One of Europe’s most prominent white supremacists appeared in Vetschau, Germany, with a State Parliamentarian to discuss enacting a policy of mass deportations, a type of ethnic cleansing sterilized with the term “remigration.”
Austrian Martin Sellner, de facto leader of the pan-European, white nationalist Identitarian Movement, and Lena Kotré, member of the Landtag (legislature) of Brandenburg state for the far-right political party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD, Alternative for Germany) appeared together at a city car dealership to give a talk about migration policy.
Footage taken from the January 23 event by a German blogger who frequently livestreams AfD events, Sebastian Weber, shows the flag of the Identitarian Movement, Identitären Bewegung, hanging in the parking lot entrance while counter protesters and police gathered outside of the event.
Sellner, a former neo-Nazi, has built a career for himself as a pitchman for the far-right, billing the wholesale removal of refugees and asylum seekers and mass curtailing of immigration as a means of stopping what he sees as the replacement of white people within Europe. Rooted in the debunked but nonetheless influential white supremacist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory that views immigration as part of a multi-generational plot to flood European countries with non-white people and replace the native Europeans, Sellner uses this conspiracy to justify his harsh anti-immigrant policy proposals.
The Austrian activist often organizes his own speaking events where he can espouse his particular brand of white nationalism. In May 2025, Sellner was an organizer of the “Remigration Summit” in Italy where he and several other prominent far-right influencers and political figures, including Kotré, gave talks. Another conference is already being planned for this year.
Screen capture from the stream of Sebastian Weber showing the entrance to the speaking event. The flag of the German branch of the Identitarian Movement is hanging on the gate. (Source: YouTube)
On The Showroom Floor
The Vetschau talk was planned by Sellner, but had initially been an official Brandenburg AfD event titled “Remigration in theory and practice.” Scheduled for January 20, AfD’s federal leadership reportedly asked for it to be stopped, resulting in Kotré canceling the event. Party leaders have stressed that their version of remigration differs from Sellner’s by targeting only non-citizens.
This distinction is important for the AfD, as a German Federal Administrative Court ruling in the case of the far-right Compact magazine being declared extremist frequently mentioned Sellner. A constant contributor to the publication, the court found his remigration plan to be incompatible with the country’s constitution.
In a previous meeting between Sellner and AfD representatives in November 2023, Sellner delivered a lecture in a Potsdam, Germany, hotel on his plan for “remigration,” posing the question of “whether we as a people in the West will still survive or not.” According to an investigation published by Correctiv, who infiltrated the meeting, Sellner proposed that “foreigners” be subject to “reverse settlement” and proposed a system by which “unassimilated” citizens could also be deported. Despite reports that AfD members echoed Sellner’s views during the meeting, the party denied it afterwards.
After a brief introduction from Sellner and Kotré about the schedule and taking media questions, white nationalist Maximilian Märkl stood up to give opening remarks. Märkl is the spokesperson of Identitäre Bewegung Deutschland (Identitarian Movement Germany, IBD). IBD has long been an advocate of remigration and its members have reportedly been involved in 114 crimes between April 2017 and August 2018. In 2019, the movement was classified as right-wing extremist by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency. While IBD’s activity stagnated and the organization fractured into several smaller Identitarian groups, the movement has been making a comeback.
In 2025, Märkl helped IBD run a remigration campaign in Germany aimed at school children, in which they distributed 20,000 fliers suggesting students ask their teachers questions about remigration.
During his talk, Märkl credited Sellner and other “Identitarian activists” for raising the issue of remigration to one of national discussion and debate. He blamed the media for misrepresenting the Potsdam meeting—an accusation Sellner and Kotré also managed to fit into their opening remarks—and applauded the AfD for finding the “courage” to work with the Identitarian movement.
The bulk of the event was moderated by Paul Brandenburg, a physician and public commentator whose website includes short articles and comments written by the doctor on a variety of subjects. These include articles with titles like “Germany’s repopulation: According to @Grok a bloodbath of Islam” and “Trump in Davos: The mass importation of foreign peoples is destroying Europe.”
Brandenburg, who gained notoriety during the pandemic as a critic of COVID-19 health measures, told the crowd he is not a member of any political party or movement.
Martin Sellner (left) and Paul Brandenburg (right) during the January 2026 lecture. (Source: YouTube).
Kotré began her talk by distinguishing how the AfD’s remigration plan differs from Sellner’s vision and reiterated that they did not want to deport citizens. Asked how she might improve on her party’s platform, she mused about a possible private deportation industry, before saying she did not want to overstep. Later in the conversation, Kotré said she wants a review of people who have naturalized to Germany over the past 10 years. Those found to be deceptive, she suggested, could have their citizenship revoked: “Whoever naturalizes, must also denaturalize.”
Kotré denied racism in one breath, and in the next decried a problem with “culturally foreign people,” specifically pointing to the “Arab-Muslim cultural sphere.”
“Father of Remigration”
Martin Michael Sellner has been a far-right activist since his youth. He previously belonged to the neo-Nazi group“Stolz und Frei” (Proud and Free), and was mentored by Gottfried Küssel, who was imprisoned twice in Austria for “Nazi revivalism.” Sellner also admitted to affixing a swastika poster onto a synagogue in Baden bei Wien, Austria in 2005.
Since shifting his focus to Identitarianism and the pan-European Generation Identity network, of which he was the unofficial leader, Sellner has been fighting a self-declared war on the Islamization of Europe. 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. During the subsequent investigation, 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.
Sellner’s current vision of remigration has grown into a 30-year plan toward making countries “European again” and devoid of “multiculturalism.” In November 2024, Sellner was invited to, and virtually attended, the white nationalist American Renaissance conference to discuss his remigration policy proposal. He also helped organize and spoke at an international “Remigration Summit” in Italy in 2025, where he was introduced as the “father of remigration.” During his speech, he talked about pushing for every European government to implement a form of remigration policy, and a larger plan to achieve this through influencing media, culture, and governments “to the [political] right.”
Sellner believes that migration into Europe is worthy of “revenge” through remigration and says, once complete, will be valued through the “laughter of our children.”
Kotré attended the same Potsdam secret meeting in November 2023 where Sellner delivered a lecture on remigration alongside neo-Nazis from Blood & Honour, a neo-Nazi group banned in Germany, and Junge Tat (Youth Action), a Swiss neo-Nazi group.
The Brandenburg AfD, Kotré’s local AfD chapter, is mired in controversy. In 2024, it called for Ukrainian asylum seekers, war refugees, and those who “tolerated refugees” to be banned from attending public events across the country. Kotré defended the proposal, saying that “innocent people” caught up in this ban are simply “collateral damage.” Since 2024, Kotré has been the Chairwoman of the AfD parliamentary group in the Dallgow-Döberitz municipal council.
Lena Kotré giving a speech to the far-right Homeland Party in the UK in April 2025. (Source: Facebook).
Kotré traveled to the United Kingdom to speak at the Homeland Party’s “Big Remigration Conference” in April 2025. During the speech, she joked in English that with a “deportation industry” Germany could once again become an exporting nation. In her proposal to remove the barriers that slow down deportations, she said that individuals of unclear origins could be removed after investigations using “DNA analyzers, linguistic assessments and the examination of their mobile phone.”
Also in attendance was French writer Renaud Camus, who coined the term “The Great Replacement.”
A Legitimate Face For Ethnic Cleansing
The choice of one of AfD’s State MPs to boost Sellner and the IBD’s position shows that the party continues to be willing to promote right-wing extremists and racist immigration policy. AfD is the second largest single political party in German Parliament and is fighting a classification by its national security service deeming it a far-right extremist organization due to its history of Islamophobia, ethnic definition of German people, and egregious statements by its leadership, among other reasons.
Sellner, Kotré, and Brandenburg all found time to accuse the media of misrepresenting their views, but the coverage received at this event is exactly the type of attention Sellner has long sought and often failed to achieve.
And while Kotré said that AfD leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla asked through her husband, AfD Parlimentarian Steffen Kotré, to cancel the AfD Brandenburg event with Sellner, there is an increasing closeness between members of the party and Sellner.
On January 26, 2025, Secretary General of AfD Thuringia, Daniel Haseloff, posted a picture of a meeting with Sellner inside the state Parliament. Also at the meeting were AfD MPs Robert Teske and Stefan Möller.
A post by Daniel Haseloff to X showing he and AfD MPs Robert Teske and Stefan Möller meeting with Martin Sellner on January 26, 2026. (Source: X)
AfD MP Kay Gottschalk posted a video on X on January 27, 2026, saying he plans to attend the Remigration Summit 2026, an event organized by Sellner. Last year’s Summit in Italy attracted white nationalist organizations from across Europe, as well as a representative for Turning Point USA, the late Charlie Kirk’s far-right, pro-Trump organization.
While Sellner has taken many steps to soften his image, telling press during the recent talk that he is “just an Austrian author trying to take part in the discourse,” he promotes a position that would be many magnitudes more severe than the violent immigration enforcement being enacted in the United States. Sellner has even credited Trump for “exploding” the term transnationally, delighting when the president used the word in a social media post.
Similarly, AfD has been working diligently to recruit international allies where it can find them, including in the American GOP. In December 2025, a 20-person delegation traveled to Washington D.C. to meet with administration officials.
