"Compact" ban | Jürgen Elsässer in Wonderland

The Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig is hearing the ban on the magazine "Compact." During the hearing, its founder and editor-in-chief, Jürgen Elsässer, savvyly placed a book on the table in front of him, as if at a reading: his autobiography "I am German. How a Leftist Became a Patriot," published in 2022. A portrait photo of him was on the cover. A meticulously planned appearance. The court's decision is scheduled for this Tuesday.

Classified as "certainly right-wing extremist" by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution since 2021, the magazine was banned in July 2024 by then-Interior Minister Nancy Faeser. Editor-in-chief Jürgen Elsässer received investigators who wanted to secure evidence and assets at his home that morning in his bathrobe. In August, however, the Federal Administrative Court partially suspended the immediate enforcement of the ban. It had apparently not been prepared thoroughly enough.

In his autobiography, Jürgen Elsässer presents his path to becoming a right-wing extremist journalist as an awakening, based on the significant role he played in the left-wing media landscape. "After just six years in journalism, I was already one of the best-known names in the left-wing media world. For a good two years, I had been the senior political editor of the monthly magazine 'Konkret,' the flagship of left-wing journalism since the days of Ulrike Meinhof, and I got along splendidly with my boss, Hermann L. Gremliza. 'Gremliza is the prophet and Elsässer his sharp sword,' was a quip of those days." He probably invented the quip himself.

In his autobiography, he portrays himself as both wild and pedigree-certified: "The fire of the South blazes in my veins, sheathed in the steel of Nordic virtues. What else could I have become but a revolutionary fighter against injustice?" This kind of trivial romanticism of revolution permeates the entire book. And so it goes through Elsässer's years in the left-wing wonderland, with a passionate heart as the top checker leading the way – which should not be taken at face value. Since Elsässer now addresses a right-wing audience, he wants his anti-German positions after the annexation of the GDR to the FRG in 1990 to be understood as a tactical, not an anti-national, approach: "My anti-German strategy, even at its worst, was not emotionally charged, not directed against my fellow countrymen, but politically motivated."

The concept of "people" in general—Elsässer distinguished between good peoples and bad peoples in his articles. Deconstructing ethnic thinking was not his style. Through the detour of solidarity with the ethnic politics and belligerent aggression of Slobodan Milošević in Serbia, which was essentially no better than that of Franjo Tudjman in Croatia, ethnic and nationalist-pro-Serbian categories became increasingly important for Elsässer—which amounted to, for example, racially denigrating the population group that identified itself as Kosovar or downplaying the 1995 massacre of Muslims from Bosnia in Srebrenica by Serbian militias.

Marit Hofmann, who was responsible for the culture section at Konkret, says: "It's disastrous that Konkret hasn't yet addressed this part of its magazine's history, which includes supporting Serbian nationalism, denying massacres, and pandering to conspiracy theories after 9/11." In her memory, Elsässer was "not very helpful as an editor because he worked almost exclusively on his self-promotion, which increasingly leaned toward being a people's tribune. He found the appropriate audience on the right, not the left."

In 2002, Elsässer was fired from Konkret. He returned to Junge Welt, which he and others were forced to leave in 1997 following a dispute over the paper's political and personnel orientation. They then founded Jungle World , where he was only able to publish a few articles. Later, he again fell out with the editors of Junge Welt, temporarily becoming a freelancer at Neues Deutschland, and was also expelled from that in 2009 after founding a cross-front organization "against finance capital," which was also welcomed by the NPD and Junge Freiheit.

Contrary to his own portrayal, Elsässer was not a central figure in the formation of the "Radical Left" initiative in 1988/89 and the "Never Again Germany" campaign it initiated in 1990, or in the emerging anti-German movement. He is not listed among the supporters by name in the anti-German appeals of the 1990s, such as "No Vote for Germany" in December 1990 or "No Peace with Germany" on May 8, 1995. Nor is he listed in the thick newspaper "Radical Left Pamphlet" of March 1991 with its "Call for an Anti-War Council" in light of the Gulf War.

Even before that, in the Communist League (KB), to which Elsässer belonged from 1976, he was controversial, but not a thought leader. He felt primarily responsible for himself. "Jürgen Elsässer acted very dominant everywhere and loved being the center of attention," recalls Paul Stern, a former member of the KB, in an interview. "Among us in the Cologne KB, he was known as Gallo—the Gallic rooster who always had the say and crowed the loudest in the chicken coop."

Elsässer wrote several articles for "Arbeiterkampf," the KB newspaper. "Moreover, none of his sometimes abrupt changes of position or course, at least from the beginning of his anti-German phase in 1989/1990 , stemmed from any form of intellectual reflection," summarizes author Bernhard Schmid, himself a member of the KB in Baden-Württemberg since 1987. "In each case, it was simply a matter of adopting a pose that pleased him or seemed to promise success or attention."

Under the heading "The Perfect Organization," Elsässer states in his autobiography: "If one ever wanted to attempt a coup again, one would have to do it roughly the way the KB did back then. All the strategic questions that arose on the left in the 1970s and which the KB solved intelligently are resurfacing today on the patriotic and liberal side. (...) The failure of the KB's revolutionary concept was not due to our strategy and tactics, but to our ideology." Stripping the KB of its political foundation, focusing solely on a "coup" and a "revolutionary concept," is Elsässer's tactic: in order to propagate a right-wing coup, the KB is foisted with a "revolutionary concept" that it never had. Rather, the KB defined itself through the fight against the "fascistization of state and society" and through democratic and social defensive struggles, something which it was repeatedly accused of by other, much more revolutionary K-groups.

Criticism of Elsässer continues, especially in light of the rise of the AfD and authoritarianism. The Federal Ministry of the Interior is no substitute for Antifa, nor is the Federal Administrative Court. Now, he is even marketing the bathrobe he wore during the raid on July 16, 2024, the day the ban was issued: "Compact bathrobe 'Elsässer' finally available," the "Compact Shop" advertises, as a way to "counter the state power." "With this designer bathrobe made of fine velour, you'll be well-dressed for every raid." If "Compact" is banned, the right-wing extremist scene will also be cut off from a supply of tasteless bathrobes.

The author was a member of the KB from 1976 until its dissolution in 1991 and worked in the office of the magazine »Konkret« from 1993 to 2004.