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WHITE NATIONALISTS ACROSS Europe have for more than a decade promoted a policy called ‘remigration’, which despite its innocuous-sounding name is a plan to expel non-white people from the continent.
Now, far-right activists and fringe political parties in Ireland are joining that chorus of extremists. In doing so, they are continuing to take inspiration from anti-immigration movements abroad and attempting to introduce their talking points into Irish politics.
On 17 May, members of the far-right National Party attended a “Remigration Summit” in Italy, and at an anti-immigration rally in Dublin city centre on 26 April, they marched down O’Connell Street chanting: “Save the nation, remigration!”
The National Party’s only elected representative, Patrick Quinlan of Fingal County Council, repeated the call in a speech he made at the Customs House on the same day.
“Ireland belongs to the Irish people. We must start a policy of mass remigration,” Quinlan told a crowd of thousands gathered along the quays who chanted: “Get them out! Get them out!”
“We’ll shut the borders, we’ll house the people, we’ll rekindle our ancestors’ divine fire,” Quinlan said.
The party’s youth wing also turned up selling the same message – the mass expulsion of immigrants and those who do not fit their definition of Irishness.
Quinlan is not the only Irish politician to call for ‘remigration’. Dublin City Councillor Gavin Pepper did so last year on social media, while complaining about crimes committed by Muslims in Ireland.
Gavin Pepper and Patrick Quinlan were contacted by The Journal and offered an opportunity to respond.
And at the summit in Italy, National Party member John McLoughlin said that while his party does not advocate violence, when “our people reach breaking point, you most certainly won’t be able to depend on the likes of me or any other political leaders here to hold them back”.
Opponents of ‘remigration’, he said, should think twice because “it’s not our last hope to save ourselves, it’s their last hope”.
The Journal sought to contact John McLoughlin via social media and the National Party, but received no response by the time of publication.
Those on the far-right fringe in Ireland are following the lead of more established anti-immigration parties (and right-wing extremist groups) elsewhere in Europe, who have made mainstreaming ‘remigration’ their goal.
In the last year or so, they’ve begun to see some success.
It's great to have young men stepping up, Fair play John and well done on representing the party. https://t.co/FZ9sCxmSoy
— Cllr. Patrick Quinlan (@PQuinlanNP) May 25, 2025
Those who call for ‘remigration’ want to see non-white people expelled from Europe en masse, regardless of their citizenship, legal status or place of birth.
This, according to those who support the idea, can be done forcibly or through incentivising people to leave a country voluntarily.
The term ‘remigration’ has long been used in academia to describe people returning to their countries of origin voluntarily, like refugees returning to their home countries after World War II, for example.
More recently, the word has been hijacked by supporters of Identitarianism - a pan-European, ethnonationalist movement that began in France in the 2000s.
Remigration is the only ticket to make Europe European again!
— Remigration Summit 26 (@resum25) March 24, 2025
👉🏻 Get yours now (in the comments below) and join us in that fight on Saturday the 17th of May in Milano, 🇮🇹
Let’s make history together ✈️ ! pic.twitter.com/WKQv1ff93k
Identitarians are racial segregationists. They oppose multiculturalism, globalisation and immigration in general, all of which they see as existential threats to the white populations and national cultures of Europe.
Like other far-right groups, they are particularly concerned with demonising Muslims and often try to stoke fears of “Islamisation”.
In a 2019 report, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue – a think tank focused on combatting extremist ideologies – described ‘remigration’ as “essentially a non-violent form of ethnic cleansing”.
If ‘remigration’ is the goal of white nationalists, the animating fear behind it is the ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theory, which casts foreigners – especially Arabs – as an invading force marshalled by global elites whose objective is to wipe out white people.
The ‘Great Replacement’ theory featured on general election posters erected last year by a grouping of far-right Irish parties that included the National Party, the Irish People party and Ireland First.
It also came up in the speech delivered by the Nationals Party’s John McLoughlin in Italy, when he talked about “ethnic replacement”, casting out “the invader” and referred to asylum seeker accommodation buildings as “plantation centres”.
He compared British control of the six counties in the north to how “Germany lost Frankfurt to Turkey, or France lost Paris to Algeria”.
As is typical with proponents of the theory, which originated in France, McLoughlin inverted the real history of the French invading and colonising Algeria.
He also said those who oppose ‘remigration’ aim to deny its supporters “the very heritage of our ancestors, carved in stone and soil”.
During the speech, McLoughlin made repeated references to soil, and the phrase “stone and soil” has echoes of the Nazi slogan “blood and soil”.
He also said the National Party stands for “excellence over equality”.
National Party members represented Ireland today at the Remigration Summit 2025 in Milan.
— The National Party | An Páirtí Náisiúnta (@NationalPartyIE) May 17, 2025
Many thanks to the conference organisers for hosting such a thoroughly well-run event despite interference from multiple state governments and their leftist foot soldiers.
Remigration is… pic.twitter.com/5z8TaQyZti
As Quinlan and McLoughlin did in their speeches, Irish adherents to the theory cast their project as one of liberation, and resistance to the “invasion” and “plantation” of Ireland.
They do so using language that invokes the Irish struggle against British rule and colonialism.
Quinlan said in his speech that Ireland has lost “that holy fire that blazed in our patriot dead”.
“They were able to conquer tyranny because of that fire,” he said.
Elsewhere in Europe, white nationalists call for a new ‘Reconquista’, a reference to the campaign by Christian kingdoms to retake land conquered by Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula centuries ago.
‘Remigration’ has been promoted by far-right political parties and extremist groups in a number of European countries over the last ten years or so.
More recently, it’s found expression in Canada, Australia and, most notably, in the United States.
Those who promote the idea aim to bring it into mainstream political discourse, which was the purpose of the “Remigration Summit” that took place in Italy on 17 May.
In 2024 the vision of Remigration became the hope of our entire continent.
— Remigration Summit 26 (@resum25) January 1, 2025
In 2025 we will organize the first Remigration Summit: in May we will gather activists, journalists and politicians to unite our ideas, reach and influence. If we work together, Remigration is inevitable. pic.twitter.com/F0ZA0oWIXG
The most prominent exponent of the idea in the European context has been the far-right German political party Alternative for Germany (AfD), which came second in this year’s federal election with just over 20% of the vote.
The AfD has been officially labelled a right-wing extremist group by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (BfV) and one of its members has been convicted for using banned Nazi-era slogans. The party also has documented ties with neo-Nazi groups.
The BfV said the AfD aims “to exclude certain population groups from equal participation in society, subject them to unconstitutional discrimination, and thus assign them a legally devalued status”.
Ahead of this year’s election, AfD leader Alice Weidel endorsed the idea of ‘remigration’ at a party conference, where she talked about “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, making a U-turn on a topic that had brought intense scrutiny upon her party only a year previous.
In 2024, the policy was deemed too extreme by another major player in far-right European politics, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party in France, after a report by Correctiv exposed a secret meeting between AfD members, neo-Nazis and like-minded businesspeople, at which ‘remigration’ was the main talking point.
Reports of the meeting led to massive demonstrations across Germany.
National Rally, which itself has Nazi-sympathising roots, and the AfD have since broken off their alliance in the EU Parliament.
Another far-right French politician, Éric Zemmour, has called for a ministry of ‘remigration’ to be established.
In Austria, the idea has been promoted by the leader of the Freedom Party (FPO), Herbert Kickl. The party laid out plans to create “Fortress Austria” ahead of parliamentary elections in 2024, in which it won around 29% of the vote.
The FPO has also called for the EU to have a “remigration commissioner”.
In Sweden, ‘remigration’ is government policy, although it does not involve forcing people to leave the country. Sweden does not strip people of their citizenship or refugee status, unlike the more extreme ideas promoted elsewhere in Europe.
The Swedish government incentivises people to leave voluntarily by offering them money, something Denmark also does.
And then there is the case of the United States since Donald Trump won the presidency for a second time.
There, the term has become more common since the 2024 election campaign, when Trump himself used it in a Truth Social post attacking his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris.
Trump wrote: “As President I will immediately end the migrant invasion of America. We will stop all migrant flights, end all illegal entries, terminate the Kamala phone app for smuggling illegals (CBP One App), revoke deportation immunity, suspend refugee resettlement, and return Kamala’s illegal migrants to their home countries (also known as remigration).”
While Trump did effectively freeze all refugee resettlement on his first day in office, he also signed an executive order intended to provide white South Africans asylum status.
He has also said white people in South Africa are being subjected to “genocide”, a common myth among white nationalists.
Since coming to power, the Trump administration has been expelling people from the US under dubious pretexts, some of whom have a right to reside in the country and others who are in fact American citizens. The US president’s use of the term ‘remigration’ was celebrated by those in Europe who have sought to mainstream it, including the well-known Austrian white nationalist Martin Sellner, who hailed it as a “victory”.
“Remigration has had a massive conceptual career,” Sellner wrote on X.
“Born in France, popularised in German-speaking countries, and now a buzzword from Sweden to the USA!”
Last week, the US State Department sent a plan to congress that would transform the government agency that oversees immigration into an “Office of Remigration”.
Implementing ‘remigration’ as envisioned by extremists like Martin Sellner would involve a state either revoking or breaking its own laws around citizenship. It would also mean withdrawing from international treaties that guarantee people the right to seek asylum.
This is why Germany’s AfD has been labeled a right-wing extremist organisation, because its intention is to violate the country’s constitution and deny citizens their most fundamental rights.
Need more clarity and context on how migration is being discussed in Ireland? Check out our FactCheck Knowledge Bank for essential reads and guides to finding good information online.
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