Austrian white nationalist Martin Sellner says he was “very happy” Trump used “remigration,” an anti-immigrant term he helped popularize

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

On September 14, 2024, then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump called for implementing the far-right immigration policy known as “remigration,” which Media Matters found national news media largely failed to cover.

From HuffPost last September:

Last weekend, former President Donald Trump posted another anti-immigrant screed to Truth Social. It would have been unremarkable ― at least, graded on the Trumpian curve of extreme xenophobia ― except for one word.

“[We will] return Kamala’s illegal migrants to their home countries (also known as remigration),” he wrote. “I will save our cities and towns in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and all across America.”

Many people might have glossed over his use of “remigration.” White nationalists did not.

“#Remigration has had a massive conceptual career,” Martin Sellner — leader of the Austrian chapter of Generation Identity, a pan-European white supremacist network — tweeted in his native German. “Born in France, popularized in German-speaking countries and now the term of the hour from Sweden to the USA!”

It was a succinct and accurate history from Sellner, a 35-year-old who typically trafficks in vicious lies and conspiracy theories, particularly about Black and brown people. He has been at the vanguard of pushing “remigration” — a euphemism for ethnically cleansing non-white people from Western countries — into the popular political lexicon in Europe.

From the January 31, 2025, edition of Restoring Order, uploaded to Substack

MARTIN SELLNER (AUSTRIAN WHITE NATIONALIST): And what is, at the moment, the most important term and idea for us is remigration. This term is way more popular and also, I would say, way more known right now than even the term identitarian. And this is for us way more important, to bring this popular concepts and idea in the political discourse.

PATRICK CASEY (HOST): Yeah. It's a great term, and it's one that — it's one that's — I know Stephen Miller used, and I think Trump used it, as well. There's a lot of content over the 2024 election, but I'm like 99% sure Trump used it. So what is your reaction to seeing this term that you probably deserve — you deserve a lot, maybe most of the credit, for it even being known in the English world, and all of a sudden, Trump and Stephen Miller are using your term. How do you feel about that?

SELLNER: I was very happy when he used it. There was even a, I think, a report done by Bloomberg where they, like, traced it down, how this term was spread. I think Trump used it in a tweet. I think it's so strong because it's a vision, you know? You can talk about repatriations or deportations, which you shouldn't say in Germany because it is a very different context than the Anglosphere.

But this is just a small little measure. Remigration is more the dream. This vision, that what we are — have been experiencing the past decades does not have to be the future. We can stop it. We can revert it. We can go back, but also we can go into a different and alternative future. And this is something that is very strong and powerful.

...

And I think remigration will become the mobilizing myth for a new European generation. I hope so, at least.

CASEY: It's great to hear. Yeah. I hope it does that for America as well. It's a little bit different, as we said, but obviously, if Trump and Miller and other MAGA people are using it, it's still obviously relevant here. So.

SELLNER: Absolutely. And also, remigration, it's very important, it's not the same as, like, deporting people or repatriations. Obviously, you have to do this with illegals, but remigration always puts the focus on incentives on trying to, also with nudging, with overall, long-term political goals that might even go 20, 30 years, to inverse these flows of migration. It's a very, in its core, a very anti-globalist and ethno-pluralistic idea.