Germany bans right-wing extremist media outlets, conducts extensive police raid
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (Social Democratic Party) has banned Compact, a right-wing extremist magazine, as well as its affiliated Conspect Film production company. According to Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA), police conducted searches on the morning of 17 July of 14 properties associated with the magazine in four states.
The magazine’s website was also blocked. Compact had recently been designated a right-wing extremist publication by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), as the German domestic counter-intelligence agency is officially named.
“This is the central mouthpiece of the right-wing extremist scene. The magazine shamelessly incites hatred of Jews, people with a history of migration, and our parliamentary democracy,” Faeser announced on Tuesday, 16 July, saying the magazine is against the current constitutional order.
According to the Interior Ministry, as many as 340 police officers searched the organization’s offices and the homes of their main management, shareholders and stakeholders from the early morning hours in the states of Brandenburg, Hesse, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt. DPA reports police also raided the premises of the building in Falkensee, Brandenburg, where the publication has its official address.
The aim of the intervention was to confiscate evidence and property. The police have at least temporarily seized bank documents, cash, gold and vehicles.
Jürgen Elsässer, the magazine’s Editor-in-Chief, responded by calling the raid an unbelievable interference with freedom of the press and compared the federal regime to the previous one in communist East Germany. Representatives of the populist, right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party also criticized the raid.
The BfV found in 2022 that the magazine was espousing “attitudes antagonistic to democracy and trampling on human dignity in society as a multimedia enterprise”.
