The AfD’s fig leaf decision: no more party events with Sellner

dpa/taz | According to the wishes of the party leadership, AfD members should not hold events with the leading figure Identitarian Movement (IB) classified as right-wing extremistMartin Sellner, organize more. According to dpa information, a corresponding resolution was passed by the Federal Executive Board. All associations and members of the AfD would be asked not to “hold any party events with Sellner,” said a corresponding letter that was later sent to the party’s state, district and district executive committees.

Sellner meeting not excluded per se

This decision would not per se rule out future meetings between AfD members and Sellner, but they should no longer take place on the AfD ticket. Thuringian AfD politicians had recently received the Austrian in a very public manner in the Erfurt state parliament, after a few days earlier a meeting between the Brandenburg AfD politician Lena Kotré and him caused a stir. Kotré had originally invited Sellner to give a lecture, but canceled the event after the AfD leadership intervened and then appeared as a guest at a Sellner event. The Federal Administrative Court has classified Sellner’s racist concepts as clearly unconstitutional, but the extreme right-wing AfD still consistently uses his fighting term “remigration”.

Signal distance to Sellner’s ideas

In the letter from the AfD leadership to the state, district and district executives, the board refers to current positions in the party that are intended to signal distance from Sellner’s ideas, such as an AfD statement from 2021 on the “German people and German identity”. In it, the AfD wrote that it was “unreservedly committed to the German people as the sum of all people who have German citizenship (…) there are no first or second class citizens for us”.

Reference is also made to an AfD position paper on so-called remigration that was passed in January 2024. It says: “The AfD does not differentiate between German citizens with and without a migration background. All Germans are part of our national people regardless of origin, descent, ideology or religious affiliation.”

Court: Sellner concept violates the Basic Law

The research platform “Correctiv” reported on a meeting of right-wing circles in Potsdam in 2024. It made the headlines, among other things, because of the term remigration, which Sellner said he used there. According to the Federal Administrative Court, his concept violates human dignity protected by the Basic Law. It does not recognize every citizen as having equal rights.

Sellner also includes citizens with a migration background in his concept if they have not assimilated (assimilated or adapted). According to his own statements, he doesn’t want to have her deported, but he does want to use pressure to get her to leave.