Compact (magazine)

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Compact - magazine for sovereignty
logo
description newsmagazine
publishing company Compact-Magazin GmbH
First edition 2010
Frequency of publication per month
Sold edition ≈40,000 copies
()
Editor-in-chief Jürgen Elsässer
editor Compact-Magazin GmbH
Web link www.compact-online.de
ZDB 2415845-8

Compact (publisher's spelling : COMPACT ; since October 2013 with the addition: Compact - Magazin für Souveränität ) is a monthly political magazine in Germany. The editor-in-chief is Jürgen Elsässer , the editorial office is in Berlin . The publisher Kai Homilius is the managing director of Compact-Magazin GmbH . The editorial office is located in Waldheim , a district of the Brandenburg town of Falkensee . Scientists and journalists rate the magazine as a conspiratorial ideological cross-front magazine and assign it to right-wing populism . Since 2015, Compact has presented itself as the mouthpiece of the right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the Islamophobic Pegida movement. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has been listing the magazine as a suspected case since March 2020 .

history

Since 2008, Kai Homilius Verlag has published the Compact book series, which is overseen by Elsässer . From 2009 DVDs were also released there in cooperation with Schild Verlag . The magazine's zero issue appeared in December 2010. Since August 2011 it has been published by Compact-Magazin GmbH in Werder , which Elsässer founded with Kai Homilius and Andreas Abu Bakr Rieger . Each of the three held a third of the shares. The magazine has neither connections to the campaign network Campact nor to Compact Verlag .

Since 2012 the editorial team has been organizing an annual “Compact Conference for Sovereignty” on a specific political or social topic. Since February 2013, monothematic special editions with a greatly expanded scope have been published under the name “Compact Special”.

In November 2014, Rieger resigned as a partner and member of the editorial team. His share was taken over by Jumbo-Dienstleistungs GmbH in Hamburg, which, after changing its name and relocating its headquarters, is now "Nordheide Kontor GmbH" with its headquarters in Neu Wulmstorf . Rieger justified his departure with the "increasingly radical-subjective attitude" of Elsässers, whose paper represents " racist and nationalist positions" like Pegida . The position on the Russian crisis is " völkisch ". It is no longer possible to represent different positions in the paper.

In January 2015, Compact expanded its range with the Compact TV YouTube channel . Katrin Nolte moderates the monthly programs. According to the company, the printed edition of Compact rose to around 80,000 copies, of which a good half would be sold. The paper received a loan of 100,000 euros from one or more strangers.

So-called “compact reader trips” have been offered since 2015, including a. on the subjects of “Saxony's splendor and Prussia's glory” in Saxon Switzerland or “Education and Bathing” in Crimea .

In 2017, the magazine called for the release of Beate Zschäpe , allegedly the most important terrorist in the NSU network, in a special issue .

The magazine's domain was briefly seized in January 2018 after failing to cover litigation costs . These arose because the journalist Richard Gutjahr had obtained an injunction against the dishonorable suspicions about him that Compact had spread.

Organs and publishers such as Kopp Verlag, known for its conspiracy theories, or the Preussische Allgemeine Zeitung place advertisements in the magazine. The campaign “ One percent for our country ”, which presents itself as a “patriotic citizen network” and which acquires donations for demonstration alliances against immigration, is also advertised by Compact .

On August 28, 2020, the magazine's accounts and pages on Instagram and Facebook were deleted. This was justified by the fact that Compact articles were systematically attacking people based on their origin, gender and nationality.

publishing company

The magazine is published by Compact Magazin GmbH . The publishing house is domiciled in Werder (Havel) on the Großer Zernsee . There is also sitting Kai Homilius Verlag . The seat of the Compact editorial team was unknown until December 2017. Then a group of anti-fascists came out of the editorial office, which is also the residence of the editor-in-chief Jürgen Elsässer. Accordingly, the editorial office is located in a small single-family villa in Waldheim, a district of Falkensee , at the gates of Berlin.

Editorial goals

The editors of the print edition are made up of Elsässer (editor-in-chief) and Martin Müller-Mertens (head of the service). The editors see Compact as a counterpoint in an allegedly “synchronized” media landscape of “standardized media”. This self-image culminates in the advertising slogans “Courage to be truthful” and “Read what others are not allowed to write”. The makers of Compact see the alleged hegemony of the USA in Europe and the alleged lack of sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Germany as an independent state with its own constitution as the cause of the alleged media censorship . In the self-portrayal of the magazine, fascism and Zionism were also equated and concentration camps were played down by referring to Abu Ghuraib and Guantanamo .

Since mid-2013, the Compact magazine has been advertising under the motto “Courage to Truth”, which the AfD also uses as a motto. Elsässer initially distributed the magazine at AfD party conferences. In spring 2015 he decided to make the magazine the election campaign paper for the AfD. Especially since the refugee crisis in Europe in 2015 , Compact has regularly advertised AfD politicians and their positions with front pages and themed magazines. Elsässer organized a live conference with AfD top candidate André Poggenburg three days before the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt in 2016 , gave him space to present the AfD goals and identified himself with them. He presented Compact as the voice of the “silent majority” and the AfD as their party. On the evening of the election, Poggenburg did not answer questions from the public broadcasters, but only from Compact magazine. With this, Elsässer Compact positioned itself as a mouthpiece for AfD and Pegida supporters, who reject the so-called mainstream media across the board and call it the “ lying press ”. One of the authors frequently quoted and received by the magazine is the right-wing extremist Russian political scientist and advocate of the concept of neo-Eurasism Alexander Gelevich Dugin .

In the September 2016 edition, Compact published its own dossier on the right-wing extremist identity movement . Elsässer declared its head Martin Sellner to be a "new Rudi Dutschke ". In 2019 a compact special edition was published with the title “ Höcke . Interviews, speeches, breaking taboos. ”In the same year, a special issue dealt with the alleged“ Deep State ”, a, as Elsässer claimed on YouTube,“ a network of secret services, business bosses, stock market gurus and left-wing media ”. In the 4/2020 issue, the headline was “They are coming! The new flood of asylum in the shadow of Corona ”; In the advertisement for this issue it was claimed that in the "slipstream" of the virus "further facts for the population exchange would be created". In mid-March 2020, Compact had initially welcomed the fact that 60 million citizens were quarantined in Italy due to the spread of the coronavirus and that a state of emergency had been declared in Ticino , and at the same time criticized Merkel not reacting adequately strictly to the pandemic and advocating "moderate and moderate ". However, in April 2020 the magazine changed course; Now, in view of the state containment measures, Elsässer wrote about an alleged “Corona dictatorship ”, which in reality was about “destroying unproductive capital” as it did earlier in the world wars; the North Rhine-Westphalian Prime Minister Armin Laschet also spoke " like Adolf Hitler about the last Volkssturm contingent". From then on, more and more voices were also quoted according to which the virus was in truth "not particularly dangerous". On Compact TV , Markus Motschmann, a specialist in ophthalmology from Haldensleben, claimed that it “looked like” that the population should “ gradually be introduced to some authoritative, dictatorial repression ”; The mask requirement in shops is only an obedience test by the federal government.

After Compact - at the same time as the " wing " within the AfD - was put under observation by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution as a suspected right-wing extremist case, the magazine reacted by claiming that it was about "defamation and state observation of the opposition environment". The protection of the constitution is "part of the left-hyper-moral rule of conduct". Also Björn Höcke was "in contrast to the government agitators, a true democrat". Compact also published an earlier Höcke speech in which the latter had called the constitution protection “vicarious agents of the establishment”, and a video of a conversation between Höcke and the Saxon wing chairman Jens Maier . The demand of the AfD leadership for self-dissolution of the "wing" called the sheet a "putsch against Höcke".

Compact conferences

Elsässer organized so-called compact conferences together with the Russian Institute for Democracy and Cooperation :

reception

Compact is referred to as a " transverse front magazine". At least as such, Mathias Brodkorb (right-wing extremism expert of the SPD) gave him little chance of success. He attests that the magazine has had a list to the right from the start and sees anti-Americanism and anti-imperialism as the dominant topics from the second issue . In a Focus report, the magazine is called “ Putin's announcement organ”.

Right-wing extremism researcher Alexander Häusler calls Compact a “right-wing magazine with a right-wing populist and anti-American orientation and a tendency towards conspiracy-based arguments”. He counts it to a "new right journalistic network", which also included the Secession and the Junge Freiheit . For Jürgen P. Lang the self-proclaimed "voice of popular resistance" is in truth the "central organ for conspiracy theories" and the spearhead of perfidious agitation against the refugee policy of the federal government . According to Lang, the commercial success of the magazine can be explained by the close networking of Alsatian with customers around AfD and Pegida. Antonie Rietzschel ( Süddeutsche Zeitung ) described Compact as a “right-wing populist magazine with a penchant for conspiracy theories”. Erik Peter ( taz ) wrote that Compact picks up "the millions of anger from social networks" and is for them, "as a supposedly professionally researched quality product, at the same time a source and fuel". The Americanist Michael Butter calls Compact one of "the two most important producers of printed conspiracy theories " (next to Kopp Verlag ). As evidence, he refers to Eva Herman's article from August 31, 2015, which described the cause of the refugee crisis as an alleged plan "of a group of people in power in the global financial system [...] who want to subdue the world from their global capital pool". The Germanist Sören Stumpf also cites Compact as an example of the spread of conspiracy theories as a business model . Annette Langer ( Spiegel Online ) locates the paper in right-wing populism. Arne Zillmer ( malfunction reporter ) assesses Compact as "extremely problematic". Political scientist Markus Linden stated in 2014: “In the subtitle 'Compact' describes itself as a 'magazine for sovereignty'. The concept of sovereignty, understood as plebiscitary people's democracy and set in opposition to the supposed foreign control of Germany, forms a normative leading category of the conspiracy movement. ”The magazine is the organ of a“ neo-right movement ”. They represent a conservative family policy and positions that are “fundamentally critical of asylum and Islam”. Right-wing extremism expert Andreas Speit also sees the magazine in the right-wing spectrum. However , in June 2016, Die Zeit emphasized: “Calling the Compact magazine as right-wing populist misses the point. Compact always remains connectable on many sides. ”It is“ a kind of echo chamber ”,“ in which one is no longer disturbed by a deviating “mainstream opinion” ”. In an extensive discourse analysis study, the sociologist Felix Schilk speaks of a “narcissistic address” by the magazine, which would make the readers “part of a discourse community”. A “certain plurality” has its “common basis on the social-psychological level”, which is why Compact largely manages without systematic theoretical references and offers its audience “buzzwords, the content of which mostly remains unexplained”. Jürgen Elsässer is a "political agitator" who maintains a "predominantly instrumental relationship to his content, takes up social polarization tendencies and systematically reinforces them because they guarantee the success of his project." Marc Grimm and Bodo Kahmann (2017) describe the magazine as " right-wing extremist. " "And as the" journalistic flagship of anti-Semitic hatred of Israel and anti-Americanism in Germany ". For Melanie Amann ( Der Spiegel ), Compact “ brings the people's soul up to operating temperature for the 'battle for the West'”. The political scientist Gideon Botsch sees the paper as a “combative magazine that has in phases really propagated the overthrow”.

In March 2020, the head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Thomas Haldenwang , found that the magazine made use of " revisionist , conspiracy-theoretical and xenophobic motives". Therefore, Compact is classified as a so-called suspected case. A month later, the Federal Office specified that the paper had links to “clearly right-wing extremist movements” and spread “blanket accusations” against migrants and Muslims; Islam is "indiscriminately portrayed negatively", as a "permanent source of danger and threat", immigration is linked with "crime, terror and Islamization" and the conspiracy myth of the " Great Exchange " is spread. “Defamatory contributions”, for example about the liberal entrepreneur George Soros , “anti-Semitic conspiracy theories” and a “revisionist view of history” (e.g. the question of war guilt during the Second World War) would be added.

Compact-Magazin GmbH was represented at the Leipzig Book Fair from March 17th to 20th, 2016. Some initiatives and politicians protested in advance with an open letter: “Racist, nationalist and anti-Semitic propaganda does not belong in an international event like the Leipzig Book Fair.” The fair management agreed with the content, but saw no legal possibility of Compact again due to the freedom of the press offload. On March 19, 2016, around 200 people demonstrated against the magazine's presence at the fair.

The author Roger Willemsen was criticized for his contribution in the compact zero number and stated that he was only able to check the orientation and seriousness of the new magazine after it was published. Even Dorothea Marx (SPD Thuringia) regretted an interview for Compact . It is far from her to “support any crude right-wing populist theses”.

(Negative) award

literature

  • Felix Schilk: Sovereignty instead of complexity. How the Querfront magazine ›Compact‹ deals with the political legitimacy crisis of the present. Edition DISS, 2017, ISBN 978-3-89771-768-8 .
  • Kevin Culina, Jonas Fedders: United in the enemy image. On the relevance of anti-Semitism in the Querfront magazine Compact. Edition Assemblage, 2016, ISBN 978-3-96042-004-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Christian Fuchs and Fritz: In- house mail for the angry . The magazine "Compact" celebrates the AfD. The editor-in-chief is Jürgen Elsässer - who used to fight on the left front. In: TIME NO. 25/2016 . ( https://www.zeit.de/amp/2016/25/afd-compact-juergen-elsaesser in- house mail for the angry).
  2. ↑ Potsdam District Court, Commercial Register HRB 24411 sheet with shareholders' list of 2010
  3. ↑ Benedikt Peters: mix-ups. The good people from Compact Verlag . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , June 10, 2018.
  4. ↑ Potsdam District Court, list of shareholders from November 17, 2014 on Commercial Register Gazette HRB 24411; Hamburg District Court , Commercial Register Gazette HRB 108154 with list of shareholders, both last accessed on November 4, 2016
  5. ^ Wolfgang Storz : "Querfront" - career of a political-journalistic network. Otto Brenner Foundation , Frankfurt am Main 2015, ISSN  2365-1962 , p. 41.
  6. ^ A b c Christian Fuchs: "Compact": In-house mail for the angry . In: The time . No. 25 , 2016 ( online ).
  7. ↑ Konrad Fischer: AfD: cash in with the right-wing populists. wiwo.de, March 11, 2016
  8. ↑ a b Daphne Weber: Location of the right magazine “Compact”: Compact with Jürgen alone at home . In: taz . December 18, 2017 ( taz.de [accessed December 20, 2017]).
  9. ↑ "I then seized the domain": How Richard Gutjahr defends himself against the controversial Compact Magazine . meedia.de , January 23, 2018. Markus Reuter: Public: Richard Gutjahr has domain seized by right-wing magazine Compact . netzpolitik.org , January 23, 2018.
  10. ↑ a b c Erik Peter: The key word givers of the right: Scheue Angstmacher taz.de, April 10, 2016
  11. ^ André Postert : “Saxony and intellectual right-wing extremism. Metapolitics of the New Right. ”In: Uwe Backes , Steffen Kailitz (Eds.): Saxony - A stronghold of right-wing extremism? Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2020, p. 52
  12. ↑ Sebastian Pittelkow and Katja Riedel: { https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/facebook-compact-offline-101.html Right magazine: Facebook takes "Compact" offline ] tagesschau.de , August 28, 2020, access on August 29, 2020.
  13. ↑ Thorsten Metzner: Right-wing populists among themselves: Compact magazine invites AfD politicians to a secret seminar. pnn.de , July 31, 2017
  14. ^ A b Robert Kiesel: Right-wing populism: The AfD and the compact magazine: Alliance of the "courageous" . Forward / look to the right , March 11, 2016
  15. ↑ Friderieke Schulz: Rewe because of the display of the right magazine Compact in the criticism . nw.de, December 30, 2018
  16. ↑ Karolin Schwarz: Hate Warriors. The new global right-wing extremism. Herder, Freiburg 2020, p. 106
  17. ^ A b Antonie Rietzschel: Conference with Scholl-Latour, Herman and Sarrazin: The family conspiracy . sueddeutsche.de, September 6, 2013
  18. ^ Schnellroda im Saalekreis The ideology gas station of the AfD . Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, March 23, 2016
  19. ↑ Volker Weiß : The authoritarian revolt. The New Right and the Fall of the West. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2018, p. 196
  20. ↑ Volker Weiß: The authoritarian revolt. The New Right and the Fall of the West. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2018, p. 95
  21. ↑ Matthias Kamann: Höcke's intellectual wasteland . Welt Online , August 28, 2019
  22. ↑ a b Jan Petter: The magazine that the protection of the Constitution now also reads . Spiegel Online , March 12, 2020
  23. ↑ Lucius Teidelbaum: Right reactions to Corona . hagalil.com, March 24, 2020
  24. ↑ a b c Andreas Speit, Konrad Litschko: “Compact” magazine in crisis: Under a scrutiny taz.de, April 15, 2020
  25. ↑ Patrick Gensing: Criticism of Corona Measures: Radical Change . tagesschau.de, May 5, 2020
  26. ↑ Niklas Ottersbach: Doctors on the wrong track: appearances of the "Anti-Drostens" from Saxony-Anhalt www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de, May 23, 2020
  27. ↑ Christoph Stollowsky: Façade in pink: Autonomous people carry out paint on the house of Thilo Sarrazin . In: Der Tagesspiegel , November 24, 2013. Compact: With Sarrazin against marriage for everyone . Publikative.org, November 24, 2013
  28. ↑ Sidney Gennies: Truth Leased . Zeit Online , November 23, 2014
  29. ↑ Ute Weinmann: “Eurasia still has to wait. How 'identitarians' and the Russian right converge and what separates them from one another. ”In: Judith Goetz, Joseph Maria Sedlacek, Alexander Winkler (ed.): Untergangster des Abendlandes. Ideology and reception of the right-wing extremist 'identitarians'. Marta Press, Hamburg 2018 (2nd edition), p. 365
  30. ↑ "Compact" Annual Conference in Berlin: Hochhuth is, Coca-Cola does not . In: taz , October 26, 2015
  31. ^ "Compact" conference in Berlin: The Right Trinity . taz.de , November 7, 2016.
  32. ↑ Mounia Meiborg: Compact Conference: Right-wing populists threatened a lawsuit by the landlord . Zeit Online , November 25, 2017
  33. ↑ Steffen Kailitz : "Saxony - a stronghold of the AfD? Development, perspectives and classification of the federal party and the Saxon state association. ”In: Uwe Backes / Steffen Kailitz (eds.): Saxony - A stronghold of right-wing extremism? Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2020, p. 170
  34. ↑ Thomas Witzgall: Compact Conference: Jürgen Elsässer in the Bauerntheater . endstation-rechts-bayern.de, October 1, 2018
  35. ^ Rainer Roeser: Conspiracy theory meets AfD politics. bnr.de, September 27, 2019
  36. ↑ New rights: Event for Greta-Hasser in Magdeburg. volksstimme.de, November 15, 2019
  37. ^ Thomas Sebastian Vitzthum: Anti-Capitalism Left publicist praised by the NPD for “Popular Front” . Welt Online , January 16, 2009. Roland Sieber: Reich citizens, neo-Nazis and anti-Semites - Querfront hijacked peace demonstrations . Die Zeit - Blog, April 16, 2014. In the fight against the media mafia . In: taz , April 16, 2014:
  38. ^ Mathias Brodkorb : Jürgen Elsässer and his magazine “Compact” - The Gottfried Feder of the 21st Century? Right end of the line , March 25, 2011
  39. ↑ Back to the Cold War - Putin's Speakers . In: Focus , 37/2014.
  40. ↑ Alexander Häusler, Rainer Roeser: “Erfurt is beautifully German - and Erfurt should remain beautifully German!” The political appearance of the party “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) in Thuringia. Edited by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung , Landesbüro Thüringen, Erfurt 2015, ISBN 978-3-95861-322-5 , p. 29 f.
  41. ↑ Alexander Häusler: The AfD - a right-wing populist »movement party«? In: Alexander Häusler, Fabian Virchow : New social movement from the right? Fear of the future. Descent of the middle. Resentment - A pamphlet. VSA, Hamburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-89965-711-1 , p. 49.
  42. ↑ Jürgen P. Lang: New rights: In the network of the conspirators. Bayerischer Rundfunk, January 24, 2016.
  43. ↑ Michael Butter: "Nothing is what it seems". About conspiracy theories . Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2018, pp. 9–12 and 196.
  44. ↑ Rita Lauter: Conspiracy Theories: Nothing is what it seems . zeit.de , April 25, 2018; accessed on August 20, 2019.
  45. ^ Annette Langer: Meeting of right-wing populists: "I have some homosexual friends myself". Spiegel Online , September 6, 2013; accessed on August 8, 2014.
  46. ^ Arne Zillmer: World premiere or world conspiracy: The Compact Conference in Berlin . Die Zeit - Blog, November 23, 2010
  47. ↑ Markus Linden: Everything is a lie! Conspiracy theories are explaining the world to more and more people. It doesn't bode well for the rest of society . The European , November 11, 2014
  48. ↑ Markus Linden: Neorechte movement. From media bashing to national resistance . In: NZZ , October 26, 2015
  49. ↑ Konrad Litschko, Andreas Speit: “New Right” radicalizes Pegida. The heaters . In: taz , October 31, 2015, p. 5
  50. ↑ Felix Schilk: Sovereignty instead of complexity. How the Querfront magazine ›Compact‹ deals with the political legitimacy crisis of the present . Unrast, Münster 2017, ISBN 978-3-89771-768-8 , pp. 165 f .
  51. ↑ Felix Schilk: The Wrath entrepreneurs. The COMPACT magazine as a hinge component in the right mosaic . In: kultuRRevolution - magazine for applied discourse theory . No. 77/78 , pp. 32-44, p. 32 .
  52. ↑ Marc Grimm, Bodo Kahmann: AfD and Judenbild . In: Stephan Grigat (Ed.): AfD & FPÖ. Anti-Semitism, ethnic nationalism and gender images ( Interdisciplinary Research on Antisemitism Series , Volume 7). Nomos 2017, p. 45 f.
  53. ↑ Melanie Amann: Jürgen Elsässer: This is what the chief ideologist of the New Right thinks . Spiegel Online , January 13, 2018
  54. ↑ Ulrich Wangemann: Right fighting sheet with AfD affiliation: Why the constitution protection is now watching the “Compact” magazine . maz-online.de, March 15, 2020
  55. ^ Völkisches Magazin: Open letter against "Compact" at the Leipzig Book Fair . In: Leipziger Volkszeitung , March 11, 2016; accessed on June 29, 2018
  56. ^ Leipzig Book Fair: Climate research among right-wing populists and Manga escapists . Spiegel Online , March 20, 2016; accessed on June 29, 2018
  57. ↑ Roger Willemsen writes for "Compact". With Thilo and Eva in one sheet . In: taz , November 17, 2010
  58. ↑ Extremism: SPD MPs regret interview for right-wing populist magazine . Focus-Regional Erfurt, December 27, 2013
  59. ↑ Der goldene Aluhut 2016 - winners and award ceremony ( memento from June 30th 2017 in the Internet Archive ), blog of Der goldene Aluhut gUG from October 10th 2016, accessed on July 21st 2017
  60. ↑ The five wildest conspiracy theories of the year . Welt Online , November 1, 2016; accessed on July 21, 2017