In the ceremony hall of the Quinta de Salmanha (Figueira da Foz), in Portugal, no “long live the bride and groom!” could be heard this Saturday. Repeated cries of “reconquest” and “remigration” could be heard. There was no cake, there were no future spouses. What were 480 far-right extremists from all over Europe celebrating, calling themselves patriots, with some hanging crosses and nationalist emblems pinned to the buttonholes of their wedding-day suits?
The hall, 140 kilometers from Porto and whose location was revealed the day before to avoid possible disturbances, has hosted the second European summit on reemigration, a neologism coined by the ultras to refer to the mass deportation of immigrants, even European citizens of ethnic origin (no one mentioned the word “race” there) “non-European” or at least “non-Western” who do not comply with some cultural precepts. The novelty of this edition is that the summit has had representation from Vox: deputy Rocío de Meer, champion of reemigration: the one who spoke included second-generation immigrants. The presence of his teammate Carlos Hernández Quero was announced, but he did not appear in the end.
Activists gathered in Portugal are in a hurry because “nations can die,” MP De Meer has warned her colleagues in the rest of Europe. “Spain cannot tolerate one more entry, neither legal nor illegal, from any continent, from Africa or from South America,” he stressed. Her speech has been in line with other representatives of the European extreme right who, like her, have urged to move now.
“The day will come when no European will have a country to live in,” warned Max Märkl, a German activist who sent a video to regret that the authorities of his country have not let him fly to Porto. Immediately, drawing fervent applause from the audience, he appeared in the room after driving from Germany to Portugal through a Europe without borders.
The Belgian Dries Van Langenhove, founder of Schild & Vrienden and sentenced to a year in prison for the dissemination of hate messages in that organization’s chats, defended measures for what he calls “indigenous Europeans” and promised the Dutch parliamentarian Lidewij de Vos, who announced her pregnancy at the summit: “We are going to fight for your baby in your womb.”
“In Germany, with one of the largest guilt of the whites, we have a party that defends remigration and that 26% of the population supports,” says the far-right Italian writer Andrea Ballarati. “Let them call us racists, let them call us fascists, call us xenophobes, that we no longer care,” cheers the host and leader of Reconquista, Afonso Gonçalves. He addresses the same activists who despise the blue flag with 12 stars and denounce Brussels as a bureaucratic machinery dedicated to multiculturalism, who spend Saturday with Eurodance music playing in the background and the proclamations of political superstars (some with zero seats, like Gonçalves, but with 200,000 followers on Instagram), filling their mouths with another word: Europe.
Portuguese, Germans, Dutch, Italians, Spanish, Swiss and some Americans invited as stars have found a goal that they now elevate to pan-European (and American, as long as Trump rules there). These ultranationalists, at a rate of 45 euros for the cheapest ticket, do not share a language, party or nation, but they do share a driving idea: summary macro-deportations.
Against the idea of the founders of the European Union of a community based on integration, in the Portuguese city they propose another united by the expulsion of immigrants and people of non-European ethnic origin who do not comply with certain cultural traditions.
The new flag of (this) Europe does not have the blue or yellow of its twelve stars, but rather the white color of the skin of the speakers and attendees. On the buses that transported a good part of them from Porto, a man from Barcelona greets a German with a Spanish father with a “Long live Franco!” He then asks where another passenger is from. “Italian, but I live in Barcelona.” “Long live the Duce!” he shouts and immediately adds: “I have to recommend a school for your children.”
“The United States is the last heir of Rome and New York is our Constantinople,” emphasized in Resum26 Stefano Forte, a New Yorker of Italian origin who presides over the Republican Youth Club and regrets that English is not spoken in 40% of the homes in his city.
It is a question of “survival”, another word repeated ad nauseam, of a Europe that, thanks to macro-deportations, “will become great again” (the words of Stefano Forte), because “our existence is not negotiable (…) because we have the right to our homeland”, said Lena Kotré, AfD deputy in Brandenburg. Because, says Gonçalves (with a dig at the non-attendance of the ultra Chega party), “our people have become a minority”, something that the Spanish De Meer proposed in the future: “Europeans are going to be a minority.” What’s more: “Disappearing is a real possibility for Europe.” That Europe that is “of the Crusades” and “the missions”, with a Spain that “cannot deny its Christian soul.”
“Reemigration is the only solution for countries,” said Gonçalves, a friend of historical metaphors that go back to the so-called Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula and the overseas exploits of glorious Portugal. The German Kotré specified more: “Children have to be able to talk openly about reemigration with their classmate Mohamed [risas desbordantes] and say that they want to become police officers to deport migrants [aplausos]”.
Eva Vlaardingerbroek, a popular White Europe activist from the Netherlands, who is banned from the UK for her hate speech, received an award and the biggest standing ovation from the public after her name was announced. “We have managed to put reemigration at the center of the debate,” he congratulated himself. “It is time to act,” he proclaimed, while inviting attendees to stand up and sign the “Save Europe Act“, a new request for a moratorium that paralyzes study visas and family reunification, reinforce the European external border physically and technologically, accelerate expulsions, apply “national priority” and defend the “ethnic continuity” of “ancestral homelands.”
There were so many people from the audience who came to the stage to sign that the master of ceremonies remembered that the request to get up was only “symbolic” and they could do so. online.
In the most far-right wedding hall in Europe (paraphrasing one of the organizers, the Austrian Martin Sellner) a peculiar version of “whoever can do, let him do” was heard. “We have to cause an exit effect in every place where we have the possibility of doing so,” he encouraged. “Charity in the Christian tradition has never meant disorder,” he said, almost syllabic. “Your first neighbor is your compatriot.” A new way to bring the “national priority” to the fore.
What can white Europeans concerned about their disappearance do other than sign petitions in person or online? Cyan Quinn, director of the White Papers Policy Institute, an American think tank that defends macro-deportations, denounced baby check policies because they are “inflationary.” The low birth rate is a problem, but it turns out that it is not worth it for immigrants to have children. “We cannot restore our civilization with other people’s children,” he said, quoting former Republican congressman Steve King. So? Let’s see. “There is a correlation between marriage and birth rate.” We must promote a “male breadwinner economy”something like an economy in which men are the ones who earn the bread. Because women, Quinn says, “want more children than they actually have.” “Traditional societies have higher birth rates,” he insisted. Examples? “Egypt and Nigeria.”
Reemigration is “the only issue” on which Europe and the US agree
Welcomed as if he were a pop icon, and relieved in January, he said that reemigration is the “only issue” on which the US and Europe agree. “These things do not need to be learned twice.” It should be worth it to Europe, he assured, with the example of what ICE has achieved in the US.
Outside the room, in the exhibitors’ area, near the tables with trays of bread with chorizo and fries, an ultra-German association is giving away pins with an eagle. A Portuguese publisher even charges for its flyers. More and more attendees are coming out to the fresh air, because the atmosphere has heated up inside. There is a strange unanimity in a round table where tricks are shared to avoid being banned on social networks. “George Floyd died because he was a criminal,” says activist Lorenzo Caccialupi. Ovation. “White lives matter!”repeats here, as he did in the European Parliament, the ultra-Slovak deputy Milan Mazarek. New ovation. The architect of the movement, the Austrian activist Sellner, announces that they will become a lobby with nine million pro-deportation ambassadors: “To be powerful, you have to be dangerous.” At this point in the big wedding of the European far-right, many American women are already hanging from the backs of white, very white chairs.
