Interior Ministry alerted
Vienna fears an influx to the right-wing scene
January 22, 2024, 4:20 p.m
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The Austrian Interior Minister is concerned about the growing appeal of the gun-loving “New Right” in the country. The head of the Identitarians, Martin Sellner, who gave a lecture on the expulsion of migrants at the Potsdam meeting, also belongs to this movement.
In the wake of two arrests of suspected right-wing extremists in Austria, the Austrian Interior Ministry has warned of a “noticeable influx” into the country’s right-wing extremist scene. Exact numbers are “difficult to determine,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement. The current biggest challenge in the area of right-wing extremism is the “New Right” – which also includes the long-time spokesman for Austria’s right-wing extremist “Identitarian Movement”, Martin Sellner.
Sellner took part in a controversial secret meeting with right-wing extremists about “remigration” in Potsdam. According to research by the Correctiv network, AfD politicians, neo-Nazis and entrepreneurs met in a hotel there in November 2023 to discuss the expulsion of millions of people with an immigrant background from Germany. The report sparked mass protests against right-wing extremism with hundreds of thousands of participants across Germany over the weekend.
According to Correctiv, Sellner is said to have listed who should leave Germany: asylum seekers, foreigners with the right to remain and “unassimilated citizens.” Sellner, who is considered one of the leading figures in the European right-wing extremist scene, is said to have proposed “tailor-made laws” to implement the plan.
“Use all crises for propaganda”
As the ministry in Vienna announced, one of those arrested was a 20-year-old who had long been the focus of the security authorities in the course of investigations into the right-wing extremist group “Feuerkrieg Division”. The second suspect is therefore suspected of being active again in connection with Nazi ideology.
Austria’s state security agency is taking “consistent action against every form of extremism,” explained Interior Minister Gerhard Karner of the ÖVP, referring to the success of the investigation. The “New Right” is “exploiting all the crises of the last few years to strengthen its structures and its propaganda,” it was said. The ministry referred to the “high affinity for weapons” of the “New Right” and “tendencies to violence, riots and attacks on the police”.