. His solutions are likely to be smoke and mirrors and not much is actually likely to change for his supporters as a result of his election, but we’ll see…
The political Establishment such as Clinton, both major Parties in Australia, Blair’s New Labour in the UK offered more trade liberalisation, greater inequality, dwindling public services, a continued push for the sell-off of public assets, none of which address the dislocation that plagues the former middle class. People rightly see the cosy relationship between corporate interests and political elites and the shift in wealth distribution to the top and get really angry because they are excluded from not only the economy, but the political process.
There are progressive options for these issues, in the US there was the massive support for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries (which were clearly rigged against him), there is Jeremy Corbyn in the UK who has managed to seize control of the Labour Party against the economic conservatives who have run the Party since the time of Blair. Importantly for us, in Iceland there is the Pirate Party.
The Icelandic Pirate Party offers the best guide for us, having a lot of luck pushing for government transparency and more democracy in the face of corruption and economic thievery. Our policies like Universal Basic Income are aimed in the right direction too. We can do more work on this, but I am not entirely sure what off the top of my head.
Whenever I hear someone railing against political correctness I hear it as code for ‘I want to be a bigot without someone calling me out for it’.
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All for taxing religion, the not teaching it to kids bit is too authoritarian for me. How could it be enforced without mass surveillance and massive opposition from all religious people? Totally not worth it IMO. I suggest if you want to debate this specifically, you start a different thread.
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I did say it was politically incorrect.
It couldnt be enforced privately, but it could be addressed in the education system.
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I dont disagree, but we should be willing to listen to people with dissenting opinions. If people dont talk about their differences, they dont resolve them.
The left is all about inclusion and tolerance, but we dont always extend that to people who disagree with us. I think thats part of the reason for ‘the deplorables’, if both sides stay in separate bubbles nothing gets resolved.
From the point of view of the Australian Political landscape i think there is a lot of value in the PP trying to be a center libertarian party, not left or right.
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I don’t oppose their right to say racist shit, I however have no interest in listening to it. When it gets to harassment, I stop supporting their right to speak. Just because you have a right to speak does not mean I have to listen.
We have our own platform that addresses the political corruption, crony capitalism, gutting of the social safety net etc, all of which makes for a positive alternative to the racist crap being pedalled by Trump and Co. What we don’t have is the free media access, both Hanson and Trump have used free media access to get where they are. Trump with the Apprentice and Hanson with her regular spot on the Today show. If we could somehow get that sort of media coverage, we could build a plausible alternative on the minds of voters.
I don’t know how you approach politics, but I am here because the Pirate Party represents my views and values as it exists today. I have no interest in selling out my beliefs for power, if I wanted to play that game I would be in the ALP already.
Our members joined because they support the politics of the party, significantly changing what we stand for will throw all of that loyalty into doubt. Our ability to do stuff is based on people who believe in our platform wanting to do stuff to make it a reality. Mess with what we stand for and our support will evaporate like the Australian Democrats or the Wikileaks Party.
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And you dont have to, but maybe someone does.
We on the left tell people we are about tolerance and inclusion, so when we ignore them they are right to think of us as hypocrites. We marginalise people we disagree with to deny them the benefits of inclusiveness, expecting that will weaken them, but they still get to vote.
It depends what you mean by ‘listen to’, if you mean address the underlying concerns that drive the support for overtly racist candidates, sure… If you mean trying to appease the racist ideas, then you are creating a situation where you can’t help but wedge yourself.
To go down that path is to lose the votes of people who come from ethnic minorities, who vote for progressive candidates in large numbers because they aren’t stupid and won’t vote for people who use them as convenient scape-goats. Meanwhile the actual right wing racist Parties will continue to attract the committed racist vote.
Then there is the fact that we are a progressive party and we should, as decent human beings, oppose bigotry.
I hope I am simply expressing the bleeding obvious but it seems to me that the “smartest” approach lies somewhere between Glenn and Simon’s above. We ought to be aware of viewpoints other than our own even even if we ultimately assess them as unacceptable (for arbitrary degrees of repugnance.)
Surely the surprising nature of recent events reflect the extent to which both the media and the public have been living within their bubbles, ignorant of the extent of opposing views? I certainly have.
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To go down that path is to lose the votes of people who come from ethnic minorities, who vote for progressive candidates in large numbers because they aren’t stupid and won’t vote for people who use them as convenient scape-goats. Meanwhile the actual right wing racist Parties will continue to attract the committed racist vote…
however, there are also some people from migrant groups who bring conservative values with them and are attracted to conservative parties.
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You probably don’t realise this but you have just confirmed my fears. Please note I wrote “be aware of” NOT “accept”.
If the response to a controversial issue is simply to go “ewww!” and then ignore it then the opportunity to establish policies and arguments to combat it when the other side brings it up have been squandered.
Ever heard of “forewarned is forearmed”? Or even more simply “be prepared”?
Okay, well let’s have a look at the stats.
Exit Polls
You can chose the election up the top to see how the data changes, although previous elections have different data points.
US Demographics
The demographics data provides snapshots, that last being in 2010, so not showing the most recent developments, but useful for overall trends.
A discussion of the demographics of Trump voters.
There is a lot to go through there, but the exit polls and the discussion of the demographics of Trump voters are probably most relevant for us. We should probably do a similar process with the Australian electoral data at some point.
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I wouldn’t draw any solid conclusions about anything based on the outcome of the US Election…
The electoral college has been a broken system for at least a hundred years if not more, both major party candidates are the most hated presidential candidates in recorded history, neither candidate got more of the popular vote than Romney did when he lost to Obama, Clinton won the popular vote leading to fallout but she won it by a smaller margin than Gore won the popular against Bush. It was an absolute shit-show of broken American democracy.
The only thing I think could possibly be taken away from it is that economic issues override every other issue, Trump quite clearly courted the bigotry vote (as pretty much every Republican has done for decades, usually subtler) but it ultimately didn’t dissuade more general support because he also presented himself as a fighter for the economically disadvantaged which Clinton just didn’t do enough of to convince anyone that she would do the same.
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I moved the religion side-track to its own thread because it had nothing to do with the topic at hand.
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I, for one, was unsurprised by the US election result.
This article is similar to some of the articles shared earlier, but comes from a more personal perspective.
(Following comments assume the you have read the article.)
I think it may be more productive to think in terms of “What do we have to offer these sorts of people?” instead of “What right wing ideas can we adopt?” We want to win people over. We don’t want to compromise our values. How do we fight for the economically disadvantaged? How do we grow the economy of the country and small towns.
One thing I know we can do is to truly stand up for their right to free speech. After all, free speech is one of the top priorities on our platform. Give them room to spout their ideas, even if only to refute them. When we refute them, don’t do it mockingly. When Danny Nalliah gets tried for vilification of Islam (this happened before we existed, so we could not actually be involved), We should be the ones offering to donate to pay for his lawyer. I’m not privy to what Nalliah actually said, but as a free speech defender, it shouldn’t matter. He should be allowed to say it.
When Uthman Badar is meant to give a talk (at the Festival of Dangerous ideas no less) entitled “Honour Killings are Morally Justified”, and the public outrage is such that the festival organisers feel compelled to cancel that talk, we should be writing editorials in support of his freedom to give the talk and the festival’s right to host it. Honour killings are morally reprehensible, and I don’t understand why anyone would do such a thing. That is the very reason I want to hear what Badar has to say.
When the Border Force Act threatens detention centre workers with jail for speaking out about the abuse they see, we should be the ones defending them in editorials and donating for their lawyers.
Likewise when Rob Pyne proposes the “Health (Abortion Law Reform) Amendment Bill 2016” which would ban anti-abortion protests within a “protected area” (this example is Queensland specific), we should stand up for their right to protest, even though our policy is to offer baseline abortion services nationwide.
For reference: our policy on abortion
Why Rob Pyne’s proposal is likely unconstitutional
Our Marriage policy is excellent in this regard. It strongly supports LGBTI rights, without impinging on the free-speech rights of conservatives/the church/etc who believe that gay marriage is wrong. It won’t force churches to perform gay weddings, which is, from what I gather, their second main concern after the apocalyptic collapse of society. A Christian friend of mine actually first got me interested in the Pirate Party specifically because of how fair this policy is to both sides of the gay marriage debate. I don’t know how to make this policy better known or to bring other parties into line, but we can definitely make our other policies this balanced.
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Without rehashing one of the major breakdowns of that WG, one of the other serious problems there is that it is such a widespread problem that multiple people trying to work on it encountered trigger issues. Real trigger issues that really made it hard to continue the work (especially when running into that major breakdown that I don’t want to rehash).
Thread derailed for a second time!
On the Domestic Violence working group, I got the impression from researching government policy that we couldn’t offer much that the government weren’t already trying. The only thing I thought we could cover was restoring and providing funding for shelters and other NGOs tying to help the victims of domestic violence, including ensuring money is set aside for male victims too. NGOs dealing with domestic violence suffered from cutbacks since the election of the Liberal government.
Governments are treating the problem very seriously and they are talking to experts about what to do, which is pretty much our approach.
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I’ll just mention on domestic violence that the policy was completed but not presented for adoption for the reasons Frew already noted. The only idea we really had beyond what’s already being looked at is basic income, which is a very good way to break the financial dependency which underpins a lot of violence. But basic income is already in the policies, so the new DV policy wasn’t going to add a lot.
I also want to pick up on the idea that we could or should oppose militant Islam more explicitly. I know some of the left are seen as appeasing when it comes to oppressive religion. But as it happens, islamists would get very little joy from our platform. They want to force blasphemy laws on the world; we want to get rid of blasphemy laws and protect free speech unreservedly. They want a society segregated on gender lines; we oppose any right for that to ever happen in public facilities. They want religion in government; we don’t. And so on.
But we’re not for these things because we oppose militant Islam - we are for them because they are important universal values. We would be for them even if Islam didn’t exist. If we make this about opposing Islam (as opposed to supporting universal values) we diminish our message and make it divisive. So, I’d prefer to keep any reference to any particular religion firmly out of the platform.
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