Germany moves against free press,  bans Compact magazine

 

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By Anne-Béatrice Clasmann, dpa I Tuesday, July 16, 2024

 

BRANDENBURGERMAN –  Interior Minister Nancy Faeser has banned the magazine Compact, considered “a mouthpiece of the far-right extremist scene,” her ministry said on Tuesday.

Affiliated production company Conspect Film GmbH has also been banned, according to a statement.

Police have raided the outlet’s premises in Falkensee, just outside Berlin, as well as the homes of leading managers and shareholders in the states of Brandenburg, Hesse, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt to confiscate assets and evidence, it said.

Faeser justified the ban by saying that Compact is a “central mouthpiece of the far-right extremist scene.”

“This magazine incites hatred against Jews, against people with a history of migration and against our parliamentary democracy in an unspeakable manner,” the minister said.

Compact is a monthly political magazine led by editor-in-chief Jürgen Elsässer, who likes to incite his audience at events with slogans like “Americans go home” and “Friendship with Russia.”

The magazine’s leading figures maintain contacts with important figures of the far-right scene.

In its online shop, the outlet offers a coin with the image of Björn Höcke, a firebrand politician from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) who was recently convicted and fined again for using a banned Nazi slogan.

Germany’s domestic intelligence service, known as the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, classified Compact as a proven far-right extremist publication in late 2021, saying the magazine spreads “anti-democratic and inhumane” positions.

Faeser said the ban shows “that we are also taking action against the intellectual arsonists who are fuelling a climate of hatred and violence against refugees and migrants and want to overcome our democratic state.”

In order for an organization to be banned in Germany, it is not enough that it propagates an anti-constitutional stance, but it must do so in an aggressive and militant manner.

In its statement, the Interior Ministry cited fears that readers and viewers of Compact content could be incited and encouraged to carry out anti-constitutional acts. Compact publications “aggressively propagate the overthrow of the political order,” it said.