German right rails against banning of magazine

Run by a former left-wing journalist, the far-right mouthpiece Compact has been banned by German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser. She sent out a press release early on July 16 saying the ban was on the grounds that Compact "is a central mouthpiece of the right-wing extremist scene."

"This magazine incites hatred against Jews, people with a migration background and our parliamentary democracy in an unspeakable way," the statement added.

Just a few minutes before Faeser's statement was released, German media outlets had reported on police searches in several German states. Jürgen Elsässer, who founded the publication in 2010 and has been its editor-in-chief ever since, was also interviewed in front of his offices by German TV channel N-TV. He described the decision as "the worst invasion of press freedom in Germany."

The latest report by Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, devotes a page to the multimedia company, which is based in the Berlin suburb of Falkensee. According to the publisher, the circulation of the printed Compact edition was around 40,000 per month, while the number of subscribers to the YouTube channel was said to be significantly higher: 250,000 (in 2023), though some estimates put it as high as 345,000.

The outlet is seen as part of a New Right "resistance" movement. "The main feature of many of the articles published is the agitation against the federal government and the political system in general," the BfV wrote.

Links to the Identitarians

The BfV report also said that Compact exploited conspiracy theories to agitate against state institutions and Germany's pluralistic society: "Historical revisionist content and antisemitic narratives complement the agenda."

In addition, the BfV found links to right-wing extremist groups such as Germany's branch of the Identitarian movement and the regional far-right party Freie Sachsen ("Free Saxons").

It was the BfV's findings that prompted Faeser to decide to take Compact out of circulation. She described those running the magazine as "intellectual arsonists stirring up a climate of hatred and violence towards refugees and migrants, and [wanting] to overcome our democratic state."

Until the channel was taken down this week, the Compact YouTube channel often displayed videos with sensationalist headlines about violence allegedly committed by people of color.

Compact often conducted interviews with politicians from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), especially Björn Höcke, its leader in the state of Thuringia, who has already been fined twice this year for publicly using a banned Nazi slogan.

Former communist Jürgen Elsässer

Elsässer is a suspected right-wing extremist who, as a young man, was part of the radical left-wing spectrum. Once a member of the Communist League who wrote for its newspaper Arbeiterkampf, the now 67-year-old later became a journalist for several left-wing media outlets, including the former East German state newspaper Neues Deutschland, where he condemned what he called US imperialism.

Elsässer appears to have flipped to far-right populism in the mid-2000s, when he gave interviews praising the French National Front, and accused the government of using state money to promote multiculturalism. In 2009, during the financial crisis, he founded a "people's initiative against financial capital" that was meant to unite far-left and far-right organizations.

Reactions to Compact ban

Reactions to the Compact ban have been mixed. Martina Renner, domestic policy spokesperson for the socialist Left Party in the German Bundestag, welcomed the measure, saying that Compact had placed itself in the service of the AfD and had contacts with extreme right-wing media abroad.

"The network of anti-constitutional publishers, right-wing millionaires and authoritarian states must be brought to light and the money flows for potential follow-up projects must be dried up," said Renner.

Predictably, the AfD had a very different view. In a statement, the recently re-elected party leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla described the ban as a severe blow to press freedom.

"Banning a press organ means refusing discourse and diversity of opinion," they said, before accusing Faeser of abusing her powers to suppress critical reporting.

The president of the Thuringian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Stephan Kramer, welcomed the measure.

"The ban is consistent and urgently needed in the wider state fight against the right-wing extremist scene," Kramer told the media network RND.

This article was originally written in German.

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