The decision of the Berlin Administrative Court against Germany’s oldest daily left-wing newspaper Junge Welt [Young World] has become a hot topic in our country as well. According to the ruling, there was nothing wrong with the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) referring to the newspaper as “extreme leftist” in its internal intelligence reports; Marxism-Leninism was already unconstitutional and Junge Welt was praising Marx and Lenin and denouncing capitalism!
Nick Brauns, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Junge Welt, says the matter is more serious. Not only were the German courts now “accusing” Junge Welt of being Marxist-Leninist, but even the mere mention of the simple fact that society is divided into classes was deemed unconstitutional.
Brauns believes that the German state is being restructured in a more reactionary and militaristic way in preparation for war with China and Russia. The crackdown on the media and freedom of the press is only part of this reorganization.
Can you give us some information about the trial process? What happens to a newspaper if the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BvF) reports it as ‘extremist’, or ‘left-wing extremist’? What is the court’s evidence against Junge Welt?
Junge Welt has been around since 1947 and was the newspaper of the Free German Youth in the GDR. Today it is a daily newspaper with a Marxist orientation that is independent of political parties, corporations and churches. It currently has a daily circulation of around 21,000 copies.
Since the end of the 1990s, Junge Welt has been the only German-language daily newspaper to be listed as ‘left-wing extremist’ in the annual reports of the domestic secret service – the so-called constitution protection reports. The German government justified this with the Marxist orientation of Junge Welt. It is claimed that Junge Welt is not primarily a journalistic product. Rather, the publisher and the co-operative as the main owner are accused of being ‘extremist groups of people’ with plans to overthrow the government.
As a result, Junge Welt, which is also subject to the laws of the market, has considerable disadvantages in terms of advertising and distribution, but also in its editorial work. With reference to the secret service report, it has been refused paid advertisements on public radio, in railway stations and on public transport. Institutions refuse to provide information in response to press enquiries. This is the declared intention. In 2021, in response to a parliamentary question from the parliamentary group Die Linke, the German government admitted that by naming Junge Welt in the secret service report, it wanted to ‘deprive the newspaper of its breeding ground’ and limit its reach.
Because fundamental rights such as freedom of the press and freedom of trade are being violated here, the publishing house 8. Mai GmbH, which publishes the newspaper, filed a lawsuit against the naming in the intelligence report. On 18 July – after around three years – a court hearing finally took place. However, we lost in the first instance. The court considers the naming of the newspaper in the intelligence report to be justified. The judgement had obviously already been decided before the trial. We only received a new dossier from the secret service’s lawyers the day before the trial, which we were unable to respond to due to the short time available. Among other things, we were accused of using terms such as working class, capitalism and class justice. I think the term class justice is a good way to describe the judgement. Ultimately, this trial was about freedom of the press and the question of to what extent and to whom this fundamental right should apply. It obviously does not apply to left-wing critics of capitalism, or only to a limited extent.
‘THE STATEMENT THAT SOCIETY IS DIVIDED INTO CLASSES VIOLATES THE CONSTITUTION’
Presiding judge Wilfried Peters spoke in favour of the BfV from the beginning. According to the reports we read, Peters accused Junge Welt of praising Marx and Lenin, and also organising an annual conference against capitalism, against ‘the free democratic basic order.’ Can we say from now on, the German state criminalises ‘praising’ Marx and Lenin, or speaking against capitalism? The court is implying that Junge Welt is affiliated with the German Communist Party (DKP). Is it a crime to ‘affiliate with’ the DKP?
The German government and its secret service have long accused Junge Welt of having a Marxist orientation. In response to a parliamentary question, the federal government declared that the mere statement that a society is divided into classes violates the constitution. Such an absurd accusation would not only affect Marxists, but also left-wing trade unionists and bourgeois social scientists. In the trial, however, the secret service’s lawyers went even further – and the court followed their lead. Now we were accused of being Marxist-Leninist.
The secret service’s lawyers and the court referred to the 1956 ban on the Communist Party Germany (KPD) by the Federal Constitutional Court. In the judgement at the time, Marxism-Leninism – albeit explicitly in its interpretation by Stalin – was described as incompatible with the constitution. It is clear that even after 70 years, this judgement from the height of the Cold War still hangs as a sword of Damocles over the left. As proof that we are Marxist-Leninist, a photomontage from our reader’s letter page showing Lenin reading Junge Welt was cited, among other things. The judge went so far as to make the nonsensical claim that anyone who sympathised with Lenin was automatically striving for a one-party dictatorship. He also claimed that Lenin had vigorously fought against the so-called Free Democratic Basic Order (FDGO) [Freiheitliche demokratische Grundordnung]. However, the FDGO was formulated by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1952 – almost 30 years after Lenin’s death and certainly not for Russia.
Every year for almost 30 years, Junge Welt has organised the International Rosa Luxemburg Conference with speakers and artists from all over the world, including Cuban academics, Turkish socialist MPs, American trade unionists and African philosophers. This year in January, 3,700 people attended the conference, which has established itself as something of an annual kick-off for the socialist and communist left in Germany.
The court is now accusing us of using this conference to create reach and act as a political factor. Other daily newspapers also organise conferences for their readers. Bourgeois, neo-liberal newspapers organise conferences with property consultants or invite readers to wine tastings in order to retain their readership. But we are accused of not primarily aiming to win and retain readers with such a conference, but of wanting to prepare the revolution there.
It may be that individual authors or employees are close to the DKP and we also share a common Marxist conviction. But the DKP has its own party newspaper, Unsere Zeit. And Junge Welt is a daily newspaper independent of the party – also independent of the DKP. Incidentally, the DKP is a legal party that regularly contests elections. But it is also named as left-wing extremist in the constitution protection report. Of course, this should also be criticised. An important difference, however, is that Junge Welt is not a party, not an activist organisation, but a newspaper. And according to a ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court in 2005, a newspaper may not be named in the constitution protection report. This fundamental judgement was made at the time for a right-wing weekly newspaper, Junge Freiheit, and should also apply to Junge Welt.
At the same time, a right-wing magazine Compact was banned in Germany. Do you think German authorities seek a ‘balance’ between the persecution of the so-called ‘right-wing’ and the leftist publications?
Compact was the fascist magazine with the highest circulation. Its editor Jürgen Elsässer is sometimes referred to as the German Dogu Perincek because he has a similar biography, with a development from Maoism to the nationalist right and a certain Eurasian orientation. Now the Compact was a disgusting racist paper that agitated against migrants and Muslims in particular. However, the magazine was not banned because of any criminal offences, but because the German government did not like its political line.
We at Junge Welt criticised the banning of Compact as an attack on the freedom of the press – even if we don’t shed a tear for the magazine itself. It was certainly no coincidence that Compact was banned two days before the trial of Junge Welt. The German government is trying to present itself as a democratic centre that is fighting against the ‘extremists’ of the left and right. And our experience is that all measures taken in the name of the fight against the right will sooner or later also affect the left. Many bourgeois media columnists were alarmed after the ban on Compact and the trial against Junge Welt and have warned against further restrictions on press freedom – even if they have no sympathy for our left-wing, Marxist and anti-imperialist orientation.
‘THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT WANTS TO PREPARE THE COUNTRY FOR WAR IN EVERY FIELD’
Federal Germany is well-known for its anti-communist stance for decades. After the Ukrainian War and Israel’s invasion of Gaza, it seems that the German state does not want to tolerate any dissident voices in the press and tries to consolidate the state organisation in a more militaristic way. Do you agree with that?
We are currently experiencing a reactionary-militaristic state reorganisation in the Federal Republic of Germany. Immediately after the start of the Ukraine war in 2022, the government declared a ‘turning point’ and decided to massively rearm the Bundeswehr. The government’s declared aim is to make the country fit for war at all levels in the coming years – for a war against Russia and for the West’s war policy against China. This also includes the suppression of critical voices in the media. The domestic secret service is playing an increasingly active role here by defaming critics of the government as ‘extremists’ and pillorying them for their opinions.
The majority of the press has voluntarily backed this policy and has joined in with the war propaganda of the ‘evil Russians’ against whom Germany must defend itself.
Anyone who, like Junge Welt, criticises the armament and militarisation, explains NATO expansion as the background to the Ukraine war and advocates a diplomatic peace solution is defamed as a Putin apologist or traitor to the fatherland. The pressure is even stronger on the Israel-Palestine issue. Unconditional support for Israel is seen as Germany’s ‘reason of state’. Perfidiously, the state is using the remorse of many people, including anti-fascists, for the Nazis’ crimes against the Jews to suppress criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Pro-Palestinian demonstrations are regularly attacked or banned by the police. There have been a number of dismissals of journalists from the state broadcaster in recent years because they have privately campaigned for Palestinian rights on social media or criticised Israel. Foreign pro-Palestinian academics and intellectuals – including a number of Jews – have been dismissed from visiting professorships or prevented from organising events with them in Germany. Junge Welt is almost the only newspaper that has resisted this course, openly naming the occupation and war crimes of the Israeli army and standing up for the rights of the Palestinians. That is why we are accused of anti-Semitism by bourgeois newspapers – which is all the more absurd as we are an anti-fascist newspaper that rejects and combats all hatred of Jews.
