2023 Potsdam far-right meeting

Gernot Mörig and , of whom Limmer was not present, had invited the guests. Mörig was a former leader of the "Freibund", a German youth association associated with the German alt-right movement, before heading the (Heimattreue Deutsche Jugend; HDJ), a far-right and neo-Nazi association. Limmer is a former advisor of the Roland Berger consulting firm, who is best known for the 2002 takeover of the BackWerk bakery chain and his investments in the system catering companies Hans im Glück and Pottsalat. The invitation to the meeting announced a "Masterplan" and a speech by Martin Sellner. The meeting was supposed to stay secret, but Correctiv was able to get a copy of the invitation. With the aid of anonymous sources as well as video footage from inside the hotel, Correctiv successfully reconstructed the contents of the meeting. According to Correctiv, the 22 attendees included the following people: • Martin Sellner, Austrian right-wing extremist and former speaker of the Austrian Identitarian movement • Roland Hartwig, former member of the German parliament for the AfD, and the personal advisor to AfD chairwoman Alice Weidel at the time of the event • Gerrit Huy, AfD-Member of the German parliament • Ulrich Siegmund, Chairman of the AfD-faction in the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt • Tim Krause, speaker of the AfD-faction in the state parliament of Brandenburg and vice chairman of the AfD district association Potsdam-Mittelmark • Ulrich Vosgerau, member of the CDU and the board of trustees of the Desiderius-Erasmus-Stiftung affiliated with the AfD • Mario Müller, member of the Identitarian movement and research assistant to the AfD-member of parliament Jan Wenzel Schmidt • Alexander von Bismarck, member of the CDU and former mayor of Insel • Simone Baum, member of the CDU and chairperson of the North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) branch of the Werteunion • Silke Schröder, a member of the board of directors of the Verein Deutsche Sprache at the time of the event, and a columnist in the conservative publication ''. She also worked with the Austrian far-right media platform AUF1.'' • Henning Pless, right-wing extremist alternative practitioner and esoteric from Kiel • Gernot Mörig, a former personal assistant of Peter Kurth (CDU), the former president of the Federal Association of German Waste Disposal, Water - and Raw Material Economy, alongside his wife Astrid Mörig and Mathilda Huss, the hotel operators of the Adlon mansion • Hans-Ulrich Kopp, an entrepreneur, publisher and founder of Lepanto Verlag • Erik Ahrens, political activist classified as belonging to the right-wing extremist scene by state-level security authorities, and known for his part in the success of AfD-affiliated accounts on TikTok, such as that of Maximilian Krah • Christoph Hofer, an IT entrepreneur • Two clerks, one member of the Identitarian movement, and a doctor. Days after the uncovering by Correctiv, news reports based on work by another collective stated that the meeting may already have been the seventh of its kind; a draft letter by Mörig purportedly thanked AfD chairman Tino Chrupalla for his participation in a 2021 meeting described as the fifth, with a sixth planned the following year. While Chrupalla refused to comment, his participation in the fifth meeting was confirmed by other AfD members. ==Master plan==

(2024) Sellner's so-called "master plan for remigration" would entail the relocation of three groups of people from Germany: asylum seekers, foreigners with the right to stay, and "non-assimilated" German citizens. According to Sellner, "tailor-made laws" would have to be used to exert pressure on such residents to assimilate, in order to persuade them to leave the country. The plan is intended to be a "decades[-long] project". Sellner wrote to the news agency dpa that the plan envisioned a special economic zone in North Africa, which would be leased and organized as a model city. The plan included "not only deportations, but also local help, a dominant culture, and pressure to assimilate." Correctiv's reporting of an alleged "master plan" was mostly suggestive and the organisation had to admit in several courtcases in the following years that no deportation of German citizens had been discussed. Martin Sellner had exclusively advertised the removal of asylum seekers and other foreigners to 18 listeners. On 19 December 2025 a Hamburg court found the "master plan" reporting acceptable nonetheless. It concluded Correctiv did not report facts but was writing an opinion piece. Commentator Elke Bodderas wrote, that with the court ignoring the consequences of Correctiv's opinion piece, the deliberately imprecise piece of work, with its murmuring tone, helped Correctiv to survive the case. ==Reactions==

The revelation of the meeting taking place resulted in mass protests throughout Germany and calls for the AfD to be banned. Groups of thousands of protestors gathered in several German cities, with roughly 100,000 in Munich alone on the weekend of 20 January. Some sources have reported that up to 1.4 million people were involved in the protests in the period 19–21 January. with slippage continuing through February, where its standing has since remained. In Austria, the FPÖ scored losses in polls conducted by three different institutes in the period from 12 to 18 January 2024, but retained the lead. == Future transnational trends in Europe ==

As of the mid-2020s, right-wing populism is on the rise throughout Europe. For example, AfD received 15.9% of the vote in the EU elections, while Geert Wilders's party came in first place in the 2023 Dutch general election. As these parties gain support, some are moving from a nativist standpoint (e.g. leaving the EU or other transnational organizations) to working together with other far-right populist parties in said organizations. The goal for many has shifted from leaving the European Union to changing it from within. Radical right parties in the EU share anti-migration, nationalist, and nativist views, with an explicit display of such at the Potsdam Conference uncovered by Correctiv's investigative journalism. == References ==