The 2024 ban on a popular, far-right German magazine known for its antisemitic and anti-Israel content was lifted by Germany’s Federal Ministry of the Interior and Home Affairs, the Federal Administrative Court announced.
COMPACT-Magazin GmbH and its subsidiary, CONSPECT FILM GmbH, were banned on June 5, 2024, because of their “fundamentally anti-constitutional stance,” among other reasons. As a result, the magazine was deemed to be opposed to the constitutional order and was prohibited and dissolved.
Then-interior minister Nancy Faeser called Compact “a central mouthpiece of the right-wing extremist scene,” which “spreads revisionist conspiracy theories that are antisemitic, racist, and hostile to minorities.”
The new ruling by the Federal Court in Leipzig on Tuesday, however, found the ban to be “unlawful” and lifted it.
The court released a statement saying, “The Senate reached this conclusion by reviewing and evaluating the extensive material from the Compact media and other documents submitted by the defendant. In interpreting the statements, the range of possible meanings had to be considered to protect the plaintiff’s right to freedom of expression.”
In an interview with Austria’s AUF1 TV channel on Tuesday, magazine owner Jürgen Elsässer said it was “an epoch-making decision” both in terms of “freedom of the press and also for Germany.”
“It has shown that media cannot simply be banned by the government; otherwise, there would be no democracy anymore.”
He added that not only are “other media safe from such blows” but that the ruling “helps the AfD because if you can’t ban Compact, you can’t ban the AfD either.”
What is COMPACT?
The magazine was established in 2010 by far-right figure Elsässer and produces a monthly magazine, an online video channel named COMPACT TV, and an online shop. He said the magazine has a circulation of 40,000.
In 2012, Elsässer made a formal state visit to Tehran, where he was hosted by then-Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
That same year, Elsässer expressed support for the annual, Iranian-regime-sponsored al-Quds Day rally in Germany, which calls for the destruction of Israel and is attended by Hezbollah activists, supporters of Iran’s mullah regime, and neo-Nazis.
In 2015, German authors Kevin Culina and Jonas Fedders published a book named United in the Enemy Image, which explored antisemitism in Compact.
The two authors examined every issue of the magazine, from the first in December 2010 to the March 2015 issue, for “forms and expressions of antisemitic resentment.”
Culina and Fedders said that even if Jews are not explicitly mentioned, Compact habitually uses patterns that “structurally resemble the logic of antisemitism in their specific argumentation.”
They specifically mention the use of antisemitic dog whistles such as “East Coast Establishment,” “British-American capital,” and “financial vampirism.”
The two added that in every issue, “the very existence of the Jewish state is attacked.”
A 2017 study by Marc Grimm and Bodo Kahmann deemed Compact the “journalistic flagship of antisemitic Israel-hatred and anti-Americanism in Germany.” Another study in 2022 by Jakob Andrae wrote that “antisemitism has attained hegemonic validity in Compact, through which it functions as connecting elements of various themes and strategies of the New Right.”
In 2020, Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service launched a probe into the magazine due to allegations that it disseminated xenophobia and conspiracy theories.
“The magazine uses revisionist conspiracy theory and xenophobic motives,” Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution President Thomas Haldenwang said at the time.
