Reykjavík Grapevine - 10.04.2015, Blaðsíða 6

6
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 1 — 20116 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 4 — 2015
Politics | The Pirates
Last week, a conservative parliamen-
tarian flipped the meme on its head by
casting aspersions on an organisation
with roots in post-collapse protests. In
a floor speech, Independence Party MP
Vilhjálmur Bjarnason called the Pirate
Party a group “which associates with
organised crime.” Given the Pirate
Party's origins and the trail of criminal
financial calamity that friends of the
Independence Party have left in their
wake, the irony was rich.
Whether a ham-fisted attempt at
humour or a genuine suggestion from
a government that has cited labour dis-
putes and the protests of 2008-2009 as
justification for arming cops with sub-
machine guns, the quip neatly tapped
into the mainstream of contemporary
Icelandic politics. The coalition gov-
ernment is stumbling from one crass
scandal to the next. The Pirates, mean-
while, have been channeling the popu-
lar wrath with aplomb.
Untainted by pre-collapse politics,
informed by the experience of the past
few years, the upstart party was, ac-
cording to an MMR poll in March, the
most popular faction in Iceland, with
23.9 percent voter approval.
“A serious matter for
the whole nation”
Public opinion over the past few years
might speak more to the coalition gov-
ernment's woeful shortcomings than
to a genuine rise in support for the Pi-
rates. In the aforementioned poll, the
Progressive-Independence coalition
government garnered just a 33.4 per-
cent approval rating, down from 50
percent in October 2013. In the same
time frame, support for the Pirates has
mostly, until recent times, fluctuated
between six and ten percent.
The Pirates' good fortune in the past
few months does, however, seem some-
what attributable to their responses to
government cock-ups. When the co-
alition found itself subject to intense
criticism after leaking false informa-
tion about the Nigerian asylum seeker
Tony Omos, for example, the Pirates
said they were considering introducing
a confidence vote on now-former Inte-
rior Minister Hanna Birna Kristjáns-
dóttir (she eventually resigned). In
response, Prime Minister Sigmundur
Davíð Gunnlaugsson mocked the Pi-
rates as “the biggest supporters of
leaks, legal and illegal”—a swipe at
some Pirate MPs’ Wikileaks past. The
party coolly replied with an acerbic
missive pointing out the difference be-
tween individuals and institutions of
state power. “It is a serious matter for
the whole nation that the Prime Minis-
ter does not understand what govern-
ment transparency entails,” the Pirates
said in a statement.
Similarly, in response to Vilhjálmur
Bjarnason's comments, founding party
member Smári McCarthy said the
party's name pointedly revels in its op-
position to stringent intellectual prop-
erty law, calling it a celebration of “a
movement of people ostracised by well
funded monopolists.” He urged Ice-
landers to see the insult for a ruse and
to consider the idea that “organized
crime is better recognized by patterns
than names.”
“Alternatively, we could look long
and hard at Icelandic society and ask
ourselves whether there are any well
funded monopolists engaged in any
activities that follow the patterns of or-
ganised crime,” he said through online
chat, from his current home in Sara-
jevo. “It's almost amusing how quickly
results crop up."
The Pirates have also profited from
the nature of the coalition's foibles.
Since they assumed power, the Inde-
pendence and Progressive parties have
enacted unpopular policies they didn't
campaign on in 2013—namely, the low-
ering of fees charged to fishing vessel
owners, cuts to social services, and an
attempt to unilaterally withdraw Ice-
land from European Union member-
ship negotiations. Whereas other op-
position parties have only taken issue
with official policy, the Pirates have
long intoned that betrayal is a feature,
not a bug, of the system.
In an email, Pirate MP Helgi Hrafn
Gunnarsson pointed out that it isn't
clear if the coalition's most recent high
profile disdain for popular opinion—
its executive initiative on the EU is-
sue—has driven disaffected voters to
his party's ranks. Either way, he sees
room for cooperation. “Whether this
is support for our cause, or discontent
with everyone else, the call is the same:
democratic reform,” Helgi said.
The party has been a strong sup-
porter of the post-crisis constitution
drafted by an elected council only to
stall in Parliament before the 2013 elec-
tion. Among its sweeping devolution-
ary provisions are stipulations that
essentially turn the
electorate into a fourth
branch of government.
Articles 65 and 66, for
example, set out a pro-
cess that gives voters
the power, via petition,
to demand referenda—
both on bills passed by
Alþingi and on voters'
own proposals.
If the Pirates had
their way long ago,
the coalition govern-
ment would have never
gotten away with its
shenanigans without
having its feet held to
the fire. Pirate MP Bir-
gitta Jónsdóttir said,
in the aftermath of the
polling news, that she
would be willing to
work with parties ded-
icated to both constitu-
tional reform and holding a referendum
on EU membership.
All in favour, say “Arr”
That, of course, is one answer to the
million krónur question: how will the
Pirates and public opinion polls con-
tinue to affect one another?
One worry on the mind of party
officials and supporters is how their
infrastructure will scale. Based on an
online system of constant feedback, the
Pirates' attempt to inject direct democ-
racy into its deliberative process could
mean the difference between lasting
success and going the way of protest
factions before it.
“Hopefully, we will manage to build
up our infrastructure alongside this in-
crease in popularity,” Helgi said.
Arnaldur Sigurðarson, member of
the Pirate executive council and wear-
er of many hats for the party, said that
the Pirates were gaining around 100
new members every day, around the
time that news broke of their plurality.
“Last time I heard we were some-
where between 1,300 and 1,400,”
Arnaldur said, via Facebook chat. In
September, when the Pirates were still
polling in the single digits, he said they
had about 800 registered members.
Gunnar Grímsson, one of the two
developers behind both Better Reyk-
javik and Better Iceland (online plat-
forms used by the city and national
government to solicit input on legisla-
tive matters) said that the importance
of the party's technol-
ogy can't be understated.
Spats about the online
platform Liquid Democ-
racy, he said, have con-
tributed to the Pirate
Party of Germany's woes
of late.
But equally im-
portant, Gunnar said,
will be to ensure the
quality of Pirate can-
didates by weeding out
opportunists, should the
Pirates find themselves
vying for a dozen seats
at the start of an election
campaign.
If the Pirates
aren't up to it, it's likely
some other entity will
prove itself an outlet
for anger. After the past
few months saw public
pressure force the resig-
nation of Hanna Birna—only the sixth
government minister in Iceland's his-
tory to step down—one gets the feeling
that even with the old guard back at the
helm, Alþingi, after 2008, continues to
be an exciting place for a strong chorus
of minority voices once shut out of pow-
er.
Sam Knight is a journalist based in
Washington, DC. He is writing a book
on the Pirate Party and post-collapse
political movements in Iceland.
If you've been online in the past seven years, you most
likely know that the world has a minor fascination with
Iceland's criminal justice system. A number of stories with
a varying degree of accuracy—some wholly false—have
gone viral, trumpeting Iceland's unique crackdown on
crisis-related corporate fraud.
Is Iceland
Under
Blackbeard's
Jackboot?
The Pirates are now
Iceland’s most popular
political party
By Sam Knight
Photo by Geirix
By Nanna Árnadóttir
NEWS
IN
BRIEF
CONTINUES OVER...
Whereas other
opposition parties
have taken issue
with the results,
the Pirates have
long intoned that
betrayal is a fea-
ture, not a bug,
of the system.
March saw an epic battle against
misogyny in Iceland when the hashtag
#FreeTheNipple took social media,
the country and eventually the world
by storm.
Shortly after an Icelandic girl
was cyber-bullied by a troll on
Twitter for a photograph in which her
nipples were visible, thousands of lo-
cal feminist activists posted photos of
their nipples on Twitter and started a
spirited and inspiring #FreeTheNipple
campaign against social media body-
shaming and double standards.

Even Björt Ólafsdóttir, an Ice-
landic Member of Parliament, exposed
her nipple on Twitter, writing, “This one
here is for feeding babies. Shove that
up your patriarchy.”
The campaign inspired “braless”
days at the University of Iceland
and junior colleges in the capital city
as well as a #FreeTheNipple pool night
at the Laugardalslaug swimming pool.
Iceland also hit the global news cy-
cle this past month when the ruling co-
alition handed the EU a letter announc-
ing the withdrawal of Iceland’s EU
member application, without run-
ning the decision by Parliament.
Icelanders on both sides of the
EU argument collectively lost their shit
since the ruling coalition had prom-
ised a democratic referendum on
the matter, had tried and failed to get
the withdrawal through Parliament,
then went ahead and did it anyway.
The move prompted thousands
to protest against the ruling coali-
tion, whose popularity has plummeted,
making way for the underdog Pirate
Party—who have become the most
supported political party in the country,
according to a recent MMR poll.
Much to our Foreign Minister’s
dismay, the EU has said that the letter
doesn’t really count as an official
application withdrawal.
Pictured: Pirates Helgi Hrafn Gunnarsson, Birgitta Jónsdóttir, and Jón Þór Ólafsson.