AfD supports mass deportation of migrants as German elections approach

The far right in Germany is in a buoyant mood.

On Saturday, while the conference was in the eastern city of Rize, Saxony, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) laid out ambitions to close Germany’s borders, resume buying Russian gas and effectively break up the EU.

German media reported that the party’s agreed manifesto included plans to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, leave the euro and create a new confederation of states.

AfD leader Alice Weidel has even publicly embraced the term “remigration,” a word widely understood to mean the mass “return” or deportation of people with a migrant background.

Thousands of anti-AfD protesters took to the streets of Riza on Saturday, trying to block access to the conference venue.

When Alice Weidel eventually took the stage, she described the activists outside as a “leftist crowd.”

And there was talk of “large-scale repatriations” in front of a rapt conference room of delegates.

“And I have to be honest with you: if it’s going to be called remigration, then it’s going to be: remigration,” she said.

It’s a striking departure from just a year ago, when she tried to distance herself from a scandal that centered on the highly controversial concept.

There have been nationwide demonstrations against the AfD after it emerged that senior party figures were among those at a meeting where “remigration” was allegedly discussed with Martin Sellner, an Austrian far-right activist who has a neo-Nazi past.

Sellner has written about “remigrating” asylum seekers, some resident aliens, and “unassimilated” citizens.

A buzzword on Europe’s far right, some argue that legal residents will not be forced to leave. Critics say “remigration” is just a euphemism for a blatantly racist mass deportation plan.

But Alice Weidel’s decision to personally introduce the term weeks after a snap federal election demonstrates her party’s growing radicalism and confidence.

She also promised to tear down wind farms, which she called “windmills of shame”, to leave the EU asylum system and to “kick out” gender studies professors.

The AfD has consistently come second in German elections and made gains in recent regional elections in the east of the country – where the party is strongest.

However, it is highly unlikely to win power because other parties will not work with the AfD.

Parts of the AfD are classified by domestic intelligence as right-wing extremists.

In 2024, the AfD’s far-right mascot Björn Höcke was fined twice for using a banned phrase of the SA Nazi paramilitary force “Alles für Deutschland” (“all for Germany”).

He called it an “everyday sentence” and denied knowing its origins, despite having previously been a history teacher.

Reports that members of this weekend’s Riza conference chanted “Alice für Deutschland” prompted swift comparisons in the German media.

However, AfD figures often complain of being demonized and persecuted by biased media and power.

And Alice Weidel’s party – of which she is a co-leader and now a candidate for chancellor – has weathered repeated storms and is now hovering around or even above 20% in national polls.

The 45-year-old economist, who previously worked for Goldman Sachs and is in a same-sex relationship, has tried to smooth over her party’s rough edges.

But for those strongly opposed to the AfD, it is a fig leaf or – as one Social Democrat put it – “a wolf in sheep’s clothing”.

Regardless, she’s enjoying a new spotlight since she was invited by the tech billionaire – Elon Musk – for a live chat on his X platform last weekwhere he wholeheartedly supported the party.

Her declaration during this discussion that Adolf Hitler was in fact a communist drew condemnation, given the Nazi leader’s well-known anti-communism.

Critics have warned of Nazi revisionism, something the AfD has been accused of before.

Björn Höcke once called for a “180-degree turn” in Germany’s attitude to its Nazi past, while a former co-leader, Alexander Gauland, described the Nazi era as “just a speck of bird droppings in more than 1,000 years of successful German history”.

However, the AfD’s anti-establishment, anti-immigration and “wake up” agenda is finding followers in Germany, which goes to the polls on February 23.