Before the ban last month, few Germans had heard of Compact. Now the company claims: “Everyone wants a copy”

By Guy Chazan | Financial Times | August 16, 2024

Compact magazine website © Library of Congress

What was intended to be a decisive blow against right-wing extremism turned out to be another setback for the German government – ​​the latest in a long series of judicial defeats that have seriously damaged its credibility.

Last month, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser banned Compact, a controversial nationalist magazine that she described as “a central mouthpiece of the far-right scene.”

But on Wednesday, a supreme court lifted the ban – and Compact was allowed to appear again.

The ruling is an embarrassing blow for a government that has identified right-wing extremism as the greatest threat to German democracy – and is determined to eradicate it. The ruling by the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig on Wednesday discredits these efforts.

Faeser showed no remorse on Thursday. “We will not let up in our fight against the enemies of the constitution,” she said.

The interior minister, a leading figure in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party, quickly came under heavy criticism. Many saw the government’s legal setback as a gift to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which had vigorously opposed the ban.

The ruling came just weeks before important state elections in three eastern German states that are AfD strongholds.

“The worst thing is that she presents herself as the AfD’s best campaigner,” said Wolfgang Kubicki, deputy chairman of the FDP, the smallest party in Scholz’s coalition. “Ms. Faeser should consider whether she really wants to continue campaigning for the Alternative for Germany.”

Jürgen Elsässer, founder and editor-in-chief of Compact, described the verdict as “a victory of David over Goliath, a victory of democracy over dictatorship and a victory of the people over the regime”.

This is not the only defeat Scholz’s government has suffered in court. Last year, the Constitutional Court overturned the government’s budget on the grounds that it violated Germany’s strict debt rules. Last month, the court overturned part of Scholz’s reform of Germany’s electoral law.

But Faeser’s problems point to a larger problem: it is difficult for democratically elected governments to strike a balance between combating extremist views and protecting the fundamental rights enshrined in their constitutions.

The EU is in such a dilemma. Last month, the European Commission filed charges against Elon Musk’s X for allegedly violating EU law by allowing disinformation and illegal hate speech on the platform. Brussels has also launched proceedings against Meta and TikTok.

But EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton came under fire this week after he posted a letter online ahead of Musk’s interview with US presidential candidate Donald Trump threatening “full application” of sanctions if Musk failed to curb “illegal content” on X.

Critics said the letter had not been coordinated in advance with other EU commissioners and played into allegations by Musk and Trump’s campaign team that Brussels was trying to interfere in the US election.

Jürgen Elsässer, founder and editor-in-chief of Compact, described the ruling as a “victory of David over Goliath” © Swantje Stein/Reuters

When Faeser banned Compact in mid-July, hundreds of police officers searched the newspaper’s offices and confiscated documents and computers. The editors’ and publishers’ homes were also searched.

Faeser said at the time that the authorities were targeting “intellectual arsonists who are stirring up a climate of hatred and violence against refugees and migrants and want to overthrow our democratic state.”

Interior Ministry officials said the magazine spread “conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic, racist, historical revisionist and anti-minority content” and claimed that several Compact employees had links to the right-wing extremist party Die Heimat, a successor party to the neo-Nazi NPD.

However, Faeser was heavily criticized at the time because he had banned not the magazine itself, but the association of the same name that publishes “Compact” – an approach that some legal experts considered questionable and that could backfire.

But on Wednesday things got much worse for them when the Leipzig Higher Regional Court issued an interim injunction suspending the ban until a final decision in the case.

The judges expressed doubts as to whether the action against Compact was proportionate. Some of the articles published by Compact were clearly unconstitutional, but many were “harmless”. Faeser could have taken “less strict measures” than banning the newspaper outright, the judges added.

The Interior Ministry insisted that the materials presented to the court proved that Compact was “unconstitutional, aggressive and militant” and announced that it would “substantiate” its “claim” in further proceedings.

Activists for freedom of expression are dismayed by the injunction. “It is a double defeat,” said Miko Beuster, chairman of the German Journalists Association, on Deutschlandradio. “It is a defeat because the people who actually want to abolish our democracy are the ones who are celebrating. And it is also a defeat because it has destroyed trust (in the system).”

“If you ban something like this, it has to affect someone – but this ban has missed its target,” he added.

Before the ban, “Compact” was available online, in magazine and book stores and had a circulation of around 40,000 copies. But the magazine has long been in the crosshairs of German law enforcement authorities.

With its mixture of salacious gossip, anti-immigrant diatribes, climate change denial and Covid-19 skepticism, the magazine is considered a mainstay of the German New Right.

It included columns by Martin Sellner, an Austrian ethnonationalist ideologue who held secret meetings with AfD officials late last year to discuss the mass deportation of migrants.

During the refugee crisis of 2015/16, during which many Syrians came to Germany, a Compact author accused the government of “systematically flooding Germany and mixing its genes with foreign cultures in order to lower the general IQ of the population.”

One recent cover story was titled “War criminals: How German generals are planning an attack on Russia.” Another praised Maximilian Krah, the AfD politician accused of having close ties to China and Russia, with the headline “How patriots are being vilified as traitors.”

Editor-in-chief Elsässer wrote on the Compact website in June 2023: “We simply want to overthrow the regime.” His goal was to “restore Germany’s free democratic basic order,” Elsässer later said.

He also wrote about the alleged existence of a “globalist money aristocracy” of “bloodsuckers” with ties to the Rockefellers and Rothschilds – claims that experts consider to be classic anti-Semitic metaphors.

Elsässer was once considered by many to be a dangerous radical, but today he is enjoying his new fame: “Before Faeser’s attack, perhaps two million Germans knew us – today there are 60 million,” he said. “Everyone wants a copy.”

© THE FINANCIAL TIMES LTD 2024