Germany bans right-wing Compact magazine and searches properties

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By Miranda Murray and Swantje Stein

BERLIN (Reuters) -Germany banned the right-wing Compact magazine on Tuesday, accusing it of being a “mouthpiece of the right-wing extremist scene” and inciting hatred of Jews and foreigners.

Stepping up the government’s fight against what it says is a surge in far-right extremism in Germany, the interior ministry said Compact had been working against the constitutional order and ordered property searches in four states.

Compact magazine, widely seen as a mouthpiece of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party’s radical wing, has a circulation of 40,000 and a wide-reaching social media presence. The ban also applies to Compact’s subsidiary, Conspect Film, and prohibits any continuation of previous activities.

Searches of the magazine’s office as well as the homes of its top figures, management and leading shareholders in Brandenburg, Hesse, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt were aimed at seizing assets and other evidence, the ministry said.

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

Faeser has described right-wing extremism as the greatest threat to German democracy as mainstream politicians struggle to respond to a rise in the popularity of the AfD before elections in eastern Germany this year.

Compact magazine’s editor-in-chief, Juergen Elsaesser, said the ban was “dictatorial” and represented the worst attack on German press freedom in decades.

“You are treating us like a mafia, like a terrorist group. But we are a legal press organ with a clean criminal record,” he told Reuters TV. “This makes it clear that the only aim is to destroy the opposition and us as the strongest media. We are already in contact with lawyers.”

The AfD’s co-leaders also condemned the ban.

Compact’s website was no longer accessible in Germany but its accounts on social media platforms were still accessible.

RIGHT-WING TIES

The interior ministry said the monthly magazine, founded in 2010, was a central part of the New Right network and had close links to the Identitarian Movement and other far-right groups.

The magazine was designated as a proven right-wing extremist publication by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency in 2021 for disseminating conspiracy theories, anti-vaccination propaganda and antisemitic and Islamophobic narratives.

Advertisements for the magazine’s summer festival on July 27 highlight the presence of Maximilian Krah, an AfD politician whose refusal to condemn all members of the Nazi paramilitary SS under Adolf Hitler led to the AfD being kicked out of the right-wing Identity and Democracy group in the European Parliament.

Hans-Christoph Berndt, the AfD’s leader in the Brandenburg regional parliament, linked the timing of the ban to September elections in three eastern states, including Brandenburg.

Media bans are relatively rare in Germany, which places a high value on press freedom and ranks 10th out of 180 in Reporters Without Borders’ world press freedom index.

Compact can appeal against the ban at the Federal Administrative Court.

The head of the German Journalists Association (DJV), Mika Beuster, said he expected any court to uphold the ban.

“In my opinion, what Compact is doing has nothing to do with journalism, it is conspiracy-ideological, it is … definitely right-wing extremist,” he told the RND media group.

($1 = 0.9179 euros)

(Reporting by Miranda Murray, Swantje Stein, Andreas Rinke, Matthias Williams; Editing by Lincoln Feast, Timothy Heritage and Gareth Jones)