A left-wing German publication that falsely accused the nationalist AfD party of planning to “deport millions of Germans with a migrant background,” has come under fire for altering its story—again.
As we previously reported, Correctiv, a partly Soros-funded investigative website, made explosive claims earlier this month of a top-level meeting between AfD officials and members of the European ‘ethnocultural transnational’ Identitarian Movement—joined by a small number of officials from the centre-right CDU—alleging the existence of a right-wing plot to deport millions of migrants, including those with German citizenship. The article resulted in hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets around Germany to protest against ‘far-right extremism.’
In an interview on Sunday, Anette Dowideit, the deputy editor of Correctiv, said that the German press had “misinterpreted” major aspects of their reporting about the meeting that took place on November 25th in Potsdam, because her publication had in fact “not spoken of deportations or anything like that.” However, this is not true. The article explicitly states that the “shared goal” of the participants of the meeting “is the forced deportations of people from Germany based on a set of racist criteria, regardless of whether or not they have German citizenship.”
The article also draws a historic parallel with the Nazis, claiming—and using the term ‘deport’ once again—that the concept allegedly spoken of at the Potsdam meeting, “is eerily reminiscent of the Nazi’s 1940 plan to deport four million Jews to the island of Madagascar.”
It seems Correctiv is now trying to backtrack from its accusations.
Conservative German media outlets have noticed that the short summary of a book by Correctiv entitled The AfD Complex, an investigative research into the party’s affairs, has been secretly modified in the last couple of days. While the text previously said there are “plans for the deportation of millions of Germans with a migrant background,” it first changed the word ‘deportation’ to ‘expulsion’, and then adjusted the text again to read: “expulsions of millions of people from Germany.” No German citizens are now mentioned.
The negotiations held in Potsdam may have been a “secret meeting,” but the talking points may not have been much of a secret. As Dieter Stein, editor-in-chief of Junge Freiheit writes:
It is now clear that at this private meeting only a restrictive migration policy was discussed, involving border control and the consistent deportation of rejected asylum seekers and illegal immigrants. And “on a grand scale,” as Chancellor Olaf Scholz himself recently promised.
Speaking to Junge Freiheit, participants of the Potsdam meeting vehemently denied that they ever talked about the mass expulsion of foreigners with the right to remain, or even the deportation of Germans with a migration background.
One of the participants, constitutional law expert and legal representative of the AfD Ulrich Vosgerau, has decided to take legal action against Correctiv for making false allegations against him.
The left-wing publication has not only come under fire for its blatant misreporting of events, but for doing so while being financially supported by German taxpayers. Though Anette Dowideit claimed on Sunday that “we are not paid by the government,” the fact is that Correctiv received a large share of its funding, €431,000, from the federal treasury last year. In addition, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia contributed €145,000, not to speak of many other federal agencies and foundations, meaning hundreds of thousands of euros have been contributed to Correctiv by German taxpayers.
The Federal Ministry of Education and Research gave a whopping €266,000 to the publication in the past two years. Though the platform proudly states that it works “free of political and economic dependencies,” there is a strong reason to believe it is politically biased, especially given the fact that their Managing Director, Jeannette Gusko, used to work for the ministry, and has been a regular speaker at events organised by the governing social democrats.
Despite the inconsistencies of Correctiv’s reporting, and its clear political bias, mainstream political parties are attempting to exploit the revelations to reinforce their claims that AfD has to be banned. In a fiery speech in Germany’s lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, Chancellor Olaf Scholz called on “democratic parties” to stand together against threats to democracy. “When conferences are held in country manors in this country to discuss how a part of the population can be pushed out of this country—‘remigration’ being the keyword—it is reminiscent of the darkest times in German history,” he said, referring to the Nazi era.
Responding to Scholz, AfD co-leader Alice Weidel lambasted the government, and said her party was the victim of an “unprecedented smear campaign.” As more and more Germans become disillusioned with the government’s migration policies, tax hikes and green ideology, AfD is rising ever higher in the polls. It is currently the second strongest party in Germany, polling at 22% on the national level.
