Marcel Winatschek

Hail to Our New Masters

People couldn’t be bothered to vote. Too drunk, too stoned, too lazy—take your pick. Everyone was begging them to show up, and most still couldn’t manage to shuffle into a voting booth. The turnout was pathetic.

The country voted for a conservative coalition of nuclear-power enthusiasts and military hawks. The parties talking about free speech and open internet went nowhere. At least a million internet kids voted for the Pirate Party, which is something. I’ll give them that.

But what comes after—that’s harder to joke about. Surveillance, censorship, the state slowly tightening its grip. This dispatch probably ends up in the way of whatever comes next. Anyone writing here becomes a target. I used to treat these predictions like dark comedy, the paranoid game of guessing what an authoritarian government does once it settles in and feels bold. Doesn’t feel like a game anymore. Hail to our new masters.