Remigration
A secret summit of far-right extremists in Germany has refocused attention on the Freedom Party's immigration policy and links to radical groups
Servus!
Over the weekend, hundreds of thousands of Germans marched through cities up and down the country to protest against the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), currently the second-most popular party in Germany. As I covered in my latest feature for the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, the demonstrations were spurred by an investigation by the German publication Correctiv, which revealed that, in November of last year, members of the AfD took part in a secret meeting in Potsdam at which shocking plans to deport millions of migrants were discussed.
The proposals were presented by none other than Martin Sellner, an Austrian far-right identitarian activist previously barred from entering Britain and the United States. What was described as his “masterplan” centered on the idea of “re-migration”—another term for mass deportation. Per Correctiv:
There are three target groups of migrants, he explains, who should be extradited from the country—or, as he puts it, ‘foreigners’ who should undergo ‘reversed settlement.’ They are: asylum seekers, non-Germans with residency rights, and ‘non-assimilated’ German citizens. … In other words, …people in Germany should be forcibly extradited if they have the wrong skin color, the wrong parents, or aren’t sufficiently ‘assimilated’ into German culture.
Re-migration would “divide German residents into those who would be able to live peacefully in Germany and those for whom this basic human right would no longer apply,” a plan that would “contravene the citizenship rights and principle of equality between citizens.” Sellner’s vision also reportedly included establishing “a so-called ‘model state’ in North Africa, that would apparently provide space for up to two million people,” Correctiv reported, a concept “eerily reminiscent of the Nazis’ 1940 plan to deport four million Jews to Madagascar.”
No members of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) were present at that meeting. But these revelations have nonetheless refocused attention on the FPÖ’s immigration policy and the party’s links to the identitarian movement from which Sellner comes. In 2021, Kickl called the Austrian Identitarian Movement—described by the Documentation Center for Austrian Resistance as a “an extreme right-wing youth organization with many fascist echoes in its theory, aesthetics, rhetoric and style”—as “an interesting project worthy of support,” adding he viewed them simply as a “right-wing NGO” as if they were the equivalent of Greenpeace or Doctors Without Borders.
FPÖ immigration policy under Kickl has built on the slogan ‘Fortress Austria.’ In his New Year’s speech held January 12, he made clear what that would mean in real terms: no more asylum applications; a “switch from cash benefits to benefits in kind”; and asylum seekers no longer being allowed to become Austrian citizens. In other words: a hostile environment for asylum seekers akin to Hungary. “And don't let anyone tell you that this is not possible,” Kickl proclaimed. “Only those who have no balls claim that! Just like the Marxists: they want to bring in immigrants from all over the world and turn Austria into a world welfare center.”
In talking about migration, Kickl has previously used terms once employed by the Nazis in their own propaganda: Festung, fortress; Entwurzelung, uprooting or rootlessness; Bevölkerungsaustausch, population transfer or exchange. “The shadow of Goebbels [looms] over the political situation in Austria,” Paul Lendvai wrote in the Standard this week. Three human rights organizations—Black Voices Austria, Fridays for Future, and the Platform for a Humane Asylum Policy—have called a joint demonstration for 18:00 on Friday outside parliament in Vienna. The protest has been endorsed by the Greens as well as the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ). Its leader Andreas Babler said: “Let's make a statement together. Let us protect the basic values of our republic!”
Bis bald!
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