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A group of right-wing and right-wing extremists will meet in Potsdam in November. You talk about “remigration”, you want to expel people with a migration background from Germany and by that you also mean those who have German nationality. This is reported by the research network “Correctiv”.

Influential AfD politicians and members of the Identitarian Movement are said to have attended the meeting in Potsdam. But what exactly is the Identitarian Movement, what do its supporters mean by ‘remigration’ and how dangerous are the plans of the Potsdam meeting? An overview.

What is the Identitarian Movement?

The Identitarian Movement (IB) is a group of new right-wing and extreme right-wing activists. According to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, it considers itself an ‘extra-parliamentary’ and ‘patriotic youth movement’. The IB was founded in France and has also been active in Germany since 2012. According to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the group had about 500 members in 2022. The activists are closely interwoven in right-wing structures and also in the right-wing party landscape.

Martin Sellner, present at the event in Potsdam, is an Austrian right-wing extremist and was spokesperson for the Identitarian Movement Austria until 2023. In Germany he is also known as an actor with the New Right.

The IB represents the right-wing concept of ‘ethnopluralism’, according to which there are said to be different ‘peoples’ or ‘cultures’ that have their own identities and are not allowed to mix. For example, a typical slogan based on ‘ethnopluralism’ and used by many right-wing extremists is ‘Germany for the Germans’.

‘Ethnopluralism’ is a form of racism. Minorities receive less value. According to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the IB aims to “discriminate against people of non-European descent in a manner that violates their human dignity.” The IB also regularly uses the right-wing extremist image of the ‘Great Exchange’.

What does the “Great Exchange” mean?

The term describes a story of the New Right. They argue that Europe’s ‘indigenous’ population must be replaced by migration, especially from African countries and the Near and Middle East.

Within the New Right, this is presented as a consciously controlled process, often accompanied by conspiracy theories, but also as a result of demographic developments. In particular, the expression ‘revolkung’, used as a synonym, refers directly to the National Socialist term of the same name.

“The substantive positions of the IBD and the agitation based on them represent a disregard for the human rights guaranteed in the Basic Law, in particular human dignity and the prohibition of discrimination,” the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution wrote. The slogan ‘remigration’, which is characteristic of the IB, is, among other things, anti-foreigners and anti-Islam.

What exactly do their supporters mean by ‘remigration’?

The IB, the AfD and other right-wing parties regularly use the term ‘remigration’ to mean the return of anyone who does not fit their ‘ethnic-pluralist’ image. They use the term ‘remigration’ to obscure this image, because to the outside world it seems as if they mean the return of people whose asylum applications have been rejected. The IB sees ‘remigration’ as an answer to the ‘great exchange’ conspiracy theory.

This is also evident from the research by “Correctiv”. Gernot Mörig, organizer of the meeting in Potsdam, explains that the only question that brings the law together is the issue of remigration: namely ‘whether we as a people in the West still survive or not’ – a direct allusion to the story of the “great exchange”.

According to ‘Correctiv’, Sellner’s concept focuses on three groups of people with a migration history: asylum seekers, foreigners with right of residence and ‘non-assimilated citizens’. Assimilation is understood as the complete adaptation to the majority society with the loss of the language and culture of the country of origin.

According to the report, Sellner talks about “rolling back the settlement of foreigners” and is using his plans to divide society into those who should live in Germany and those who he believes should not, even though basic rights are allowed allow them to do so. to do that. Ultimately, this means that people who supposedly have the “wrong” origins or skin color should be deported from Germany – even if they are German citizens.

How dangerous are the plans?

The plans that were allegedly discussed in Potsdam are racist and anti-human. They are not compatible with the German Constitution and nationality law. They violate several fundamental rights of the Basic Law, including Article 3, which states: “All people are equal before the law.” And: “No one shall be disadvantaged or favored because of his sex, his origin, his race, his language, his homeland and origin, his faith, his religious or political views. […]».

But that doesn’t seem to matter to Sellner, because in response to a participant’s objection that this was “an impossibility”, the right-wing extremist said, according to “Correctiv”, that “high pressure” had to be exerted on people’s ability to adapt, for example through of ‘tailor-made laws’. ‘Remigration’ is a ‘decade project’.

According to research, the AfD faction leader in Saxony-Anhalt, Ulrich Siegmund, explained during the meeting that the streetscape had to change. Foreign restaurants should be put under pressure. In its state, it should be “as unattractive as possible for this clientele to live in.”

How closely is the AfD involved in the Identitarian Movement?

The AfD is strongly intertwined with the Identitarian Movement; Especially in the ethnic wing of the party, she is seen as an important part of the right-wing extremist ‘front row’ that aims to shift the discourse in Germany further and further to the right.

The organization is officially on the AfD’s incompatibility list. But the list is a fig leaf for the party, which it likes to hide how close its ties are with organizations controlled by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Many officials of the AfD youth organization ‘Junge Alternative’ come from the IB environment. And countless AfD parliamentarians employ activists belonging to or close to the Identitarian Movement, providing them not only with a livelihood but potentially with resources for the political struggle.

Siegbert Droese, member of the Saxon Bundestag, temporarily employed Daniel Fiss, who was then vice-chairman of the Identitarian Movement. According to research by the ‘taz’, Member of Parliament René Springer from Brandenburg hired Jonas Schick, who was intensively active in the Identitarian movement. Before his job at Springer, Schick is said to have already worked for Bremen AfD MP Frank Magnitz. The Bavarian Bundestag members Stephan Protschka and Jan Nolte also channeled money to activists of the Identitarian Movement through Bundestag employee contracts.

For the rest, many AfDers are not afraid of contact with the Identitarian Movement. On the contrary: we know each other, we support each other, we share and promote the same ideology.

In 2018, Roger Beckamp, ​​​​at the time a member of the AfD state parliament in North Rhine-Westphalia, was listed as a speaker at an event in a housing project of the ‘Identitarian Movement’ in Halle. Beckamp is now a member of the Bundestag. Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, AfD member of the state parliament from Saxony-Anhalt, opened his parliamentary office in the same house in Halle where Beckamp visited the ‘Identitarians’. There is a need for “meeting places between a counterculture and the left-wing mainstream,” Tillschneider said at the time.

AfDers pursue this goal nationwide: In Rhineland-Palatinate, AfD politician Joachim Paul, a member of the AfD’s federal board of directors until 2022, currently works at such a network location, according to research by, among others, the Internet portal “Belltower News” . things, he invited the former to a lecture there by IB activist Andreas Karsten.

How important is the concept of ‘remigration’ for the AfD?

Although it contradicts the principles of the constitution, AfD politicians have been intensively promoting the concept of “remigration” for a long time – and with new vigor since the issue of migration has returned to the public spotlight.

“It is not the millions of euros that will keep this society together, but remigration – millions of remigration,” said Bundestag member Matthias Helferich, smiling in a speech in the Bundestag last year. The video was widely shared in the right-wing scene. . Helferich once described himself as the ‘friendly face of the NS’ (National Socialism) and he uses the hashtag ‘remigration’ almost excessively on social media.

On a subpage of his personal homepage, which he calls the “remigration campaign page,” Helferich places stickers and flyers about the term. He wrote about this in December: “The term #remigration is increasingly being followed. It is an expression of national self-assertion in the face of global elites and foreign masses.”

Member of the Bundestag Roger Beckamp also intensively promotes the concept and uses his social networks to do so. On the sidelines of an anti-right-wing demonstration in September 2023, he filmed for social networks and demanded: “Remigration now! And millions of times.” Regarding the demonstration, Beckamp explained: “those people” who are loudly pro-migration should also be deported – “and in case of doubt they are all Germans”.

Beckamp makes it very clear here how far the concept of ‘remigration’ extends in the ethnic wing of the AfD and what hope people like him have with it: not only criminal foreigners or people with dual nationality should be deported from the country – but also Germans whose attitude is not ethnically appropriate.

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