On Sept. 15, Donald Trump pledged to restrict immigration in a fiery address to his base. Alongside familiar promises to secure the border and revoke protections for refugees, his post on X also mentioned a new tactic – “remigration.”
While largely unknown in the US — this was the first time Trump used the term in public, and the campaign did not respond to questions about it — the word is familiar in Austria. There, white nationalist Martin Sellner has made remigration the calling card of a movement demanding the deportation of ethnic minorities.
When Austrians head to the polls on Sept. 29 to take part in their country’s national election, remigration will be on the ballot. The Freedom Party, an anti-immigrant group forecast to claim the most votes, has embraced the idea as part of its platform.
Under the Freedom Party’s plan, millions of non-EU citizens could be removed from the bloc under a vague “identity based” policy that aims to reverse refugee flows and ramp up pressure on anybody who doesn’t belong to the “dominant culture.” While it’s unlikely the party will be able to make this into law anytime soon, it has also promised to stop immigration by reinterpreting rules already on the books. “Remigration” is the Freedom Party’s preferred way to talk about expelling people from the EU, a spokesperson confirmed in an emailed statement to Bloomberg.
Avoiding the word “deportation” is strategic, said Julia Ebner, who studies radical networks at London’s Institute for Strategic Dialogue. That’s because in Europe the term is “closely linked to the history of the Nazi deportations of Jews.” The benefit of using “remigration,” she said, is that it allows activists to disguise “the very extreme nature of their proposed policies.”
A Bloomberg analysis of 3.1 million social media posts shows that use of “remigration” has exploded in the past eight months, spiking in the run-up to major elections. Bloomberg’s analysis identified Sellner as the most effective influencer to promote the term during that period. Mentions of the word, more than 97% of which appeared on X, first gained traction earlier this year in German-speaking countries before taking off in France, the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK, and now the US.
As the concept has spread, it has become a lightning rod in debates about immigration — as well as a reflection of the growing influence of European ethno-nationalist extremists in global politics.
How a Radical Idea Went From White Nationalist Circles to Mainstream Politics
Source: Talkwalker/Hootsuite
Once an obscure social-science term used to describe the voluntary return of European Jews after World War II, “remigration” was appropriated about a decade ago by White nationalists in France as a way to discuss deportation. That remains the dominant use, although the concept has also been associated with more extreme policies, like expelling naturalized citizens based on their perceived lack of assimilation.
The word burst into public view earlier this year in Germany, after CORRECTIV magazine published an explosive investigation into a secret meeting that took place in November 2023 in the city of Potsdam outside Berlin. According to eyewitness accounts and hidden camera footage cited by the magazine, that gathering convened members of the country’s AfD party along with neo-Nazi sympathizers and donors. It featured a presentation by Sellner about remigration — his plan to target and remove minorities by force.
After the report came out, Sellner said that his remarks had been distorted. “Remigration is a bundle of measures to reverse migration flows based on alternative population and identity policies,” he wrote in March, citing an excerpt from his book. The AfD responded with a statement that specific proposals made in Potsdam were not party policy.
When Germans learned about the meeting two months later, more than one million protestors took to the streets bearing signs and slogans denouncing far-right extremism.
“‘Remigration’ reminds us of the darkest times in German history,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz told parliament after the demonstrations had ended. “It is more than just a word.”
Immigration Reflects Germany’s Political Divide
Hundreds of thousands of people marched across the country against the far-right, while supporters of the anti-immigration AfD mobilized largely in Germany’s east
Source: Local media reports; German parliament
Note: Counter protests took place between in January 2024 and white nationalist protests took place between April – June 2024
Leading the Charge
Sellner, an influencer and author of “Remigration: A Proposal,” has played a central role in reshaping immigration debates in the German-speaking world. While he’s a marginal voice in Austrian politics, the 35-year-old activist, who has been barred from entering the UK for spreading hate speech, is a leader of the Identitarian movement, an ethno-nationalist, anti-immigrant organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated a hate group. In an email to Bloomberg, Sellner rejected that label, writing, “love of one’s homeland can never be hatred.”
Sellner came to international attention five years ago after receiving money from the Christchurch, New Zealand terrorist who murdered 51 people in shootings at two mosques (an Austrian court later absolved Sellner of any fore-knowledge or responsibility in the attacks). With the help of his wife, Trump influencer Brittany Pettibone, he has promoted racist conspiracy theories and staged real-world provocations for material to package into online content.
Pettibone, who has adopted Sellner’s surname, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Since March, when Elon Musk lifted Sellner’s four-year ban from X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, the activist has posted dozens of messages a day on Telegram and X to mobilize sympathizers and mainstream remigration with an international audience. Spikes and troughs in the word’s use frequently correspond to Sellner’s on- and offline activity.
In Austria and Germany, Sellner’s campaign is playing out at a moment of political volatility. Polls show that immigration tops the concerns of Austrian and German voters, many of whom feel as if their countries no longer have control over their borders. The most recent EU statistics show more than two million people entered Germany and 200,000 people entered Austria in 2022, with foreign-born residents now representing about 17% and 19% of the populations, respectively. The lack of coherent integration policies to deal with this influx have stoked social tensions and soured many voters on traditional parties.
That has been a boon to Sellner’s Identitarians. Chapters of the group exist in about a dozen European countries, are highly coordinated and have affiliations with mainstream parties. In a May report, Austria’s Interior Ministry said that since its founding in 2012, the movement has sought to pull legacy parties such as the Austrian People’s Party further to the extremes on issues including immigration.
“Nazis are successfully influencing public discourse,” the Austrian ministry warned. “In view of the upcoming elections in 2024, it can be assumed these new right-wing groups will intensify cooperation.”
The ministry has since opened an investigation into one of the group’s marches, in which participants were filmed denying the Holocaust and calling for the mass execution of minorities.
Sellner rejected the Interior Ministry’s suggestion that Identitarian rhetoric is similar to that of the Nazis. In a Sept. 26 statement to Bloomberg, he described his movement as fighting back against “replacement migration worldwide.”
“We are an intellectual avantgarde and dissidents against the mainstream,” Sellner wrote. “We are not too radical. We are just early.”
Members of the Identitarian Movement take part in a demonstration in Vienna on July 20, 2024.
Photographer: Alex Halada
On March 10, just a day after Sellner was reinstated on X, staff members at the EU’s human rights organization in Vienna were startled to hear a thud outside their second-floor window, followed by the scraping of a metal ladder against stone. Before guards could respond, hooded marauders had already climbed the façade of the Fundamental Rights Agency, said two officials briefed on the matter, both of whom asked not to be identified because the EU doesn’t want to draw attention to the incident.
Images showed three activists standing on the balcony of the 19th-century building, shouting into a bullhorn and setting off flares. They had replaced the EU flag with their own — a blood-red banner painted with bright white letters: R-E-M-I-G-R-A-T-I-O-N.
Vienna police and fire officials managed to end the occupation after an hour, marching the members of the Identitarians out through the front doors. But things didn’t end there. After casually flipping a white nationalist symbol to a handful of onlookers, Sellner posted a call to arms on X that quickly drew tens of thousands of views and thousands of new social media followers, bringing his total to about 200,000 across Telegram and Musk’s platform.
Remigration social media rhetoric’s spread across Europe and the US
Source: Talkwalker/Hootsuite
Note: Data for September 1st – September 9th is missing
Note: Post are aggregated by level 4 Geohash grid-cells (roughly the size of New York City)
Over the following days and weeks, the stunt continued to generate attention. On March 8, two days before the rights agency standoff, there had not been any social media posts referencing or tagging Sellner. Two days after he posted his video, mentions of Sellner jumped to 500. Online uses of “remigration” surged 35% in the 24 hours around the event, and remained at elevated levels for days after.
A week later, Sellner tapped into his expanded follower base when he posted a video of Swiss police handcuffing him during a raid of another remigration event. Images and footage of the incident racked up almost 100,000 views, and the Austrian was retweeted by a producer on “The Alex Jones Show.” Musk also responded to Sellner directly to express his concern, driving mentions of his name to nearly 4,400 on March 17.
Remigration reminds us of the darkest times in German history. It is more than just a word.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz
Sellner has been open about the work that goes into staging his provocations. While appearing on a panel to promote his book, the activist explained how he games online engagement by making small protests look like showy big-budget productions.
“Demonstrations should be developed like for Hollywood,” he said. “People come together once, like for a movie with actors, with props, with a budget. Then you shoot this film at a radical pace with incredible effort and commitment.”
RemigrationsSchlumpf
@LachMalmit
🚨 #Sellner has landed 👌🏻
#FreeSellner #Remigration
Follow the home courier!
Link in the comments ⬇️
Mar 10, 2024 · 10.1k views
Martin Sellner flips a white nationalist symbol to onlookers as he is arrested by Vienna police for climbing the Fundamental Rights Agency
From Vienna to Mar-a-Lago
Bloomberg’s analysis found that social media, and predominantly Musk’s X, has been instrumental in seeding remigration, once a niche idea circulating mostly among German-speaking ethno-nationalists, into mainstream political discourse.
Since acquiring the platform formerly known as Twitter two years ago, Musk has played an increasingly central role in promoting views that his platform once blocked. In addition to lifting bans on extremists such as Sellner, he did away with the company’s Trust and Safety Council, whose mandate included combating hate speech. The X owner, whose own follower count has doubled to nearly 200 million since 2022, has also fanned jingoistic passions by predicting civil war in the UK during recent race riots and promoting videos accusing the Biden administration of facilitating an immigrant invasion.
A Sept. 14, 2024, Guardian analysis of Musk’s tweets showed that while the billionaire has “formed a sort of symbiotic relationship with conservative media influencers, basking in their praise and in turn amplifying their talking points,” he “has little to no interaction with leftwing activists or critical journalists.”
“Elon Musk has become notorious for amplifying fringe campaigns, conspiracy theories or disinformation, often with disturbing racist undertones,” said Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, a British non-profit that receives funding from the Pears Foundation and the Barrow Cadbury Trust.
Accounts that share Musk’s interests have also flourished. A popular X account that generates ad revenue by posting racist material, according to an investigation by the Swedish news outlet SVT Nyheter, has grown by more than 300,000 followers since June. According to Bloomberg’s analysis, posts about remigration are consistently among the account’s most viewed.
Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
Should remigration continue to make its way into everyday political discourse, warned Eviane Leidig, a fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, an independent think-tank affiliated with Leiden University, it wouldn’t only bolster exclusionary and undemocratic policies, it could also generate violence.
Trump’s Sept. 15 tweet was the moment when “remigration” entered the American political mainstream. The post amassed more than 50 million views and caused mentions of the term to hit an all-time high of 63,000 per day. In the following hours and days, high-profile personalities like Stephen Miller, Trump’s senior advisor, and Jack Posobiec, an activist who recently published a book arguing that leftists should not be considered human, released a series of posts touting “remigration” to their millions of followers.
Now, less than six weeks before Americans elect a new president, the word is surging in the US. Of all social media posts mentioning “remigration,” data shows that the proportion of US-based posts has grown exponentially — from 4.7% in January to 15.5% in August to a whopping 58% in September. Republican immigration advisor Stephen Miller recently suggested that “remigration” could become Trump’s plan to “end the invasion of small town America.”
In 9 months, social media posts mentioning Remigration coming from US IP addresses increased by more than 1000%
Source: Talkwalker/Hootsuite
In Europe, the idea’s spread has had real-world effects. In Germany, the AfD party made the concept a central plank of its campaign in regional elections in Lower Saxony and Thuringia, where it claimed about 33% and 31% percent of the votes. Alice Weidel, one of the AfD’s leaders, has said that if the party were to take power one of its first acts would be to close Germany’s borders.
Austria’s Freedom Party, the group currently projected to win the country’s national election on Sunday, has also embraced remigration. Its proposed program mandates the deportation of irregular immigrants — undocumented migrants and refugees who have had their claims rejected — and the tightening of visa and citizenship laws. Millions of unwanted people would also be expelled from the bloc.
In both countries, legacy parties have pledged not to enter coalitions with the Freedom Party and AfD, making it unlikely that they’ll enter government. Still, their success has already prompted the governing parties to harden their own stances on immigration.
The term’s uptake, analysts say, is already a sign that mainstream politics are beginning to shift.
“The radical right is no longer the outsider,” said Daniele Albertazzi, who researches the extreme populist right at the University of Surrey. “It’s shaping the core of political debate.”
Edited by: Jessica Loudis Michael Ovaska Methodology
Bloomberg collected data on the number of social media posts mentioning “remigration,” “mass deportation,” and “Martin Sellner” using the Talkwalker API. Talkwalker returns data across dozens of social media platforms, such as X, Reddit, Youtube, Twitch and TikTok. For this article, Bloomberg collected data for the January 2024 – September 2024 time-frame. More than 95% of posts came from X.
Bloomberg collected data on counter-protests from local media reports and data on white nationalist protests from official reports of the German parliament.
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Publish date : 2024-09-27 21:14:00
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