Germany bans far-right magazine close to AfD for “inciting hatred” | International

German government bans far-right magazine dense, Close to the most extremist wing of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, believing that it incites hatred against Jews and immigrants and that it serves as a mouthpiece for conspiracy and far-right theories. From now on, its sale in paper form will be illegal, as well as the dissemination of the contents of the website and the associated television channel, which produces …

German government bans far-right magazine dense, Those close to the most extremist wing of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party believe that it incites hatred against Jews and immigrants and that it serves as a mouthpiece for conspiracy and far-right theories. From now on, its sale in paper form will be illegal, as well as the dissemination of the content of the website and the associated television channel, which produces videos for social networks.

The announcement of the ban, extremely rare in a country that guarantees freedom of the press, has been accompanied by an extensive police operation in four federal states. Since this Tuesday morning, agents have searched the headquarters of both companies (Compact-Magazin and Compact-TV) and the homes of their managers and shareholders to seize material and collect evidence.

“The ban is a hard blow against the extreme right,” German Interior Minister Nancy Fesser said. “We are taking action against intellectual arsonists who create a climate of hatred and violence against refugees and migrants and want to overthrow our democratic state.” The magazine’s website has already been disabled. “Our signal is very clear: we will not allow ethnicity to define who belongs to Germany and who does not,” stressed Fesser, who added that the German constitution “protects all people who are treated with hostility because of their faith, their origin, the color of their skin or their democratic stance.”

magazine dense It has been published monthly since 2010 and has a circulation of around 40,000 copies, according to the company’s own figures, which have not been independently verified. The associated YouTube channel, Compact TV, has around 345,000 subscribers. The publication is known in Germany as a central actor in the dissemination of the ideology known as the New Right, an environment that advocates an ethnically homogeneous state, with authoritarian characteristics, and which at the same time distances itself from the right-wingers who they openly advocate National Socialism.

The magazine’s editor-in-chief, Jürgen Elsaesser, 67, is a former professor who has moved from supporting the extreme left in his youth to the principles of the extreme right he defends today. Writer and activist, it is common to see him at AfD events. He has described Russian President Vladimir Putin as “a statesman who protects his people, his country and his state”. His home is one of those registered by the police this morning, as evidenced by a photo in which he is seen opening the door for officers in a dressing gown.

In addition to AFD, companies dense They also maintain close ties with the far-right so-called Identitarian Movement and the Free Saxony Party, which among other things calls for the independence of this East German federal state. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (German internal secret services) was monitoring the environment dense And a few months ago, it officially changed its classification from “suspected extremist” organization to “confirmed extremist.”

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The Ministry of the Interior concluded that the publications and activities dense They can incite citizens in the context of their “anti-Semitic, racist, anti-minority, historical revisionist and conspiracy theory content” and “encourage them to act against the constitutional order.” According to the office, this media organization agitates not only against the current German government, a coalition of social democrats, greens and liberals, but also against the “political order in general.” The secret services have confirmed that it uses “resistance and revolutionary rhetoric” and that it resorts to “distorted and manipulative representations.”

“An attack on press freedom”, according to the AFD.

The magazine has a long history of extremely controversial covers. In one from last November, Minister Faser’s face appeared in the foreground, several people with foreign features with threatening attitudes in reference to the refugee reception policy and the headline “Asylum bomb”, which is directly related to the increase in crime in Germany. In another recent drawing he showed the Reichstag, the parliament building, sinking in a stormy sea, with the phrase: “Asylum, flood.” The magazine often calls prominent German politicians from all parties except the AfD “criminals.” A recent issue featured the leader of this organization in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, who was recently convicted of using a Nazi slogan, on the cover with Donald Trump and the headline: “2024, change.”

AfD leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Krupalla have strongly criticized the German Interior Ministry’s decision and accused Fesser of abusing power. “This is a crushing blow to press freedom,” they said in a joint statement this Tuesday. The ban on the magazine does not directly affect the AfD, but the party’s far-right faction has lost the media platform on which it disseminated its content and which wrote laudatory descriptions of its candidates for the regional elections in September. State Eastern Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg.

Not all members of the group agreed to be associated with the magazine because they believed it could harm them because of its extremism. One of their representatives, Jürgen Braun, made claims to his radical left-wing minister Fesser. Braun refers to Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government as a “green-left dictatorship.” The ultra group is suspected of extremism and debate has heated up in recent months over whether attempts should be made to ban it. In the European elections last June, the AfD came in second with around 16% of the vote, and polls predict it will win regional elections in September with around 30% of the vote.

Banning a media outlet is extremely unusual in Germany and evidence of extremism is analysed in detail before such a controversial decision is made. Freedom of the press is enshrined in the German Basic Law (constitution) and any exceptions must be legally debated. There are two recent examples, but from very minority organisations and almost Amateur, as an internet platform Altermedia Deutschland, in 2016, and in 2019 two small publishing companies in the orbit of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is considered a terrorist organization in Germany (and the EU).

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