Professor Dr Gudrun Hentges, Chair of Political Science, Educational Policy and Political Education at the Faculty of Human Sciences, provides an answer.

Since the secret meeting of supporters of the populist and extreme right near Potsdam in November 2023, Germany seems to be more clearly aware of the extent of the threat posed by right-wing forces. As we now know, Martin Sellner, head of the Identitäre Bewegung Österreich (Identity Movement Austria) until 2023, hatched a racist plan for the deportation and expulsion of millions of people in his main speech at the meeting titled ‘Master plan Remigration’: People living in the federal territory should be deported to a third city to be created; this could be leased and organized as a ‘special economic zone’ in North Africa. In the reports of the research network Correctiv it became clear that the presentation of the so-called master plan met with goodwill and approval among the participants from business and politics.

Racist or antisemitic deportation plans are not new. Shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War, after the defeat of France in June 1940, the ‘Madagascar Plan’ became more important: At the time, the Nazi regime considered deporting four million Jews to the French colony of Madagascar.
The new concept of ‘remigration’ has been well known in research since 2011 at the latest. That year, Renaud Camus, one of the pioneers of the French political party Rassemblement National, explicitly called for forced remigration in his work ‘Le grand remplacement’ (The Great Exchange) . The term was used as a weapon in the fight against alleged mass immigration and Islamization.

Since then, the term has also repeatedly been taken up in Germany by various members of the populist and extreme right. Among them is the Identitäre Bewegung, which launched a campaign in 2017 under the slogan ‘Defend Europe’ and tried to prevent civil sea rescue in the Mediterranean with the ship C-Star . The German party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in the Bundestag also repeatedly calls for remigration, repatriation or deportation in plenary debates. Last but not least, the new right-wing party Werteunion (Value Union) strikes a similar tone.

The danger from the right does not lie in the fact that primarily the concepts invented by the pioneers of the ‘Nouvelle Droite’ are given a new meaning. Rather, it is that such plans for forced remigration and deportation have found their way into the German Bundestag via the Identitäre Bewegung and the AfD. These terms and concepts are disseminated through plenary debates and Bundestag printed media and permeate the public space. The secret meeting also made clear that it is no longer just about terms and concepts, but that these plans have become more concrete.

The so-called master plan for the expulsion of people, including people with a German passport, is an attempt to undermine fundamental rights and is unconstitutional. It remains to be hoped that the major demonstrations, in response to the secret meeting, will ensure that the danger from the right is not downplayed.