Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has urged democrats to stand together against “fanatics with assimilation fantasies” after it emerged that politicians from the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party had discussed a “masterplan” for mass deportations in the event of the party coming to power.
The far-right meeting, involving members of the AfD, the head of the Identitarian Movement and neo-Nazi activists, took place last November at a countryside hotel on the outskirts of Potsdam.
According to the investigative outlet Correctiv, which first reported the story, the concept of “re-migration” – the forceful return of migrants, allegedly including those with German citizenship, to their countries of origin through mass deportations – dominated the discussions.
Invitations seen by Correctiv and the Guardian described the meeting as an opportunity to present “an overall concept in the sense of a masterplan”. The ideas discussed at the meeting reportedly included deportations to areas in northern Africa, where up to 2 million people could be placed.
Scholz sharply condemned the alleged plans on Thursday. “We protect all, regardless of origin, skin colour or how uncomfortable someone is for fanatics with assimilation fantasies,” he wrote on social media.
“Learning from history is about more than just lip service,” he added, in what appeared to be a reference to the Nazi dictatorship, which made race ideology, ostracism and the deportation of Jews, Roma and Sinti, gay people and many others the cornerstone of its politics. Scholz continued: “Democrats must stand together.”
The AfD, buoyed in part by discontent over immigration, is polling in first place in all five of Germany’s eastern states, three of which are expected to hold elections later this year. While the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the liberal, pro-business Free Democratic party (FDP) have, for now, ruled out the possibility of entering coalitions with the party, AfD’s presence at the meeting suggests a far-right organisation with its eye on political gains in the near future.
The AfD members were meeting Martin Sellner, a key figure in the pan-European “New Right” who, in 2019, was permanently barred from entering the UK because of his extremist views.
In a statement sent to the Guardian, Sellner confirmed he had presented the idea of “re-migration” at the meeting but said it was not about a “secret masterplan” and his comments had been shortened and taken out of context.
During the meeting, Sellner said, he had made it “unmistakably clear that no distinction can be made between different types of [German] citizens – that there must be no second-class citizens – and that all re-migration measures have to be legal”.
“Remigration also includes not only deportations, but also local assistance, Leitkultur [guiding culture] and pressure to assimilate. The demand is part of an alternative migration and family policy, the aim of which is to control immigration so that it does not exceed Germany’s reception limits.”
As news of the meeting sparked outrage across Germany, Maximilian Krah, the AfD’s lead candidate for the European parliament elections in June, vowed to address the large number of migrants who had arrived in the country in 2022, more than 40% of whom were reportedly from Ukraine.
“In 2022, 2.7 million people migrated to Germany,” he tweeted. “That is destroying our country! Only the AfD will stop this and arrange their return.”
With contributions from Associated Press and Reuters
