Compact (German magazine)

For the American magazine, see Compact (American magazine).

Compact
Editor-in-ChiefJürgen Elsässer
EditorDaniell Pföhringer
CategoriesPolitics
FrequencyMonthly
PublisherCompact-Magazin GmbH
FounderJürgen Elsässer, Kai Homilius, Andreas Abu Bakr Rieger
Founded2010
Based inFalkensee, Germany
LanguageGerman
Websitecompact-online.de
OCLC724419039

Compact (stylized COMPACT, published with the subtitle "Magazine for Sovereignty" (German: Magazin für Souveränität) since October 2013) is a German media outlet, based on a monthly magazine. Compact is a popular magazine of the far-right in Germany. It united different right-wing political milieus through strategic topic setting.[1] The magazine was banned on 16 July 2024 in Germany. The ban was lifted on 14 August 2024 by a German federal administrative court in Leipzig.[2]

The editor-in-chief of Compact is Jürgen Elsässer; the CEO of the publishing company Compact-Magazin GmbH is Kai Homilius and Elsässer. The editorial office is in a family home in Falkensee in Brandenburg, on the western outskirts of Berlin.

In March 2020, the head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Thomas Haldenwang, classified Compact as a "certainly far-right extremist" ("gesichert rechtsextremistisch") publication, citing "revisionist, conspiracy-theoriest, and xenophobic motives", antisemitism, Islamophobia, and contempt for the principles of the Federal Republic of Germany. Compact was classified as a Verdachtsfall [de] (suspected case), the first step to the censorship of a publication in Germany.[3] Since 2015, Compact has aligned itself with the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the Islamophobic Pegida movement.[4][5]

On 16 July 2024 the Federal Ministry of the Interior banned the Compact entity for "anti-human hate speech and agitation" with immediate effect.[6] Police searched nationwide business premises as well as the residences of a number of persons, which had financed or edited Compact, including editor-in-chief Elsässer.[6][7]

  1. ^ Schilk, Felix; Gegenfurtner, Gregor (20 October 2022). "Visuelles Framing im Compact-Magazin. Ergebnisse einer quantitativen Bildtypenanalyse". ZRex – Zeitschrift für Rechtsextremismusforschung. 2 (2–2022): 287–312. doi:10.3224/zrex.v2i2.07.
  2. ^ "Court suspends publishing ban on far-right German magazine". Reuters. 14 August 2024. Retrieved 21 September 2024. A German court on Wednesday overturned a publishing ban on Compact magazine, described by the government as a "mouthpiece of the right-wing extremist scene", pending a final decision on efforts to outlaw the publication.
  3. ^ Jan Petter: Das Magazin, das jetzt auch der Verfassungsschutz liest. In Spiegel Online, 12 March 2020.
  4. ^ Patricia Anne Simpson (1 December 2016). "Mobilizing Meanings: Translocal Identities of the Far Right Web". German Politics and Society. 34 (4). Berghahn Books: 34–53. doi:10.3167/gps.2016.340403. ISSN 1045-0300.
  5. ^ tagesschau.de. "Verfassungsschutz: "Compact" gesichert extremistisches Beobachtungsobjekt". tagesschau.de (in German). Retrieved 12 December 2021.
  6. ^ a b Michael Götschenberg, Holger Schmidt (16 July 2024). "Faeser verbietet "Compact"". tagesschau.de. Retrieved 16 July 2024.
  7. ^ "Deutschland verbietet rechtsextremes "Compact"-Magazin". ORF.at (in Austrian German). 16 July 2024. Retrieved 16 July 2024.