Germany’s far-right AfD co-leader calls for mass deportations
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The co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany party has called for mass deportations of immigrants as the party launches its program for next month’s national election.
In a fiery speech to supporters in the small town of Riesa in Saxony, eastern Germany, Alice Weidel said that under the AfD – the party ranked second in the polls with a record vote share of about 20% – Germany will see “repatriations on a large scale”.
Weidel, the AfD’s prime ministerial candidate in the election, used the controversial term “migration” to describe the policy.
The word was coined by Austrian right-wing thinker Martin Sellner, who defined “emigration” as the forced removal of immigrants who violate the law or “refuse to assimilate,” regardless of citizenship status. theirs – an idea that critics say amounts to an act of ethnic cleansing.
On Saturday, Weidel said: “I have to tell you quite honestly: if it’s called migration, it’s called migration.”
She received thunderous applause from party delegates, who also repeatedly shouted “Alice für Deutschland” – a play on the banned Nazi-era slogan “Alles für Deutschland”, which means is “everything for Germany”.
Weidel, a former Goldman Sachs analyst, has positioned himself as the more dignified face of a party of extremists who have been classified as right-wing extremists by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency.
Earlier this week, in a joint appearance on – has become a mainstream political force.
However, this party has little chance of coming to power in the upcoming election because all other major parties in Germany have ruled out the possibility of a coalition with this party.
Weidel’s support for migration was seen by some in the party as a nod to Björn Höcke, the far-right flagbearer who led the AfD to a historic first-place finish in regional elections in Thuringia state, eastern Germany in September.
“It’s a concession to Björn Höcke,” said Kay Gottschalk, a member of the German Bundestag who belongs to the party’s more moderate wing. “It’s a word, of course. I would put it another way – send them back – but that is what the delegates want.”
Weidel also used his speech to repeat calls to bring the Nord Stream gas pipeline from Russia to Germany back into operation, bring back nuclear energy and criticize research programs on gender.
The party’s gathering was met with large-scale protests. About 10,000 anti-AfD protesters showed up and police blocked Riesa, a town of 30,000 people, delaying the conference’s start by two hours.
