German Interior Minister Nancy Feather announced the ban and closure of Compact magazine, the accounts of the publishing house were arrested, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is conducting searches in the publishing house and the house of the editor-in-chief. The magazine is accused of “hostility to the German constitution.” The correspondent of Die Welt points out that we are talking about a popular right-wing magazine with tens of thousands of subscribers, which is close to Alternative for Germany (AfD) and is known for its pro-Russian, anti-migrant and anti-American orientation.

CARSTEN HADLER, presenter of Die Welt: From the Federal Ministry of the Interior in Berlin, Marian Grunden is for us. Marian, it really happened unexpectedly, as Interior Secretary Nancy Feather justifies the ban (magazine. — In other words) Compact?

MARIAN GRUNDEN, correspondent of Die Welt: This is justified by the fact that he was the mouthpiece of the right-wing extremist scene, and it should be added that he was hostile to the constitution. This is how this magazine is evaluated. But anti-constitutionalism is far from enough to justify a ban in Germany. This unconstitutional nature must be expressed in an aggressive, combative form.

And this was recognized as proven here at the Federal Ministry of Internal Affairs, and, of course, was based on data and investigations by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. And that is why these searches were organized, the purpose of which was not only to find evidence confirming this suspicion, but also to confiscate assets.

And these assets are said to be quite large because Compact magazine had a huge reach. For example, only during the coronavirus pandemic, the circulation of the magazine was 80 thousand copies. And there are a lot of subscribers on their YouTube channel too. Hundreds of thousands watch daily videos and this, of course, is an excessive coverage, which is covered by this conspiracy, sometimes anti-Semitic, anti-American content.

And yes, on the one hand, he was, of course, considered the mouthpiece of the AFD, but there were also close contacts with the Identitarian movement, as well as with small parties such as the Free Saxons, which are considered right-wing extremists.

And Jurgen Elsasser, the editor-in-chief, called again last year, quote: “to overthrow the regime,” which probably also gave another reason to further advance the investigation. And this, of course, is the statement by which he officially asked the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution to carefully study this case.

The fact is: this magazine is now banned. Although, in fact, a festival was scheduled for the coming weeks, which was called the “Patriot Festival”, to which Martin Zellner, a leading figure of the identarists, was also invited, who was supposed to speak there and who had actually already been banned from entering Germany.

And also Maximilian Kra, the main candidate of the AfD in the European elections, who stood out in this election campaign thanks to large-scale scandals and influence from Russia, mentioned again and again.

It is said that this Russian influence also existed on this magazine. It is said that the magazine acted extremely friendly to Russia. That is, you can see the spectrum in which this magazine and this editor-in-chief were located.

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