“Remigration” dispute in the state parliament
Thuringian politicians accuse AfD of trivializing
January 31, 2024, 8:18 p.m
The expulsion plans discussed at the right-wing extremist meeting in Potsdam are causing an outcry across the country. However, the AfD in Thuringia declares the concept called “remigration” to be a political program. She is experiencing headwinds in the Erfurt state parliament.
Several state politicians have accused the Thuringian AfD faction of trivializing the term “remigration”. The AfD is about “nationalist and racist ideas, and we don’t need them,” said SPD migration politician Thomas Hartung in the Thuringian state parliament. What is meant by remigration is: “deport, deport, get rid of”. AfD MP Stefan Möller defended the term. “Remigration is one of our political solutions,” said Möller, who is co-chair of the Thuringian AfD alongside Björn Höcke.
The AfD state association is classified and monitored by the state Office for the Protection of the Constitution as definitely right-wing extremist. The Thuringian AfD parliamentary group had requested a current hour with the title “Start remigration from Thuringia instead of demonizing it”. When right-wing extremists use the term “remigration,” they usually mean that large numbers of people of foreign origin should leave the country – even under duress.
Thuringia’s Interior Minister Georg Maier had already accused the AfD before the debate began of wanting to use the current hour to relativize the term and describe it as something “completely normal”. “This is a transparent strategy,” said Maier on the sidelines of the state parliament meeting. “The AfD uses this term euphemistically. They act as if it were something harmless, but their plans are not,” said Maier.
The background to the debate about the term is research by the media company Correctiv about a meeting of radical right-wingers in Potsdam with some AfD politicians as well as individual members of the CDU and the very conservative Values Union. According to participants, it was about the concept of so-called remigration. At the start of the AfD’s Current Hour, MPs from the Left, SPD and Greens held up signs that read: “Never again is now!” Many demonstrations against right-wing extremism are taking place across the country under this slogan.