You have a good point. Although I doubt it’s worth the trade off. I think pirate party movements vs environmental movement is a good comparison. Pirate party-ism kind of died. Environmentalism lives on. Not saying it’s necessarily because of naming. But, I don’t think sounding like you’re “pro theft” helped.
Pirate party-ism kind of died.
Wouldn’t say so. They got more popular, they are just not as often mentioned in news as before.
In Russia for example Pirate Party was frozen becase during Putin’s reign it is unsafe(as in you will be killed or imprisoned) to register opposition. So currently PP works as Roskomsvoboda(PP’s project like EFF).
The negative connotation that you mention is the point of the trade off. On one hand it makes the message less appealing - because it’s using a symbolic name with a negative connotation.
On the other hand - the negative connotation makes it less likely that the symbols will be hijacked by opponents.
By example:
- Green movements don’t have symbols with such connotation. Opponents use green washing to hijack the movement.
- Pirate party movements do have names and symbols with negative connotations. If you’re working with intellectual property you don’t want to be associated with piracy. There’s no such thing as pirate-washing…(?) However, open source movements is a related phenomenon and a counter example. There have been examples of open source-washing. Companies that pretend to be open but they really aren’t really. Android and openai comes to mind.
When a movement is formed there is a possibility to build a narrative that is more or less desirable to hijack. Making it less desirable to hijack might make it less desirable overall. That’s the trade off.
