Pirate Party "Right Wing" ideas thread

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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8 posts were split to a new topic: Religion, what is it and how should we relate to it?

I moved the religion side-track to its own thread because it had nothing to do with the topic at hand.

:slight_smile:

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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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Basic Income probably allows removal of the minimum wage.
Not having a minimum wage seems to be a right-wing tribal touchstone, hence the relevancy to this thread.

Economic argument: there are some people whose hourly value is genuinely below the minimum wage. Therefore, setting one locks these people out of employment.

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Mark, your opinion is a good example of how easy it is to fall into the EXTREME Islamist trap. All those things you said are all values of EXTREME Islam, not Moderate Islam. We would not have the slightest interest in appeasing Extreme Islamists (for all the reasons you said and more).

The problem is that Extreme Islam is dominating the headlines of ALL Islam, they are deliberately blurring the lines to make us think that ALL Islam is extreme and thus drive a wedge between non-Muslims and Moderate Muslims (harassment, etc).

Their strategy is to drive disillusioned and vilified Moderates towards the Extreme where they are waiting with open arms to give them a sense of belonging and a free suicide vest.

Refugees are particularly vulnerable to being turned extreme as there is so much fearmongering against them, which is fueled by the extremists committing terrorist attacks, and so it feeds into a loop.

I don’t differentiate between extreme and moderates out of Political Correctness, but out of practical need to actually fix the issue. If we let the extreme win and turn moderates against us (because we turned against them) then we are stuffed!

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Simon, I agree. I referenced “militant islam” rather than “extreme islam” but I think we are talking about the same thing. I assume you also don’t want to attack islam in our policies.

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Yep, I think so. I guess I’m trying to be very careful to differentiate the difference to make the position clear, because I’m mindful that this is a public forum also Google indexed and I wouldn’t want someone else to stumble in here and get the wrong idea of what myself or anyone else in the party are trying to say when making an opinion about us. Sorry if sounds like I’m picking at your wording

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I’m a fan of Islamic banks. Interest on loans is haraam so their reconcept of loans is much simpler and more humane, tending to work out like a middle-man purchaser to enable buying in installments.

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Actually, lets look at some data on that …
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/22/muslims-and-islam-key-findings-in-the-u-s-and-around-the-world/ seem to have some pretty broad data on the subject from around the world.
Maybe Pew Research are a bad source. I don’t know. Tell me if you know better.

However, based on that research, support amongst the Muslim/Islamic adherants for Sharia Law as the law of the land seems to be quite low in Southern-Eastern Europe and Central Asia, but surprisingly high in South-East Asia, South-Asia, the middle-east/North Africa (except Lebanon), and sub-Saharan Africa (except Tanzania).

Given that these numbers for some countries are as high as 90+%, it would be unreasonable to characterise this view as being representative of only extreme or militant parts of the religion, unless you wanted to also represent the entire religion as such.

Given that the polls also say that the majority of Muslims disapprove of ISIS, I would say that the majority are also not militant/extremist.

That leaves with the position that a large proportion of the Muslim population, who are not really extremists at all, are still in favour of Sharia Law.

I’m not advocating ANY position as a consequence of the above. Just looking at data first.

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I don’t disagree with the data. Lets put this into the context of Australia. If we let just anyone in who wants to come in, we could in practice be overthrown by believers in Sharia Law. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn’t, but it’s possible.

I don’t think that’s in the best interest of the existing inhabitants of our country or our pirate values, so I would not want this to ever be possible.

But our values also call us to be fair. Maybe it’s the 10% who are trying to run away from the Sharia system who wants a chance who get painted with the same brush as the rest. That’s not fair. Maybe it’s the practical reality that not everyone can be helped, I accept that too - we need to be fair to ourselves also.

Maajid Nawz has the answer. Look up his videos. Seriously. If we can challenge their thinking and bring them to an understanding of Islam which is compatible with living in our neck of the woods (some some people already here could use a dose of this too) then I don’t think that we would have a problem.

Then is it a matter of having a program to educate and immerse incoming migrants and refugees about cultural difference and what is expected of them?

solution to this is to enforce a fee for anyone who subscribes to a religion. The fee will then be transferred to the church or mosque that they are registered to.

If they consider their god to be more important, then they need to pay their fair share to their local church or islamic mosque.