Hail the New Regime

First, a note for everyone who didn’t vote: go find a bouncer you trust and request a broken nose, because the turnout was, to use the technical term, an embarrassment.

What the election produced: a majority for Germany’s conservative-liberal coalition—the CDU/CSU, center-right Christian Democrats with a fondness for nuclear power and military engagement, teaming up with the FDP, nominally libertarian and in practice allergic to anything that might complicate the state’s relationship with the internet. For anyone who cares about digital rights, free speech, or the general principle that governments shouldn’t be allowed to censor and surveil networks because they find them inconvenient, it’s a sobering result.

The one genuine bright spot: the Pirate Party pulled nearly a million votes. That’s a real number. The internet nerds organized, showed up, and registered on the national electoral map. Whether it amounts to anything is a different question. Meanwhile I’m taking bets on how long before this journal gets flagged by the incoming surveillance apparatus. Hail the new rulers. Hope they’re busy with other things for a while.