German Interior Minister bans AfD-adjacent "right-wing extremist" magazine, raids homes of editorial staff, seizes assets, in the latest effort to defend democracy by abolishing democratic freedoms

Compact editor-in-chief Jörgen Elsässer opens his door to masked special operations police this morning, following the Interior Ministry ban on his publication.

Compact was a German magazine founded in 2010 by the former leftist Jürgen Elsässer. With a circulation of 40,000, it was a vocal supporter of the nationalist wing of Alternative für Deutschland. In December 2021, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution declared Compact to be a “confirmed right-wing extremist” publication, and today Nancy Faeser, the Federal Minister of the Interior, banned it outright. Early this morning, police raided Compact editorial offices and also the homes of Elsässer, his employees and shareholders.

Within hours of the raids, Faeser offered this statement:

Today I have banned the right-wing extremist Compact magazine. It is a central mouthpiece of the right-wing extremist scene. This magazine incites unspeakable hatred against Jews, against people with a history of migration and against our parliamentary democracy.

Our ban is a hard blow against the right-wing extremist scene. The ban shows that we are also taking action against the spiritual arsonists who are fuelling a climate of hatred and violence towards refugees and migrants and want to overcome our democratic state. Our signal is very clear: we will not allow ethnicity to define who belongs to Germany and who does not. Our constitutional state protects all those who are treated with hostility because of their faith, their origin, the colour of their skin or their democratic stance.

I would like to thank the security authorities at federal and state level for their closely coordinated and consistent measures. I would particularly like to thank the forces who have been searching various properties since the early hours of the morning

Faeser claims the authority to ban Compact via Article 9 of our Basic Law and §3 of the Vereinsgesetz, or the German law on associations. Both allow the prohibition of “associations whose purposes or activities … are directed against the constitutional order”; the latter grants the Interior Ministry the authority to decide on such bans and to confiscate the assets of prohibited organisations. This is a well-known tactic for evading our constitutionally guaranteed freedom of the press, and the Interior Ministry has used it before – but, as far as I know, never against a periodical with the reach or political significance of Compact:

It is not often that the state bans a newspaper or magazine. This is because the Basic Law guarantees freedom of the press. The Ministry of the Interior has previously used a ban on associations as a kind of workaround. In January 2016, the neo-Nazi website Altermedia was taken offline in this way. In August 2017, the radical left-wing website linksunten.indymedia was hit. In February 2019, the Federal Ministry of the Interior banned a publishing house and a music production company associated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which had already been banned. This publishing house was also a limited liability company – just like Compact-Magazin GmbH is now.

The Ministry have enacted their ban a mere seven weeks in advance of the state parliamentary elections in Thüringen, Saxony and Brandenburg. Alternative für Deutschland are the strongest-polling party in each state, and now Faeser has deprived them of what she believes to be their “central mouthpiece.”

To give you some impression of the wide-ranging and authoritarian nature of this ban – which prohibits the reproduction of logos and images associated with Compact, extends to the termination of private social media accounts and even the confiscation of payments owed to third-parties – I translate the official announcement in full:

Federal Ministry of the Interior and Homeland

Announcement of a ban on the associations “COMPACT-Magazin GmbH” and its sub-organisation “CONSPECT FILM GmbH”

From 5 June 2024

Pursuant to Article 9(2) of the German Basic Law in conjunction with Section 3 of the Associations Act of 5 August 1964 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 593), which was last amended by Article 5 of the Act of 30 November 2020 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 2600), the Federal Ministry of the Interior and for Home Affairs issues the following order:

1. The association ‘COMPACT-Magazin GmbH’ including its sub-organisation ‘CONSPECT FILM GmbH’ is opposed to the constitutional order.

2. The association ‘COMPACT-Magazin GmbH’ and its sub-organisation ‘CONSPECT FILM GmbH’ are prohibited and will be dissolved.

3. It is prohibited to provide, host, operate or continue to use the following online accounts of this association:

-Homepage: https://www.compact-online.de

-Homepage: https://www.conspect-film.com

-YouTube: COMPACTTV

-YouTube: JürgenElsässer7613

-Telegram: COMPACT-Magazine

-Telegram: COMPACTTV

-Telegram: COMPACT.DerTag

-X (formerly Twitter): COMPACTMagazine

-TikTok: compact.magazin

-Gettr: compact

-Facebook: compact.tv

-Facebook: Conspect Film GmbH

-Instagram: Paul Klemm

-VK: COMPACT-Magazine

-WhatsApp: COMPACT

That’s right, Paul Klemm and Jürgen Elsässer just had their personal Instagram and YouTube accounts terminated by a direct order of the German state.

It continues:

4. It is prohibited to form substitute organisations for the association ‘COMPACT-Magazin GmbH’ and its sub-organisation ‘CONSPECT FILM GmbH’ or to continue existing organisations in the form of substitutes.

5. It is forbidden to use the logos and branding of the association ‘COMPACT-Magazin GmbH’ and its sub-organisation ‘CONSPECT FILM GmbH’ for the duration of the enforceability of this ban in public, in meetings or in writings, via sound or image platforms, and in images or representations that are distributed or intended for distribution.

There follows a list of the forbidden logos and images, which I won’t reproduce here, because that is literally illegal now.

6. The assets of the ‘COMPACT-Magazin GmbH’ association, including its sub-organisation ‘CONSPECT FILM GmbH’, are confiscated and appropriated in favour of the Federal Government.

That’s bad enough, but if you’re a third-party who expects payment from Compact for services rendered, you’re also out of luck. The Federal Republic is taking that too:

7. Third-party claims against the association ‘COMPACT-Magazin GmbH’ or its sub-organisation ‘CONSPECT FILM GmbH’ shall be confiscated and appropriated in favour of the Federal Government insofar as the nature, scope or purpose of such claims constitute intentional promotion of the unlawful efforts of the association ‘COMPACT-Magazin GmbH’ including the ‘CONSPECT FILM GmbH’ attributable to it or insofar as they have been established, to withdraw assets of the ‘COMPACT-Magazin GmbH’ association, including the ‘CONSPECT FILM GmbH’ attributable to it, from official seizure or to reduce the value of the assets of the ‘COMPACT-Magazin GmbH’ association, including the ‘CONSPECT FILM GmbH’ attributable to it. If a creditor has acquired such a claim by assignment, it shall be collected insofar as the creditor was aware of its status as a collaboration claim or as a bypass claim at the time of its acquisition.

8. Third-party property shall be confiscated and appropriated in favour of the federal government if the entitled party has intentionally promoted the unlawful activities of the association ‘COMPACT-Magazin GmbH’ or its sub-organisation ‘CONSPECT FILM GmbH’ by transferring the property to them or if the property is intended to promote these activities.

9. This order is promulgated for immediate execution. This does not apply to the confiscation orders in numbers 6, 7 and 8.

But what is Compact magazine, you ask? They must be really bad, right? Well, this hostile German Wikipedia article compiles many of the magazine’s alleged sins against all that is right and good. Below I translate representative excerpts, so that you can form your own opinion:

The editorial team saw Compact as a counterpoint to the allegedly “synchronised” media landscape of “standardised media.” This self-image culminated in the advertising slogan “Courage to tell the truth” and “Read what others are not allowed to write.” According to its self-image, the magazine was “the sharp sword against the propaganda of the empire,” a “weapon called knowledge, forged from ore economic and intellectual independence.” The creators of Compact traced the cause of alleged media censorship to the supposed hegemony of the USA in Europe and the alleged lack of sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Germany as an independent state with its own constitution. The magazine equated fascism with Zionism and trivialised concentration camps by applying the term to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo …

From mid-2013, Compact adopted the slogan “Courage for Truth,” which the AfD also uses as its motto. Elsässer initially distributed the magazine at AfD party conferences. In spring 2015, he decided to turn the magazine into an election campaign paper for the AfD. Since the refugee crisis in Europe in 2015 in particular, Compact has regularly advertised AfD politicians and their positions on its front pages and in themed issues …

In 2016, Elsässer wrote in Compact on the election of the avowed Muslim Sadiq Khan as mayor of London that it was “first and foremost this suicidal liberalism that is gradually turning London into a non-European city.” In the September 2016 issue, Compact published its own dossier on the far-right Identitarian movement. Elsässer declared its leader Martin Sellner to be a “new Rudi Dutschke.” In 2019, Compact published a special edition entitled “Höcke: Interviews, Talks, Tabu-Breaking.” In the same year, a special edition dealt with the alleged “Deep State,” a “network of secret services, business bosses, stock market gurus and left-wing media,” as Elsässer claimed on YouTube. Also in 2019, the magazine featured a cover picture with an imperial eagle enthroned on the Green Party logo instead of a swastika, together with the headline “No people, no empire, no diesel – the eco-dictatorship of the Greens.” In issue 4/2020, the magazine ran the headline “They’re coming! The new flood of asylees in the wake of Covid”; the tagline for this issue claimed that “further facts for population replacement are being created” in the “slipstream” of the virus.

… In April 2020 … Elsässer wrote about an alleged “Covid dictatorship,” which was actually about “destroying unproductive capital” as in the world wars; he also said the North Rhine-Westphalian Minister President Armin Laschet spoke “like Adolf Hitler to the last Volkssturm contingent.” The magazine quoted more and more voices saying that the virus was in fact “not particularly dangerous.” On Compact TV, the Haldensleben ophthalmologist Markus Motschmann claimed that it “looks like” the population was to be “gradually introduced to somehow authoritative, dictatorial repression”; the mask mandate in shops was just a test of obedience by the federal government. On YouTube … Elsässer described the demonstration in Berlin against the coronavirus measures on 29 August 2020 as the “most important date since the Second World War.” In 2020, a Compact special issue was published with the title “Die Querdenker – Love and Revolution,” which presented Covid protesters and their initiatives. In the editorial, Elsässer wrote that in the “Merkel state,” “the politburo of virologists decides, and the central committee of the prime ministers nods everything through.” As a result of the “mask imperative,” men and women are now “[even] more heavily veiled than under the Sharia regime [...]” …

In early 2021, Elsässer described the storming of the Capitol in Washington as the work of “great patriots” … He added, however, that the “storming of a parliament [...] to initiate a revolution” must be better organised. When it comes to “overthrowing the regime”, “a plan and a kind of general staff” are needed.

Compact frequently warned against Zionists and pro-Israeli organisations and used invoked stereotypes like the “East Coast establishment” and “financial vampirism”; it also referred to French President Emmanuel Macron as “Rothschild’s president.” Jews were accused of “profiting” from the Holocaust. At the end of January 2021, the magazine titled an online article: “Rockefeller, Bill Gates and Davos: How the elites are working on a global vaccine passport” …

In August 2021, the magazine published an issue entitled “The Gay Republic.” It spoke about the importance of the family, the alleged effeminisation of society and gender reassignment as a purported symptom of personality disorder, as well as making further homophobic and anti-LGBTQ claims …

After the Russian attack on Ukraine at the end of February 2022, Compact wrote that Putin was “hated by the West because he represents a counter-model. He is a patriot and not a hater of the fatherland, he rejects multi-culturalism and gender stereotyping.” In March 2022, the magazine published a special edition entitled “The Enemy Image of Russia” to provide information about the “background to the current propaganda” against Moscow. In May 2022, Compact wrote that “global elites” were pursuing a “Great Reset genocide” …

The cover of the December 2022 issue featured the politician Sahra Wagenknecht … under the headline “The Best Chancellor.”

Following the attack on Israel by the terrorist organisation Hamas on 7 October 2023, Compact distributed a video entitled “Israel: Not our war!” on its YouTube channel. This video claimed that “Israel would never have been able to prepare this ground offensive without this attack, which raises the question of whether the whole thing was staged.” It also stated that, after “the enthusiasm for the war in Ukraine” waned, “the German government wants to lead [us] into the next slaughter.”

Now, probably nobody will agree with all of the theses here ascribed to Compact. I certainly don’t, but then again I know that none of my readers agree with me on all matters either. This is about freedom of expression, not which views we find most persuasive or sympathetic, and I have provided this polemical exposé above all to make one point: Compact is not some strange extremist outlier, nor is it the Völkischer Beobachter risen from the grave. It is entirely typical of alternative political discourse across the West – a discourse that exists in varying forms on both the left and the right in all of our countries. There is the constant, running critique of “global elites,” who are seen as the cause of Western political pathology; the populist rejection both of Islamisation and of LGBTQ ideology; a certain scepticism of Israel and Zionism; and a general questioning of the establishment stance on the Ukraine war. Millions of people adhere to some version of some of these views, and the question is not whether they are right or wrong, but what it means that the Interior Ministry has decided these widespread sentiments are basically illegal.

German politicians appear to be caught in an ever-escalating authoritarian spiral. This spiral originated with repressive efforts to stifle critics of the Covid response after 2020, when our domestic intelligence agency first took aim at “delegitimisers of the state” and declared Compact and Alternative für Deutschland politically suspect. Alas, repressive measures never have the near-term political effect that their proponents imagine, and so those bureaucrats and politicians who have assumed responsibility for neutralising “the right” must escalate and escalate. The same dynamic characterised the pandemic response, but in this case it is far more dangerous, because “the right” is not going away, and a lot of this hamfisted repression will merely increase popular sympathy for its positions.

You can never have a partial censorship regime directed only against whatever it is that “the extreme right” is imagined to be. Over time, the impression arises that as-yet uncensored outlets enjoy the tacit approval of the censors, which drives the bureaucrats and the politicians to censor ever more widely. The prospect of arbitrary political repression emanating from the Interior Ministry will also increase the pressure to destroy political opponents, as the establishment must fear that these same tools will wielded against them if they ever fall from power. As Zeit journalist Lars Weisbrod posted this morning (in a since-deleted Tweet captured here), “It’s interesting to wake up and realise that an AfD Interior Minister could simply have my newspaper editorial office raided and banned at any time? I’d somehow imagined the rule of law differently.”