We present ourselves as supervillains. We have several good reasons for this, as well as a few bad ones.
What other politicians do
Every normal politician optimizes their image. The hair is perfect, the answers sound reasonable, the mistakes disappear from the press release. That's rational — for the politician.
For the citizen, it's not. You get a good feeling, but not good governance. And the feeling lasts until the next headline.
Why we deliberately cast ourselves as the bad guys
You can't fall back on identity politics when your identity is "supervillain." Nobody votes for us because of our image. We have to deliver on substance, because that's our only option.
Precisely because we're supervillains, we have to deliver the best analysis. Otherwise we're just clowns.
Odysseus had himself tied to the mast so he could resist the Sirens. Not because he was stronger, but because he removed the option of becoming weak. We call ourselves the League of Evil so we can't retreat into identity politics.
(For the curious: Thomas Schelling won the Nobel Prize for this concept. It's called a "commitment device" — you bind yourself to a strategy in advance to prevent future temptations.)
We create incentives for other politicians
They have to engage with our arguments, because scoring points on a rhetorical level is not an option.
Anyone who tries to beat us with rhetoric is arguing with a guy standing on stage in a cape. You can't win that.
If they argue reasonably, so do we. If they start using rhetoric, we flip the table.
Nobody wants to stand on a podium next to a supervillain and be the more emotional one of the two.
It's marketing. And it's fun.
We'd prefer it if the quality of arguments alone were enough. But in politics, unfortunately, it isn't, and marketing is a necessary evil.
Other politicians tell half-truths to make a good impression. We make a clear separation between aesthetics and methodology instead: our supervillain image is marketing, and has nothing to do with the quality of our arguments.
The aesthetics are deliberately separated from the methodology. It's on us to prove that there's more behind this than a joke.
And since honesty is a core pillar of this party, we'll admit another reason: it's fun. Dr. Dubium has always wanted to be an officially recognized supervillain. Going into politics was the obvious next step.
"Ok, but where does AI come in?"
You can't lock 20 people in a room and have them work through a question from every angle for five days. You'd get a call from the ethics committee.
With AI, you can.
-> Here's what that looks like in practice.
What sets you apart from other protest parties?
Die PARTEI
Die PARTEI makes fun of politics. We replace politics with methodology.
Both look similar from the outside. But: Die PARTEI has absurd positions. We have a process. Die PARTEI wants to entertain. We want to analyze — and be entertaining while doing it.
Piratenpartei
The Piratenpartei failed due to the transparency paradox: all internal conflicts became public — turning into a media spectacle. We publish the analysis, not the drama.
-> More about us