Activism in the 21st Century

Activism in the 21st Century

By Simon Frew

The Political Situation

Computer technologies are having a large impact upon how politics operates in the 21st Century. The rise of file-sharing and the social media has fundamentally changed how culture is disseminated. I realise that I am preaching to the converted as it was these changes that initially provided the conditions that spawned the Pirate Party. The aim of this discussion paper is to illustrate our role in modern politics and look at some of the ways we can work to grow and affect change in the coming year and beyond.

The Main-Stream Media (MSM) developed a near-monopoly over the dissemination of information in the 20th Century. This meant that by the end of the century politics was an attempt to do something that the MSM would report on, as it was the easiest way to get information out. The ability to reach large audiences required access to industrial scale technology, printing presses, TV and radio stations, an amount of capital that excluded all but a select few from being able to express their views to broad audiences. The average media consumer could comment through Letters To The Editor, but for the most part it was a one-way form of communication.

This had effects on what was reported as the media was funded mostly by advertising and companies could threaten to withdraw advertising if negative stories were run. Mainstream politicians developed ways to garner support from the MSM and politics was carried out largely within this framework. PR firms, focus groups etc. were used to sculpt messages that played well to the public.

The internet fundamentally changed this dynamic. Over the last 20 years or so, we went from a society where industrial production was required to reach a large audience, to a society where people can choose their news sources from literally thousands of sources around the world; including their own contributions through websites or blogs.

The social media has amplified this, so if the content is meaningful to a broad spectrum of people it can reach an audience similar in size to a story in the mainstream media. Everyone can now reach a global audience with their thoughts and ideas. There is no need to shout futilely at the TV any more as that can be done with some tangible effect on Twitter. A commentary of the MSM's coverage of events can be made by who-ever feels a need.

The major political Parties in Australia have yet to grasp this change in the media landscape and continue to play the game of packaging their activities exclusively for the MSM, not taking into account the sustained commentary by many ordinary Australians. A few politicians in both major parties have understood the importance of the social media, with Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull ironically being the two stand-outs.

This is part of the reason that politicians are seen to be in the pockets of large corporations. The media has to convey an opinion that advertisers want (being the people paying for the content), so politicians have to play to that audience as much as the electorate. The threat of negative coverage can sway a politician as much as negative popular opinion. Another reason is the hefty donations many companies make to the government. In regards to copyright reform, over the last few years there have been large donations from companies like Village-Roadshow to the ALP.

We come up against both of these pressures in our campaign for a free culture. It is part of the growing political power of large corporations, where politicians serve corporate interests against the interests of the majority of their electors. This growing corporatism is becoming more and more obvious and has given rise to a fight-back. This is taking many forms; from #OccupyWallSt to Anonymous, from Wikileaks to the Pirate Party itself.

Of course, Copyright is the example of this corporatism closest to our Piratical hearts, where the interests of record labels and movie studios trumps the interests of the rest of us. They continue to clamp down on sharing because it is only though the imposition of draconian copyright laws they can hope to survive against the nominal cost of reproduction afforded by digital technologies. They aim to legislate their way back to the 1980's, where they had an iron grip on the worlds culture, when controlling the physical production of media actually mattered.

The impact of the social media has been felt most strongly in the places where information has been most tightly controlled, most notably with the Arab Spring. This is largely because authoritarian regimes rely on media censorship to control the political message and therefore their MSM is more widely discredited than the MSM in the West (which seems hell-bent on heading the same way).

That said there are limitations to what the social media can achieve. During the Egyptian revolution Intelligence officials would monitor social media sites to know who to arrest, some activists used aliases and Virtual Private Networks to avoid attention and broadcast info to the wider world, but social media sites became too dangerous as tools for communication amongst ordinary people. Iran has an extensive censorship and control regime to keep a lid on social communications. It is excessively brutal and repressive and comes at a significant cost to Iran, that much information available to people in the rest of the world is blocked. China's censorship regime is not as repressive as Iran, they often turn a blind eye to people using VPNs so Chinese scientists, academics etc. can access quality info from the rest of the world. It is aimed at limiting access to outside info, not cutting it off completely.

During times of crisis it is possible for some governments to enforce wholesale censorship, it comes with serious political and economic consequences for the regime. While Iran successfully cut the internet during the elections in 2009, in Egypt and Tunisia the internet was cut off too late, protests already gripped the country and all cutting off the internet did, was give people an extra excuse to go out and protest.

Alongside the Arab Spring there has been the rise of Hacktivism. Anon and LulzSec being the most famous proponents. Hacktivism is probably best defined as "the non-violent use of illegal or legally ambiguous digital tools in pursuit of political ends". Punishments for engaging in Hacktivism are disproportionate to the actual crime. DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks are the virtual equivalent to a sit-in, yet people found to participate can face serious penalties. Up to 10 years jail for participating in an attack, although Judges seem to understand the heavy-handedness in that and actual punishments meted-out are much lighter.

While the Pirate Party aims to achieve our aims through participation in the political system, many Hacktivists share our goals. I propose that as part of our platform we call for legal punishments for hacking to fall into line with the real world equivalents. However this is a secondary issue, with the copyright lobby and US government both driving for a clamp-down on file-sharing, attacks on civil liberties continuing and governments still operating behind closed doors, but where time permits and issues come up, we should throw in our 2 cents.

Activism Within the Pirate Party

We have engaged sporadically in activism as opportunities have presented themselves. The first campaign we engaged in was against the Internet Filter. This was a messy campaign for a number of reasons. The Digital Liberties Coalition had started the campaign against the filter, which culminated in a small protest at Parliament House in Canberra. It was felt that the Canberra protest harmed the campaign because the small attendance was able to be used to discredit the movement.

The filter died off in the news for a while as other issues came to the fore. When it returned to the agenda in 2010 a plethora of anti-filter groups were started on Facebook etc. We called a public meeting in Sydney and started the Sydney Anti-Filter Coalition, people around Anon and 4Chan started Block The Filter (BTF). Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA), being the peak lobby group for the digital sphere took the lead and set up a coalition incorporating the different committees that had sprung up.

Having learned that small protests were harmful we wanted to avoid repeating the same mistakes. Despite this there were a few small protests, including a 6 person march down Martin Place and a smallish Barbeque in Parramatta organised by BTF. We organised an action called Gag The Filter where about 15 people walked around Sydney gagged, and distributed info about the filter. This was organised to be positive even with a small number of participants. Another successful activity we undertook was David Campbell's presentation on how to circumvent the filter for Exit Australia, the right to die campaigners.

One of the main reasons nothing large was able to get organised was that the EFA were only interested in demobilising the movement and directing energy into fundraising for their advertising campaign. This marked the beginning of a decline in the influence of the EFA. We have attempted to work with them on a number of issues, but they aren't interested for some reason. We will continue to try where we can, but it seems they will continue their slide into irrelevance.

We were quick to get involved in the defence of Wikileaks both hosting a mirror of the site when it was closed down and helping organise protests in its defence. We took part in what was to be a broad coalition, but it rapidly became us and the various Socialist groups. We were able to keep the message about transparency and free speech, despite attempts to turn it into a general critique of capitalism. The marches looked a bit like May Day at times, with all the Che flags etc. but the media focused more on the pirate flags as we weren't the 'usual suspects.'

The socialists actually create issues for any street protest because they fill the space with their branding and their peculiar ideology. Being proponents of free speech it is hard, if not impossible to stop them, but they do scare a lot of people off. On the flip side, they are very good at putting up posters and handing out hundreds of flyers, which reach many people we don't, as we are much more reliant on the Internet. I don't have any solutions for this, other than to keep trying to organise creative actions where we can, they really prefer traditional protests as they are the most conducive for their campaigning. We need to hold them at arms length where we can and work with them when we have to. Over time we will hopefully grow to the point where we can publicise in the real world as well as we do online.

There was some success with our World Intellectual Property day action. We made a 'Pirate Sampler' of Creative Commons music and distributed CDs on the street in Sydney. This action was used to highlight Creative Commons as an alternative to the antiquated copyright system. This is something we should aim to do on a larger scale in the future.

Most of our members are studying at University. We should use this to build our profile and membership. It doesn't require much effort to advertise our existence, an hour walking around sticking up posters will reach literally thousands of students, if the posters are striking enough. Being the Pirate Party we can make good use of Piratical trappings like the Jolly Roger, so our posters will stand out.

I propose that immediately following the congress we start a committee of all interested Pirates (particularly students) to start working on having a presence on as many campuses as possible next year. Where Pirates are working alone, we should send out posters so they can stick them up around their campus, advertising our existence and our website so anyone interested can join. Where we have a few Pirates we should aim to run O-Week stalls. Where we have the people interested, the time and the Universities allow it, we should aim to form Pirate Party student clubs.

I propose that from the beginning of Autumn semester we start putting together Pirate Sampler Volume 2, for distribution on campuses and download by torrent. This will give clubs a task to get them started on their careers as notorious Pirates.

A lot of the solutions for today's problems are technological and skills based. We are one of the few organisations that grasps the possibilities that information technologies can offer. Passing on our skills and tools to broader organisations, NGO's and movements, builds the basis of our politics, where information is free and organisations are transparent and democratic. Our workshop on how to circumvent the internet filter for Exit International was a sterling example of this.

I propose that we aim to hold workshops that promote practical solutions for social movements in terms of anonymity, security and transparency. We should do this where feasible because a lot of what we want to achieve politically can be implemented through people having the skills to look after themselves. For EG using encryption makes intercepting communications much more difficult and undermines policies that allow governments to systematically monitor their citizens communications. Generalising encryption skills amongst civil society severely limits the damage to our civil liberties inflicted by agreements like the European Cyber-crime Convention.

Undertaking these tasks will help our membership to get involved in campaigns, attract new members and build our profile more broadly. This will put us on a firmer footing heading into the future.