VALKENMEER. That is what publicist Jürgen Elsässer Ban on his Compactmagazine was sharply criticized by Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD). “This is the worst interference with press freedom in Germany, at least since the Spiegel affair in 1962,” Elsässer said at a press conference outside his home. The compact ban is even worse, as the Spiegel was allowed to continue to appear despite the raid.
“There is an attempt here to destroy the entire publication body with affiliated television,” criticized the 67-year-old. This is a “scandalous” event. It was a “clearly fascist measure by Mrs. Faeser,” the entrepreneur said indignantly.
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Elsässer wants to talk to his lawyers
Elsässer further emphasized: “Compact has been around for 14 years. We are a legal newspaper. We have never been convicted of anything.” To then announce a ban would be a “measure known from the GDR or the Third Reich.” This is “unworthy” of a free, democratic basic order. It shows that Germany is on a “destructive path” towards a “new fascism,” the journalist warned.
Now no “opposition media” is safe from the “dictatorial measures of this regime,” the journalist continued indignantly. Elsässer did not want to respond in detail to the accusations that the Ministry of the Interior had made against him. But it is about the “usual hodgepodge that Mrs. Faeser says without rhyme or reason.”
The whole “house occupied”
The ban is ultimately aimed at the AfD, he stressed. “The regime is now trying to intimidate or, in the case of Compact, paralyze the entire spectrum of opposition media.”
Elsässer also described the nationwide raids on his magazine. In the morning, fifty officers showed up at his home address and “occupied the entire house.” “Everything” will be confiscated. Including all computers, cell phones, hard drives, a stage and much more. “The state is trying to maintain a tabula rasa here,” he criticized. Although his magazine is currently “weakened,” “the truth cannot be banned.” He is optimistic that he will ultimately be the winner.
Ministry of the Interior calls for ‘human dignity’
The Federal Ministry of the Interior had the ban on the magazine justified, among other things, by the fact that it was directed ‘against the constitutional order’. Furthermore, the Compact disseminates “anti-Semitic, racist, anti-minority, historical revisionist and conspiracy theory content” and “agitates against a pluralistic social system that respects the human dignity of the individual and provides for the free and equal participation of all citizens in political decision-making.”
Essentially, Elsässer represents an “ethnic-nationalist social concept” that ignores the “human dignity” of those who “do not fit into this ethnic concept.” The magazine is also accused of creating a “social and political climate of exclusion” and “inciting hatred against Jews.” (ho)
