American Renaissance Plans to Ethnically Cleanse the U.S.

Sellner’s presence at the conference, even if virtually, signals AmRen’s willingness to collaborate, and plan for America’s future, with a man who once belonged to an openly neo-Nazi group called “Stolz und Frei” (Proud and Free), was mentored by Gottfried Küssel, who was imprisoned twice in Austria for “Nazi revivalism,” and once stuck a swastika poster onto a synagogue in Baden bei Wien, Austria. 

Since shifting his focus to Identitarianism and the pan-European Generation Identity network, of which he was the unofficial leader, Sellner’s been a relentless propagator of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. This earned him admiration from the Christchurch mosque attacker, who, inspired by the conspiracy theory, killed 51 people and injured another 89 in a series of mass shootings targeting two New Zealand mosques. It was revealed the shooter donated nearly $1,700 to the Identitarian movement and exchanged emails with Sellner, though no charges were brought against Sellner. 

Over the past couple of years, Sellner has been sharing plans for “remigration,” which entails the forced deportation of non-white people living in a country, even if they’re citizens, back to their supposed “home countries.” Sellner shared this ethnic cleansing plan in a secret meeting with high-ranking figures in Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, AfD) political party which sparked protests of thousands of people. Sellner and the term even gained enough attention to have Trump parrot the phrase in a post on Truth Social. In essence, the remigration envisioned by Sellner is what white nationalists hope mass deportations in the U.S. will lead to.

Guido Taietti is a high-ranking member of the Italian neo-Nazi, anti-immigrant, and anti-LGBTQ+ former political party, now social movement, CasaPound. He has a history of political violence, and was sentenced in 2019 to more than seven years in prison for a brutal attack on a man, alongside fellow CasaPound adherents (the sentence was later reduced to two years and six months on appeal). The attack itself, which happened in 2015, involved beating an anti-fascist activist with a bar and kicking him several times in the head. The victim suffered serious head trauma, multiple fractures, and bilateral lung contusions. Other members of CasaPound have been involved in outright hate and acts of violence, including a gang rape, for which two members were convicted and sentenced to prison in 2019, leading anti-Roma mobs in 2021, and a brutal assault on Moroccans in 2022. Clearly, a violent past is no problem for AmRen. 

AmRen Speakers Fantasize A White America

Speakers generally split their conversations into two issues: justifying the dehumanization of migrants, and how best to turn dehumanization into deportation. Richard Marksbury, a former professor at Tulane University with ties to several neo-Confederate groups, which generally seek the creation of an all-white seceded American South, took a historical approach to justifying white supremacy. He labeled the United States as the ethnic homeland of white Americans, with classic Americana and American traditions belonging “unique[ly]” to white people. Marksbury blamed the Union’s victory in the Civil War for leading to supposed increased attempts to control the white population. Further, he suggested that ethnonationalism needed to become a mainstream discussion in the United States, as he believes it’s not spoken about in the media because it keeps “whites” from knowing a racially-pure ethnostate is an option for them. 

Amy Wax, a tenured professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School with a history of publicly making racist and sexist comments including telling a Black student “that she had only become a double Ivy ‘because of affirmative action” and saying that “people of color needed to stop acting entitled to remedies, to stop getting pregnant, to get better jobs, and to be more focused on reciprocity,” was also an honored guest at AmRen. Wax was recently sanctioned by the University for actions related to her work at the school. At AmRen, Wax discussed “race realism” a pseudonym for “race science,” or eugenics, which in modern times tends to manifest in proposals for stricter immigration policies for supposedly “low IQ” populations, and claims that people of color are inherently inferior and criminally dangerous. In eugenics, white people are the superior race. At its worst, eugenics was used as justification by the Nazis for the murder of those deemed “impure” through implementing compulsory sterilization and euthanasia programs. The Nazis lifted this practice from the U.S., which had its own ugly track record of eugenics policies including forced sterilizations in the first half of the 1900s. 

Wax also advocated for stopping the trend of “rejecting race realism” which supposedly “entails the suppression of faces and the growth of censorship.” Instead, she wants to publicly acknowledge “race realism” as scientific truth, and even goes so far as to say the Black community shouldn’t feel offended by it, since she, as a woman, wasn’t “traumatized” when grading curves were apparently different for men and women in university grading. Further, she argues that “hard” race realism, which falsely claims that IQ differences between races are inherent, is necessary to end “wokeness.” 

Other speakers took the conversation a step further, and wanted to practically apply their eugenicist and white supremacist beliefs to today’s world. The election proved to be a huge issue, with American Renaissance reporting that Trump’s return to office was bringing optimism to white nationalists. 

Gregory Hood, a writer for AmRen, also known as James Kirkpatrick of VDARE, but whose real name is Kevin DeAnna, delivered a lecture titled “The Last Election and the Last American.” DeAnna made a name for himself writing for AmRen and VDARE under these pseudonyms. He also has documented connections to the Wolves of Vinland, who had a member plead guilty to arson in 2012 and was sentenced to two and a half years in prison after setting fire to a historic Black church. DeAnna spoke about this year’s election and how it may affect white nationalists’ goals for a white America. He said, somewhat optimistically, they’d received a “stay of execution” with Trump’s election, but will need to pressure the government and drive policy changes rather than assuming Trump will cater all his policymaking to white nationalists. Expanding on the need to push policy changes themselves, Sam Dickinson, a lawyer to the Klan, described by American Renaissance as a “white activist,” noted that the Constitution “has never been there when we needed it.” 

Jared Taylor invoked the famous Trump motto “Make America Great Again,” MAGA. Except for Taylor, in order “to make America great again…he [Trump] must make America white again.” Unfortunately for white nationalists, Taylor believed this was something Trump “cannot do.” However, Taylor was bullish about Tom Homan’s appointment as “border czar” by Trump, and anticipates the forthcoming mass deportations to be compared to the Holocaust. To achieve his goals of an American white ethnostate, the mass deportations “ha[ve] to be done.” Other anti-immigrant Trump cronies, such as Stephen Miller, who was recently appointed as Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy and has longstanding ties to white nationalists, are admired by Taylor, with Miller described by Taylor as “the best white man in the first Trump administration.” To summarize Taylor’s position on the future of America, aided by the upcoming Trump administration, “We must have a house that is ours and hours alone.” 

Taietti’s lecture, titled “Identitarianism: Errors and Lessons from Europe,” focused on supposed solutions to migration, which he believes are currently erroneously perceived as an internal issue, while the system itself needs to be replaced. This overhaul, in Taietti’s eyes, should be a transnational effort, with multiple countries in Europe closing their borders and instituting remigration as a policy in order to solidify the existence of a pan-European white ethnostate. Regarding the American elections, Taietti claimed Trump isn’t the “white savior” that white nationalists may be looking for, but will see what he can do about “illegal” immigrants. However, Taietti made it clear “illegal” immigration isn’t the crux of his ideology. His belief is that “legal” immigrants are more dangerous than “illegal” immigrants in Europe, meaning that for him, deportation will not stop at “illegal” immigrants. 

The deportation of anyone perceived as a “cultural burden” on white people is something Sellner expanded on with his “remigration” proposal. In his lecture, titled “Remigration — A Hope for Europe,” he took his plan for Europe’s ethnic cleansing and translated it into the American context. Sellner urged the AmRen attendees to become a stronger power bloc, as Trump’s election victory doesn’t necessarily signal a concrete win for white nationalism. He suggests that pushing remigration as a mainstream political policy, as he’s done in Europe, can be achieved by making “the idea of remigration very well known, then make it moral, positive, and hopeful.” In fact, Sellner wants to make the absence of remigration in the United States appear as an immoral act against white people. Once remigration is ready to be enacted, Sellner warns that asking for complete radical change instantly may not go over well. Instead, he advises forcing migrants out via incentives or deportation, deporting any “foreigner” with a criminal record or who is a “cultural burden,” and even going so far, similar to Taietti’s suggestion, as to pressure “passport citizens” to leave.

The focus of this year’s AmRen conference reflects the white nationalist movement’s wholesale adoption of the “Great Replacement” as a key talking point, and growing calls for ethnic cleansing and white ethnostates as a key goal of the movement. All of this is encapsulated in the idea of remigration, a term that is now extremely popular among white supremacists. As Sellner said to the assembled, “millions must go” through remigration, and “Never make your peace with this vile project of the replacement of our people… call it out and destroy it.”