»Compact« ban-Jürgen Elsässer in Wonderland

The ban on the magazine “Compact” is negotiated before the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig. Their boss and founder Jürgen Elsässer presented a book on the table in front of him at the hearing, as with a reading: his autobiography published in 2022 »I am German. Like a left -wing patriot, «. A portrait photo of him on the cover. A planned appearance. The court’s decision has been announced for this Tuesday.

Since the constitutional protection, the magazine was banned by the then Interior Minister Nancy Faeser in July 2024. Editor -in -chief Jürgen Elsässer received the investigators who wanted to secure evidence and assets at home in the morning. In August, however, the Federal Administrative Court partially exposed the immediate enforcement of the ban. This was obviously not prepared thoroughly enough.

In his autobiography, Jürgen Elsässer sells his way to the right -wing extremist publicist as an awakening, starting on an important role that he had played in the left media landscape. »After just six years in journalism, I was one of the best -known names of the left media world. I have been a leading political editor at the monthly magazine ›concrete‹, the flagship of the red journalism since the days of Ulrike Meinhof, and understood me splendidly with my boss Hermann L. Gremliza. ›Gremliza is the prophet and Alsatian his sharp sword,‹, was a bonus of those days. ”He probably invented the bon mot himself.

In his autobiography, he stages himself as wild as descent certified: »The fire of the south blazes in my veins, covered by the steel of the Nordic virtues. What should have become of me other than a revolutionary fighter against injustice? ”Such trivial revolutionary romance runs through the entire book. And so it goes through Alsatian’s years in the left Wonderland, with a hot heart as an upper checker – which should not be taken for bare coin. Since Alsässer now turns to a right audience, he wants to understand his anti -German positions after the connection of the GDR in 1990 to the FRG as a tactical, not as an anti -national approach: “My anti -German strategy was not emotionally heated even in its worst worsening, not directed against my compatriots, but politically motivated.”

In general, the concept of popular – Alsatian differentiates in his articles to good peoples, bad peoples. Deconstrating ethnic thinking was not his. About the detour of solidarity with the ethnic politics and warlike aggression of Slobodan Milošević in Serbia, which was essentially no better than that of Franjo Tudjman in Croatia, ethnic and nationalist-prospective categories for Alsatians were increasingly important-for example, which were considered to be racist as Kosovar Massaker Serbian militias in 1995 to play down Muslims from Bosnia in Srebrenica.

Marit Hofmann, who was responsible for the cultural department at “concrete”, says: “It is fatal that” concrete “, among other things, this part of the magazine history, which includes the support of Serbian nationalism, denying massacres and using conspiracy theories to Nine Eleven. Worked on his self -marketing, which went more and more towards Volksstribun. He found the corresponding audience on the right and not left. «

In 2002, Alsatians were released at “concrete”. He went back to the “young world”, which he had to leave in 1997 together with others in the dispute over the political and personnel orientation of the leaf, whereupon she founded the “Jungle World” in which he could publish only a few articles. Later he overturned again with the bosses of the “young world”, became a flat -rate fleece at the “New Germany” and flew out there in 2009 when he founded a cross -front organization “against financial capital”, which was also greeted by the NPD and the “young freedom”.

Unlike himself, Elsässer was not a central figure in the formation of the “Radical Left” initiative in 1988/89 and the “Nie Wieder-Deutschland” campaign in 1990 or in the resulting anti-German current. In the anti -German calls in the 90s, such as “no voice for Germany” in December 1990 or “No peace with Germany” on May 8, 1995, he cannot be found among the supporters listed by name. And also not on the big newspaper “Flightwinding Radical Left” from March 1991 with their “call to the anti -war council” in the face of the Gulf War.

He was controversial in the Communist Confederation (KB), which Alsatian belonged from 1976 from 1976, but not a pioneer. He felt primarily responsible for himself. “Jürgen Elsässer performed very dominantly everywhere and loved to be the focus,” recalls Paul Stern, former member of the KB. “With us in the Cologne KB he was known as a gallo – as a Gallic rooster, who always had the say and crowed the loudest in the chicken courtyard.”

Elsässer wrote some articles for the »workers’ fight«, the newspaper of the KB. “Incidentally, none of his partially abrupt position or course changes, at least from the beginning of his anti-German phase 1989/1990, emerged from some form of intellectual reflection”, the author Bernhard Schmid, himself a member of the KB in Baden-Württemberg since 1987. “It was just about taking a pose that he liked or seemed to promise or succeed.”

Under the heading “The Perfect Organization”, Elsässer says in his autobiography: “If you ever want to try again to get close to a overthrow, you would have to do it like the KB back then. All strategic questions that came up on the left in the 1970s and which the KB solved intelligently reappear on the patriotic and freedom side. (…) The fact that it did not work with the KB revolution concept was not due to our strategy and tactics, but because of our ideology. “The creation of the KB from its political basis, the focus solely on a” overthrow “and a” revolutionary concept “is a” revolutionary concept “that has never been underlook for the KB. Rather, the KB defined itself over the fight against the “fascation of state and society” and about democratic and social defensive struggles, which was repeatedly accused of other, much more revolutionary K groups.

The criticism of Alsatians, also given the rise of AfD and authoritarianism, continues. The Federal Ministry of the Interior does not replace Antifa, just as little as the Federal Administrative Court. Now even the bathrobe, in which Alsatians at the raid on July 16, 2024, the day of the prohibition, showed himself to be marketed by him: “Compact bathrobe” Alsatians “finally available,” says “Compact-Shop” to counter “State power”. “With this designer bathrobe made of noble velor you are well dressed at every raid.” If “Compact” is prohibited, the right-wing extremist scene is also cut off from supplies to tasteless bathrobes.

The author was a member of the KB from 1976 until 1991 and worked from 1993 to 2004 in the office of the magazine “Specifically”.