Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) has banned the far-right "Compact" magazine, a company that insults ministers as "criminals" and describes itself as the "voice of resistance". The most important questions and answers about the ban:
What is "Compact" known for?
The tabloid-style "Compact" magazine has been published monthly since 2010. Its editor-in-chief Jürgen Elsässer also appears at events. Through videos and online offerings, the media company now also reaches a wider audience beyond the circle of magazine readers. For example, the magazine talks about an "asylum bomb". A recent cover picture claimed that "German generals are planning an attack on Russia". Recently, "Compact" showed the Thuringian AfD state chairman Björn Höcke next to former US President Donald Trump with the headline "2024 Die Wende". Leading politicians are repeatedly insulted as "criminals" in the magazine - with the exception of representatives of the AfD.
What is Faeser's justification for the ban?
Her ministry has come to the conclusion that people can be stirred up and "incited to act against the constitutional order" by "Compact" publications and events. It refers to "anti-Semitic, racist, anti-minority, historical revisionist and conspiracy theory content". According to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the media company is not only agitating against the German government, but also "against the political system in general".
According to the Ministry of the Interior, "Compact" uses "resistance and revolutionary rhetoric" and "distorting and manipulative representations".
In legal terms, the move is a ban on associations - according to the Ministry of the Interior, companies can also be banned under certain conditions.
What exactly is now banned?
The sale of the magazine, the website and symbols associated with the magazine. This also includes the "blue wave". Editor-in-chief Elsässer chose this relatively new symbol for a campaign to promote a change of government after the next general election in September 2025. Blue is the color of the AfD, some of whose representatives had expressed reservations about the campaign, probably because they feared a possible new party donation affair.
How much influence does "Compact" have?
According to its own figures, the magazine has a circulation of around 40,000 copies, although this has not been independently verified. Compact TV has 345,000 subscribers on YouTube. According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, "Compact" is a "central player in the networking of the "New Right"". The term "New Right" is used to describe a scene that represents ideas of an ethnically homogeneous state with authoritarian traits and at the same time sets itself apart from right-wingers who refer to National Socialism.
The media company has close links to the far-right Identitarian Movement and the far-right AfD, among others. According to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the regional party "Free Saxony" is also part of the inner circle.
Who is Jürgen Elsässer?
The 67-year-old has an eventful political history behind him. As an author and activist, the former teacher was once part of the far left spectrum. After 2005, Elsässer moved further and further to the far right. While other journalists are occasionally attacked on the open stage at AfD party conferences, the editor-in-chief of Compact moves like a fish in water.
"Of course the AfD is an important factor," he said recently at an open-air event in Sonneberg, Thuringia. At the same time, he expressed certain sympathies for the Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) alliance and for Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he described as a "statesman who stands up for his people, his country and his state".
Has the ban affected the AfD?
Not directly, but above all the far-right wing of the party has lost a platform for disseminating its content. The AfD member of parliament Jürgen Braun, who is not part of this current, writes on X: "Compact-Elsässer made primitive remarks against me." Nevertheless, he supports "Compact" against the, as he says, "unconstitutional ban".
The federal managing director of the Left Party, Katina Schubert, believes that it is now "unavoidable" to consider a ban on the AfD. She believes: "The ban of the right-wing hate newspaper must not remain just a symbolic drumbeat." The AfD is currently being monitored by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution as a suspected right-wing extremist organization. It is not yet clear whether the domestic intelligence service could classify the party as a confirmed right-wing extremist organization in the future.
The Bundestag, Bundesrat and Federal Government are the only constitutional bodies entitled to apply for a party ban. The decision on such an application is made by the Federal Constitutional Court. One prerequisite is that the party in question can be shown to have an aggressive, militant stance.
How unusual is a media ban?
This is relatively rare - in such cases, freedom of the press must be weighed against the arguments in favor of a ban. During his time as Federal Minister of the Interior, Thomas de Maizière (CDU) banned the right-wing extremist internet platform "Altermedia Deutschland" in 2016. In 2019, former Federal Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer (CSU) shut down Mezopotamien Verlag und Vertrieb GmbH and MIR Multimedia GmbH as sub-organizations of the Kurdish Workers' Party PKK.
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