Far-right Compact Magazine Banned

Jürgen Elsässer’s Compact Magazine Banned Today in Unusual Step

Right wing media on display

A visitor to a major newsagent in a German city could – until recently – face a prominent promotional display of right wing and far right magazines, such as Cato, Compact, Deutsche Stimme, eigentümlich frei, Junge Freiheit, Krautzone, Preußische Allgemeine, Zuerst! as well as more personality centred projects like the “liberal-conservative” Tichys Einblick and the “neo-reactionary” Tumult. These outnumber the left and far left publications (1).

Earlier today, on July 16, 2024, the most popular of these, Compact, along with the associated Conspect Film GmbH, was banned by the interior minister Nancy Faeser. Police raided offices and premises in several German Länder. Its website was switched off and all further activities prohibited.

Compact was a glossy monthly magazine published by Jürgen Elsässer, who has a long history on the far left, but – first gradually, starting in the mid-00s, then rapidly – switched to the far right. He co-founded Compact Magazine in 2010. Originally it was meant to bring together far left and far right forces against “the system”. Since then the magazine had become one of the mouthpieces of the far right wing of the party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). It was classified as ‘proven far-right extremist’ (‘gesichert rechtsextremistisch’) by the internal security services, the Verfassungsschutz in December 2021.

Multi-media strategy

Compact’s media strategy was a combination of the monthly paper edition (estimated monthly circulation: 40’000), special editions on various topics as well as a YouTube channel with 335’000 subscribers (July 16, 2024) and a Telegram channel with 62’599 followers. Elsässer & co complemented this with organising conferences and events and showing presence on the street at rallies and demonstrations. This included the “anti-war” demonstration against the war in Ukraine and for a new “peace movement” called by Sarah Wagenknecht and Alice Schwarzer, where Elsässer tried to show a presence.

They also ran an online shop and successful fundraising campaigns. According to taz, the turnover of the business in 2021 was 6.8m euro with a 390’000 euro profit.

One of their more outlandish fundraising activities was the minting of silver coins, which were then sold at a big profit through the online shop: The last one came out only days ago – a “Trump Hero Medal”. Other silver medals glorified Björn Höcke, the far right AfD leader, and “Druschba” – the friendship between Germany and Russia.

Social media

Facebook and Instagram had already deleted the pages of the magazine in 2020. Their TikTok channel was deleted soon after.

Anti-fascist groups had been campaigning against the magazine as well. It was no accident that Elsässer was pictured on the front page of the Antifascist Info Bulletin’s edition about “Information War from the Right” in Winter 2023/24.

As recently as July 13 a coalition of Anti-fascist groups staged a demonstration in front of Compact headquaters in Falkensee (Havel), just outside of Berlin.

But it was the fact that some of the main distribution chains of newspapers and magazine took Compact off the shelves in February 2024 which started to affect its capabilities to reach and agitate the masses. The company Valora (press chain “Press & Books”) taking the lead, several of the main outlets followed suit and pulled the title from their shop.

The total ban by the interior minister however came somewhat surprising. taz quotes the interior minister: ‘“This magazine incites hatred against Jews, against people with a history of migration and against our parliamentary democracy in an unspeakable way.” The ban shows that action is also being taken against “intellectual arsonists” who fuel a climate of hatred. “Our signal is very clear: we will not allow ethnicity to define who belongs to Germany and who does not”.’

Predictably the far right – including the AfD leadership – see it as an attack against press freedom and freedom of opinion. Already before the ban, Elsässer was talking about the attempted “extermination” (Vernichtung) of Compact by the state on one of their daily videos on YouTube.

Jürgen Elsässer’s shift from left to right

Jürgen Elsässer was born in 1957 and has been active in politics since the mid-70s. He was a member of the organisation Kommunistischer Bund, where he became elected to the leadership in 1989. The KB was originally one of the so called (broadly Maoist) K-Groups, but became an organisation of the unorthodox Marxist left during the 80s.

When the KB split over issues of how to deal with the newly united Germany, Elsässer initially sided with the anti-German minority. He was writing for the KB’s central organ Arbeiterkampf (Workers Struggle) before the split, then for Bahamas, konkret, Junge Welt. When Junge Welt split in 1997, he was one of the co-founders of Jungle World.

In the context of the wars in Yugoslavia, especially the war in Kosovo, he increasingly sided with the Serbian nationalist side, which lead to him being sacked from konkret. He gradually withdrew from his erstwhile anti-German convictions and increasingly adopted positions which were consistent with reactionay – but still “left-wing” – anti-Imperialism.

Enamoured with dictators

He became enamoured first with Milosevic, then Ahmadinejad and finally Putin, Trump and Orban. His world view became more and more dominated by far right conspiracy narratives, anti-Americanism, and anti-Semitic stereotypes of a ruling financial elite.

When congratulating Ahmadinejad to his “election victory” in Iran in 2008, he wrote about the Iranian opposition: “Disco chicks, Tehran drug junkies and the rent boys of finance capital want to party here. It’s a good thing that Ahmadinejad’s people are a bit vigilant here and have sent some of them to a darkroom.”

Being taken to the “darkroom” by Ahmadinejad’s henchmen meant imprisonment, abuse and torture for many oppositionists.

To me this quote was revealing what a nasty person Elsässer is. This was also the point in time where he was getting directly involved with the further-and-further political right.

Against the “regime”

In recent years, especially during the Corona pandemic and since the Ukraine war, he kept stepping up his “revolutionary” rhetoric, calling for an overthrow of the “regime”.

After newsagent chains Valora and Dr. Eckert pulled Compact off their shelves, the chain Relay has extended this to other far right titles. This includes eigentümlich frei, Junge Freiheit, Zuerst! – all of which have quite different backgrounds and developments. Relay also pulled “History” magazines like Ritterkreuzträger Profile and the Deutsche Militärzeitschrift from their shelves.

It is unlikely that this is a prequel to more government bans in the right wing media-scape. The step to ban a publisher is very rarely taken. Last time this happened was in 2019 against a Kurdish publishing house accused of being a PKK front.

Free speech absolutists will decry the ban of Compact, and they themselves as well as the wider far right will be trying to portray themselves as victims of a woke authoritarianism.

I am not an advocate of censorship or state intervention. However, if Elsässer & co were successful with their “regime change”, would they defend our right of free expression? History shows, no they wouldn’t. More likely they would cart us off to some darkroom.

So let them whine, they don’t deserve our sympathy.

Christoph Fringeli

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