On Thursday evening in the town of Vetschau near Cottbus it became clear once again that the AfD’s incompatibility decisions only last on paper. The backdrop for this is an empty car dealership on the edge of the tranquil small town in the Spreewald in Brandenburg. There, the right-wing extremist Martin Sellner and the AfD member of the state parliament Lena Kotré made themselves comfortable on a podium.
Surrounded by cameras and numerous journalists, they ponder “remigration,” which in this right-wing extremist context means nothing less than the expulsion of German and supposedly “unassimilated” citizens according to ethnic and racist standards.
The Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig has already judged Sellner’s concept to be “contrary to human dignity”. Despite all this, the right-wing extremist ideology producer who founded and long led the Austrian Identitarian Movement now has what he is after again: calculated attention. And he is visibly wallowing in this on this Thursday evening.
The stage is well lit. The main thing is to produce images and further normalize ethnic ideas in the AfD. Around 100 visitors came, around a third of them were journalists.
IB omnipresent
One might think that the AfD MP Kotré was a guest of the Identitarian Movement that evening. And in principle that’s how it is: with the camera there that evening is Simon Kaupert from the extreme right-wing “Film Art Collective”. As a filmmaker, Kaupert regularly highlights the self-proclaimed Identitarian Movement (IB). The IB magazine “Identitär” will be sold on the sidelines of the event. And Maximilian Märkl, who introduces himself to the audience as the “federal spokesman” for the IB, opens the panel event with a speech. He was “very happy” that “more and more politicians” in the AfD were working with the IB.
Kotré, a member of the state parliament, reiterated several times that she was speaking that evening as an AfD member of the state parliament. She herself represented the AfD’s “remigration concept” on the podium, which is not aimed at German citizens. However, she welcomes the fact that there are “representatives in advance who think more progressively”.
The AfD has long been using the term “remigration” in the public debate as a right-wing extremist dogwhistle and camouflages its meaning with a strategically trivializing definition that suggests that German citizens are not at issue.
Lukewarm criticism from the party leadership
About a week ago Kotré, who otherwise doesn’t keep their distance from neo-Nazisherself advertised as the organizer of the panel discussion entitled “Remigration – Theory and Practice”, in which Kotré’s husband and member of the Bundestag, Steffen Kotré, also wanted to appear alongside Sellner. And this despite the fact that the AfD federal executive board had advised not to hold any events with Sellner in view of the observation by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the threat of a ban.
From the perspective of the AfD leadership, they don’t want to get too close for fear of an impending ban. The board intervened accordingly also against Kotré’s originally planned event, which was supposed to take place in Luckenwalde. However, there was no substantive criticism or even serious distancing.
Instead, a spokesman for the federal party referred to the AfD’s weakened definition of “remigration”. The right-wing extremist Brandenburg parliamentary group leader Hans-Christoph Berndt simply announced at a press conference that Kotré, a member of the state parliament, did not need permission from the party or parliamentary group to take part in an event. Kotré herself ultimately canceled the appointment in Luckenwalde at short notice, only to announce shortly afterwards that Sellner had invited her to her own event, which “coincidentally” was supposed to take place on the same evening.
The limit of what can be said
After the intervention of the party leadership, only her husband Steffen Kotré stayed away from the replacement event. When asked by journalists about his absence, Lena Kotré is evasive. “Because he is no longer an organizer, he is no longer here,” she says.
The event with Sellner and Kotré was well received in the Brandenburg state parliamentary group. In Vetschau, the Brandenburg AfD member of the state parliament, Lars Günther, also took the floor. Such an event will have to take place again in “not too long a time,” he says. And that’s what this evening was about: pushing the boundaries of what can be said and further advancing the normalization of ethnic ideology in the party.