German leader rips ‘remigration’
BERLIN — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Thursday sharply condemned alleged plans by members of far-right groups who supposedly met recently at a mansion outside Berlin to devise a plot to deport millions of immigrants, even those with German citizenship, if the groups take power.
The alleged plan, which was published in an article by the investigative journalists’ group Correctiv on Wednesday, has led to an uproar in the country because it echoes the Nazis’ ideology of deporting all people who are not ethnically German.
Scholz said Germany will not allow anyone living in the country to be judged based on whether they have foreign roots or not.
“We protect everyone — regardless of origin, skin color or how uncomfortable someone is for fanatics with assimilation fantasies,” the chancellor wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
“Anyone who opposes our free democratic order” is a case for Germany’s domestic intelligence office and the judiciary, he said, adding that learning the lessons from Germany’s history should not just have been lip service.
Scholz was referring to the Nazis’ Third Reich dictatorship in 1933-45, which made race ideology, ostracism and deportation of Jews, Roma and Sinti, homosexuals and many others the cornerstone of its politics.
The Nazis’ belief in the superiority of their own “Aryan” race eventually led to the murder of 6 million Jews and other minorities in the Holocaust.
According to the report by Correctiv, members of the farright Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, and the extremist Identitarian Movement participated in the meeting in November. At the meeting, a prominent member of the Identitarian Movement, Austrian citizen Martin Sellner, presented his “remigration” vision for the deportation of immigrants, he confirmed to the German press agency dpa. Other participants included members of the AfD, such as Roland Hartwig, an adviser to party leader Alice Weidel, Correctiv said.
The AfD was founded as a euroskeptic party in 2013 and first entered the German Bundestag in 2017. Polling now puts it in second place nationally with around 20% support, far above the 10.3% it won during the last federal election in 2021.
Since its founding, the party has continually moved to the right and gained support for its fierce anti-migrant views.
It is especially strong in eastern Germany, where state elections are slated to take place later this year in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg. The AfD is leading the polls in all three states with more than 30% support.
Deportation of German citizens is not possible under the constitution, which can only be changed by a two-thirds majority in the lower and upper houses of parliament.