Revenge Of The Netizens (DER SPIEGEL ONLINE 8/7/2009)

Online Activists Take On Germany's Political Mainstream

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With just weeks to go before Germany's national election on Sept. 27, political parties are alarmed at the rise of a new wave of Internet activists
who do not support any of the established parties. Here, supporters of the Pirate Party, which wants freedom on the Internet, protest in Berlin against a
planned ban on violent video games.

By Marcel Rosenbach and Hilmar Schmundt (DER SPIEGEL)

As Germany heads into national elections, established political parties are trying to appeal to Web-savvy voters using Facebook and Twitter. But their Internet policies are alienating bloggers and activists, who are using the medium to protest against the political mainstream.

Green Party politician Matthias Güldner, 38, isn't exactly a household name in Germany. Or rather he wasn't, until last week.

But then Güldner, who is floor leader for the Greens in the parliament of the northern city-state of Bremen, published an opinion piece in the conservative daily Die Welt in which he sharply criticized what he called the "unbearable lightness of the Internet." In doing so, he clashed with his own party, which holds the position that things cannot be liberal enough on the Web. He raged against the "glorification of the Internet" and, in a reference to the micro-blogging Web site Twitter, fumed that some of his fellow party members have apparently "twittered their brains away," judging by how little concern they apparently have for the limits of law and decency.

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