by Mara Gergolet
On November 23, 35-year-old Martin Sellner held a meeting with members of the Alternative for Germany at the site where Hitler's regime planned the final solution for the Jews. And now the second German party is also starting to use the key term of the conference: remigration
FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
BERLIN – It is no coincidence that a secret right-wing extremist conference is convened at Wannsee, on the outskirts of Potsdam, where the Hitler regime planned the final solution for the Jews. And there, in a building built by Lorenz Adlon – son of the founder of the hotel, which is one of Berlin's landmarks – a small group met to illustrate the big plan to solve the immigration problem. Their deportation to Africa, to a consenting state whose name is not mentioned, just as the Nazis planned in 1940 (an idea later rejected) to send 4 million Jews to Madagascar. All very ambiguous, all full of historical references, with great care not to officially cross the red line and not directly use Nazi terminology. Remigration, the new buzzword, of those whom Chancellor Scholz described as fanatics.
The 35-year-old Austrian Sellner listens to the AfD
The date was November 23rd, and the German research site Correctiv reported on it, the news was then picked up by much of the national press the following day. The entrance fee was 5,000 euros, and around two dozen guests were present to finance future activities. But it's the names that attract attention. The speaker Prince Martin Sellner, minor star of the new extremist right and on the verge of European subversion. Not an old iron man, but a 35-year-old Austrian with a lush quiff sloping to the right and well-shaven hair at the back – like footballers – who is also the beacon of the New Right in Germany. In 2018, Britain banned him from entering its territory for life due to his extremist and racist ideas. He has written numerous books, from the book that made him famous Identitr! History of a departure (translated as Identitarian! History of an awakening) up to the last edition published a few months ago, which is a program: regime change from the right. A strategic sketch. Sellner was one of the first to talk about ethnic replacement. And perhaps it is he – who has a certain intellectual ambition, a cultured and ambiguous manner – who inspired Michel Houellebecq in his book Submission (2015). At least he had somehow prophetically announced it.
However, a representative part of the AfD, a party that now has over 20 percent of the vote nationwide, was listening to him in the Wannsee Hotel. Roland Hartwig, spokesman for federal chairwoman Alice Weidel. The head of the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt, the most extreme faction of the party, two other prominent members of the Alternative and also two CDU politicians: more precisely, members of the Union of Values, the more right-wing wing of the Christian Democrats as the former's head of internal service Hans-Georg Maaßen (then dismissed, because he protects neo-Nazi agents) wants to be co-opted for the founding of his announced party, obviously right-wing. And then doctors, sports and food entrepreneurs, lawyers, lawyers.
The return migration plan for 2 million people
But we talked about the plan. At the heart of Sellner's discussed idea was the remigration thesis. It plans to deport up to two million immigrants from Germany to Africa. That means three categories: migrants, refugees and also citizens with a German passport who have not succeeded in integrating. In addition, Sellner also warned the AfD: The most difficult thing in the event of a takeover of power would be the resettlement of the population. There is a plan but also a call to action in his ideas, which seem sheer madness to those who look at them for the first time and which instead anticipate in his mind a dystopian Houellebecquian future.
The day after Correctiv's journalistic investigation was published, there was no shortage of reactions. Chancellor Scholz explained that we protect everyone, regardless of origin, skin color or how disturbing a person is for fanatics with assimilation fantasies.
The participants also made their voices heard. Weidel's spokesman Hartwig said he went to the rally privately without notifying his boss. Thesis was adopted by almost all other colleagues. But at the same time, one cannot help but notice that Hartwig himself reports that he read Sellner's latest book (on regime change) and found many interesting ideas in it. Just as the AfD affirms in an official statement that migrants are Germany's main problem: we must be able to take away criminals' passports and there is a need for return migration (hence the word officially finds its way into their policies). It is not acceptable for people who hate Germany and its values to become citizens. Let them rape women, attack innocent people with knives and not deport them because of their German passport. And then they show up in the statistics as German criminals.
The AfD has long been the second largest German party (after the CDU) and has more support than the Social Democrats, Greens or Liberals in government. To say that they are a minority and are loathed or viewed with extreme suspicion by the other three quarters of Germans is true. But as they prepare to take first place in three regional elections in the east next September, that feeling is no longer enough to dispel their weight in society and now in politics. Even if you look away, the almost explicit references to the Nazi era, when some terms are symbolically and maliciously evoked (without being quoted), can be reassuring. But a consolation for the blind, or rather for those who stubbornly do not want to see.
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January 11, 2024 (modified January 11, 2024 | 4:12 p.m.)
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