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Jürgen Elsässer
Jürgen Elsässer (born 20 January 1957) is a German journalist and political activist of the new right. LifeJürgen Elsässer was born in Pforzheim in 1957, the son of a watchmaker and a secretary. He described himself and his two sisters in their youth as typical admirers of left-wing values characterized by the 1968 protest movement some years earlier. His father was a conservative CDU voter.[1] To get a job as a teacher he swore his support of the Liberal democratic basic order, a requirement for employment in the German public sector and a measure to prevent political extremists from holding state funded jobs, whilst a member of communist organisations.[1] He worked as a teacher in a vocational school in Baden-Württemberg, Germany for 14 years before beginning his career as journalist for left-wing magazines in 1994. Elsässer published his first works in the newspaper Arbeiterkampf (Workers' Struggle), a magazine which was tied to the Kommunistischer Bund (communist league), an organisation of which he was a member for years.[2] In 1990 he was a sharp critic of the German reunification, because he was afraid of the possible dawn of a Viertes Reich (Fourth Reich). Elsässer was one of the political creators of the Anti-Germans movement. In 1994, he was editor of the leftist Junge Welt (Young world). He was also co-editor of the largest left-wing monthly magazine konkret until he was dismissed. Elsässer switched to the right.[3] In 2010, he founded Compact magazine,[4] of which he was also the editor. In 2011, Elsässer expressed his admiration for Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević.[1] During the 2014 pro-Russian unrest in Ukraine, Elsässer was an outspoken supporter of Russian president Vladimir Putin and received much criticism from the German media for his position.[5] Elsässer's current political position is commonly considered as right-wing populist[1][6] and he is a sharp critic of the migration policy of the former German chancellor Angela Merkel.[7][1] ReceptionMelanie Amann of Der Spiegel wrote about Elsässer, his appearance is "a mixture of evangelical preacher and teleshopping moderator" and this would "work independently of his message."[1] Similar to this Dietmar Koschmieder, editor in chief of Junge Welt said 2018 in Der Spiegel: "If you ask me, [Elsässer] has no convictions at all... He is an expert in emotionalization who adapts his message to the respective target and audience."[1] References
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