Junge Freiheit - Issues and Style

Issues and Style

The JF has one section for politics, one for culture and for foreign affairs, with lesser attention to economics. There are a substantial number of opinions and commentaries including weekly opinion columns. Every week the paper also conducts an interview with a prominent politician, author, scientist or artist. Due to the selection of its guest authors and the style of its editorials, as well as its consistent opposition to the Islamization of Europe, it has been widely claimed that the paper serves as the intellectual organ of the German Right-wing. In this connection, the State Offices for the Protection of the Constitution (German domestic intelligence service) in North Rhine Westphalia and Baden-Württemberg mentioned Junge Freiheit from mid-1995 until 2005 in their yearly reports of anti-constitutional activities for suspicion of Far-right affiliations. However, the newspaper sued the North Rhine Westphalia authorities, and the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany annulled such classification in 2005 (so-called Junge Freiheit ruling). Since then, neither North Rhine Westphalia nor Baden-Württemberg constitution protection reports mention the newspaper. The critics of the paper include Anton Maegerle (anti-right-wing journalist and author) and Stephan Braun (an SPD politician). Helmut Markwort (editor in chief of Focus), Ephraim Kishon and Erwin Scheuch deny any far-right trends in the newspaper.