A spokesman for the AfD parliamentary group announced this on Wednesday at the Maximilianeum in Munich, without mentioning the names of the MPs. The parliamentarians went to the meeting in Dasing near Augsburg “personally without instructions from the parliamentary group or their knowledge”. “The matter will initially be dealt with internally,” said the spokesman. The state parliamentary group only found out about the event and participation through reporting. The “Augsburger Allgemeine” had previously reported on the meeting with the AfD representatives in Dasing.
Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) announced that the Dasingen meeting would have to be closely examined by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and become an issue in the state parliament. “The new revelations about a radical #secret meeting in Swabia are of utmost concern. These unbearable events are an attack on democracy and peaceful coexistence in our country,” he wrote on the X platform (formerly Twitter). “The #AfD state parliamentary group is increasingly looking like the most radical bloc within the AfD.” Anyone who can be proven to have taken part in the meeting must be excluded from the parliamentary group, demanded Söder.
Sellner himself had stated that the event on November 11th was “not primarily about the idea of remigration”. He presented a book of his own. He did not give any details about the participants.
More than 60 mostly young participants
Bavaria’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution became aware of the meeting through several Internet publications. The authority explained that, according to Sellner’s statements in the online posts, “over 60 mainly young people took part” in the event in Dasing (Aichach-Friedberg district).
A spokesman for the Office for the Protection of the Constitution explained that Sellner referred to this meeting as the “Swabian Congress in the Augsburg area”. “Another Internet post shows two Bavarian AfD members of the state parliament on the same day at the same venue, so it must be concluded that they attended the event with Sellner,” explained the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution spokesman.
“AfD reveals its true face”
The Green party leader in the state parliament, Katharina Schulze, demanded that Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) provide clarification about the authorities’ findings about the events in Dasing and the actors involved. “Little by little, the AfD continues to reveal its true face. It makes plans to deport hundreds of thousands of Germans, it maintains its close ties to the right-wing extremist “Identitarian Movement” and unabashedly courts neo-Nazi hardliners,” said Schulze.
Bavaria’s SPD state chairman Florian von Brunn called for tougher action by the state’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution against the AfD. “These are no longer outliers of individual officials, this is the general anti-constitutional attitude of the AfD,” he said. “We need a ban on the new Nazis from the AfD.”
Many demos after meetings of radical right-wingers
A report by the Correctiv research center about a meeting of radical right-wingers in Potsdam on November 25th with some AfD politicians as well as individual members of the CDU and the very conservative Values Union had led to numerous demonstrations against right-wing extremism across the country in recent weeks. Sellner said he spoke about “remigration” in Potsdam. When right-wing extremists use the term, they usually mean that large numbers of people of foreign origin should leave the country – even under duress.
