Jungle World is a German weekly newspaper published in Berlin. Initially founded in 1997 by striking editors of the German Marxist daily Junge Welt,[1] it became independent after only a few issues. Today, it is published by the Jungle World Verlags GmbH in the names of over thirty current and former authors, editors, and staff as well as friends of the newspaper.
It has been described as a “newspaper of pluralistic debate,”[2] and its anti-national and cosmopolitan positions reflect those of the “undogmatic left” in Germany.[3] An online publication of the Goethe Institute describes it as “[w]itty, left-wing and fairly hard-hitting. Jungle World combines committed journalism and a good layout to form quite a good package. It doesn’t, however, sell that many copies.”[4]
The newspaper received a large amount of criticism among the left in Germany due to its opaque stance on the upcoming Iraq War in 2002 and its criticism of then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s use of anti-war politics in his re-election campaign of the same year.[5] A strong point of contention among the German left is its pro-Israel positions[6]. A founder and co-editor of the Jungle World refers to the paper as “explicitly anti-anti-Zionist, anti-anti-Semitic, and anti-anti-American.”[7]
Since its re-launch on its tenth anniversary in 2007, Jungle World features two sections: the outer concerns mostly political news and analysis on German and international matters as well as debate, the inner section provides cultural and literary criticism, biting satire, and a longer piece in the form of a dossier. In contrast to most other German newspapers, it also runs a weekly comics page. Since April 2008 its website has also run a series of blogs.