13, January 2025
Bundes: AfD embraces mass deportation of migrants as election nears 0
Germany’s far right is in a buoyant mood.
On Saturday, while its conference was under way in the eastern city of Riesa, in Saxony, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) laid out ambitions to close Germany’s borders, resume buying Russian gas and, in effect, dismantle the EU.
German media reported that party’s agreed manifesto includes plans to quit the Paris climate deal, exit the Euro currency and create a new confederation of states.
The AfD’s leader, Alice Weidel, even publicly embraced the term “remigration” – a word that’s widely understood to mean the mass “return” or deportation of people with a migrant background.
Thousands of anti-AfD protestors swarmed the streets in Riesa on Saturday, seeking to obstruct access to the conference venue.
When Alice Weidel eventually took to the stage, she described the activists outside as a “left-wing mob.”
And, in front a delighted conference hall of delegates, spoke of “large-scale repatriations”.
“And I have to be honest with you: if it’s going to be called remigration, then that’s what it’s going to be: remigration,” she said.
It’s a striking departure from just a year ago when she sought to distance herself from a scandal that centred on the highly controversial concept.
There were nationwide anti-AfD demonstrations after it emerged that senior party figures had been among those at a meeting where “remigration” was allegedly discussed with Martin Sellner, an Austrian far-right activist who has a neo-Nazi past.
Sellner has written about “remigrating” asylum seekers, some foreigners with residency rights and “non-assimilated” citizens.
A buzzword in Europe’s far-right, some claim legal residents wouldn’t be forced to leave. Critics say “remigration” is simply a euphemism for an overtly racist mass deportation plan.
But Alice Weidel’s decision to personally coin the term, weeks out from a snap federal election, demonstrates her party’s growing radicalism and confidence.
She also pledged to tear down wind farms which she called “windmills of shame”, leave the EU’s asylum system and “throw out” gender studies professors.
The AfD is consistently polling second in Germany and made gains in recent regional elections in the country’s east – where the party is strongest.
However, it’s highly unlikely to win power because other parties won’t work with the AfD.
Sections of the AfD have been classed by domestic intelligence as right-wing extremist.
In 2024, a talisman of the AfD’s hard-right – Björn Höcke – was fined twice for using a banned Nazi SA paramilitary phrase, “Alles für Deutschland” (“everything for Germany”).
He’s called it an “everyday sentence” and denied being aware of its origins, despite formerly being a history teacher.
Reports that members of the conference in Riesa this weekend chanted “Alice für Deutschland” drew quick comparisons in German media.
However, AfD figures have frequently complained that they are demonised and persecuted by a biased media and establishment.
And Alice Weidel’s party – of which she is the co-leader and now Chancellor candidate – has ridden out repeated storms to now hover around or even above 20% in national polls.
The 45-year-old economist, who previously worked for Goldman Sachs and is in a same-sex relationship, has sought to polish the rougher edges of her party.
But for those strongly opposed to the AfD she is a fig leaf or – as one Social Democrat put it – a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”.
Regardless, she’s enjoying a new spotlight after being invited by tech billionaire – Elon Musk – for a live talk on his X platform last week, where he wholeheartedly endorsed the party.
Her declaration during this discussion that Adolf Hitler was, in fact, a communist sparked condemnation, given the Nazi leader’s well-known anti-communism.
Critics warned of Nazi revisionism – something the AfD has been accused of before.
Björn Höcke once called for a “180-degree turnaround” in Germany’s handling of its Nazi past while a former co-leader, Alexander Gauland, described the Nazi era as “just a speck of bird’s muck in more than 1,000 years of successful Germany history”.
Nevertheless, the AfD’s anti-establishment, anti-immigration and anti-“woke” agenda is finding followers in Germany who go to the polls on 23 February.
Source: BBC
14, January 2025
US: “Trump would have been convicted if he were not reelected” 0
U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith concluded that Donald Trump engaged in an “unprecedented criminal effort” to hold onto power after losing the 2020 election, but was thwarted in bringing the case to trial by the president-elect’s November election victory, according to a report published on Tuesday.
The report details Smith’s decision to bring a four-count indictment against Trump, accusing him of plotting to obstruct the collection and certification of votes following his 2020 defeat by Democratic President Joe Biden.
It concludes that the evidence would have been enough to convict Trump at trial, but his imminent return to the presidency, set for Jan. 20, made that impossible.
Smith, who has come under relentless criticism from Trump, also defended his investigation and the prosecutors who worked on it.
“The claim from Mr. Trump that my decisions as a prosecutor were influenced or directed by the Biden administration or other political actors is, in a word, laughable,” Smith wrote in a letter detailing his report.
After the release, Trump, in a post on his Truth Social site, called Smith a “lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the election.”
Much of the evidence cited in the report has been previously made public.
A second section of the report details Smith’s case accusing Trump of illegally retaining sensitive national security documents after leaving the White House in 2021.
The Justice Department has committed not to make that portion public while legal proceedings continue against two Trump associates charged in the case.
Smith, who left the Justice Department last week, dropped both cases against Trump after he won last year’s election, citing a longstanding Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president. Neither reached a trial.
Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges. Regularly assailing Smith as “deranged,” Trump depicted the cases as politically motivated attempts to damage his campaign and political movement.
Trump and his two former co-defendants in the classified documents case sought to block the release of the report, days before Trump is set to return to office on Jan. 20. Courts rebuffed their demands to prevent its publication altogether.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who presided over the documents case, has ordered the Justice Department for now to halt plans to allow certain senior members of Congress to privately review the documents section of the report.
Prosecutors gave a detailed view of their case against Trump in previous court filings. A congressional panel in 2022 published its own 700-page account of Trump’s actions following the 2020 election.
Both investigations concluded that Trump spread false claims of widespread voter fraud following the 2020 election and pressured state lawmakers not to certify the vote, and ultimately, also sought to use fraudulent groups of electors pledged to vote for Trump, in states actually won by Biden, in a bid to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s win.
The effort culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed Congress in a failed attempt to stop lawmakers from certifying the vote.
Smith’s case faced legal hurdles even before Trump’s election win. It was paused for months while Trump pressed his claim that he could not be prosecuted for official actions taken as president.
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority largely sided with him, granting former presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution.
Source: Reuters