The Political Director—that is, the person who effectively runs the organization—of Germany’s up-and-coming Pirate Party is a Russian Jewess who emigrated to that country in the 1990s, loves Israel and intends to visit the Zionist homeland as soon as possible.
The Piratenpartei’s most prominent face is Marina Weisband, 25, an article in the Times of Israel has announced.
“She was born in Kiev and like tens of thousands of other Russian-speaking Jews, immigrated to Germany in the 1990s.
According to the article, the Pirate Party movement has gone global, with official chapters from Bosnia to Bolivia. A product of the Internet era for young people disenchanted with traditional politics, the parties’ positions are not entirely clear but generally demand more direct democracy, a reform of copyright and patent laws, freedom of information, and personal privacy.
In recent days, Weisband — who doesn’t keep kosher but goes to synagogue almost every Friday night — was interviewed by countless German media outlets.
Excited about a party that promises to shake up the country’s political landscape, they all wanted to hear what she has to say about what observers dubbed the party’s “neo-Nazi problem.” Over the last few weeks, some members have caused several scandals with controversial statements.
Party member Bodo Thiesen, for example, is said to have repeatedly denied the Holocaust and blamed Poland for World War II, and party official Kevin Barth tweeted that he generally finds Jews “unlikable.”
There were other similar cases, leading the head of the party’s Berlin chapter, Hartmut Semken, to lament that he can’t bear any more calls for the party to distance itself from such views.
Asked by the Times of Israel: How big is the Pirate Party’s neo-Nazi problem, Weisband said: There is none. We have about four or five people with extreme right-wing views, who express their ideas within the party. That’s not a lot among 23,000 members.
The bigger problem in my eyes is that some Pirates — it’s just a minority but still — say these ideas are covered by the freedom of opinion, that such people should be allowed to speak their minds freely.
That’s the problem we’re having, although the majority of the party is on my side, which is that freedom of opinion is something the state has to guarantee but not every individual party. We need to exclude these people from the party as far as that is legally possible.
Wherever it’s not legally possible, we need to isolate them.
It’s really just a few people. The actual problem is that they aren’t sufficiently excluded, that they are not being fought strongly enough politically. That’s also something that we’re making efforts to advance. It really needs to be said that in the history of German political parties we’re probably the party with the smallest Nazi problem.
If you look at the Greens, when they were founded they had an incredible amount of former SS members. We also have our fair share of idiots, and in my opinion we have to oppose them assertively.
What about party official Martin Delius? He likened the Pirates’ quick rise in popularity to Hitler’s National Socialist Party between 1928 and 1933. He didn’t make any comparisons regarding the parties’ platforms but he still drew the ire of many outside observers and party members.
Those who are now taking advantage of this are simply engaging in a power struggle. Of course the comparison was really stupid. But regarding the content it was absolutely harmless. He might as well have said that we’re using pants just like the Nazi party did, or that we have belly buttons just like the Nazis did. While it was foolish I cannot suspect him of having neo-Nazi attitudes. He himself was active in the Antifa [a leftist group fighting neo-Nazism and racism].
I know him well. On Holocaust Remembrance Day we were together in Berlin — it was a foolish slip for which he immediately apologized and consequently withdrew his candidacy for the federal board. In my eyes that’s a poised way to deal with a mistake.
Have you ever been to Israel?
Not yet. This spring I finally wanted to visit, but the work I do for the party destroyed my plans. My mother also keeps on raving about Israel and wants to send me there all the time.
