Martin Sellner

Martin Michael Sellner (born 8 January 1989) is an Austrian far-right political activist, and leader of the Identitarian Movement of Austria, which he cofounded in 2012. He is also involved in an important role within the Neue Rechte in Germany. He is considered part of the alt-right movement.

In March 2018, he was denied entry to, and deported from, the United Kingdom. A year later, he was denied entry to the United States because of a connection to the Christchurch shooter. In March 2024, the city of Potsdam tried to ban Sellner from entering Germany for 3 years, because of his speech on "remigration" at the 2023 Potsdam far-right meeting, that ban was revoked by a German court in late May 2024. Sellner believes in the Great Replacement conspiracy. Also in March 2024, Sellner was arrested by Swiss police while he was giving a speech at an event of the Swiss Identitarian organization.

Early life and education
Sellner was born in 1989 and raised outside of Vienna in the town of Baden by his father, a homeopath, and his mother, an English teacher. He became involved in nationalist politics as a teenager, being part of Austria's neo-Nazi scene. An early mentor of his was Gottfried Küssel, a well-known neo-Nazi figure.

Neo-Nazi activity
In 2006, at the age of 17, Sellner admitted to placing swastika stickers with another person on a synagogue in Baden bei Wien, Lower Austria. Apart from the swastika stickers, others had the inscription "Legalise it" and the letters AJ (for "Aryan Youth"). The accomplice later stated in an interrogation that they had "wanted to do something" when they heard about the conviction of the British Holocaust denier David Irving. Sellner did 100 hours of community service in a diversion at the Jewish cemetery in Baden, leading to the public prosecutor's office renouncing a criminal trial.

In 2008, at the age of 19, he helped a leading Austrian neo-Nazi group hinder liberal demonstrations and made pilgrimages to memorial services for Wehrmacht soldiers. Sellner has said that, until 2011, he was a Neo-nazi.

Career
In 2012, he co-founded the Identitarian Movement of Austria, also referred to as "Generation Identity" in Austria, after discovering the French Bloc Identitaire on the internet. Sellner copied their aesthetics, the black-yellow logo and the central term of "saving European identity". Contacts in right-wing fraternities enabled him to convince sponsors of his new, right-wing radical youth group. He dropped out of law school, and by 2016 was studying philosophy in Vienna. By 2017 he had a bachelor in philosophy, and die Zeit referred to him as graphic designer. He said that he had broken with neo-Nazism, and that the rising popularity of Nazism was a failure of society.

In April 2016, he disrupted a theatre performance of Elfriede Jelinek's piece, Die Schutzbefohlenen (theatre performance with migrants seeking asylum), along with around 30 members of his organisation, spilling fake blood. The blood was intended to symbolize the "blood of Bataclan and Brussels".

In 2017, Sellner spoke at a Pegida rally in Dresden.

Legal and visa problems
In February 2017, Sellner was involved in a fight in a Vienna U-Bahn station where he used pepper spray on people he described as far-left activists. Since this incident, he has been banned from carrying weapons.

In early 2018 he had received a donation of $1,500 from the Australian-born terrorist Brenton Tarrant of the March 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand.

In March 2018, Sellner and Brittany Pettibone, at that time his girlfriend, were denied entry to the United Kingdom at Luton Airport on the grounds that their presence in the United Kingdom was not conducive to the public good. Sellner intended to deliver an address at Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park, London. They were denied entry, detained for two days and deported.

In March 2019, Austrian police searched his home; unusually, they waited 12 minutes for him to open the door. Sellner apparently had been warned and managed to delete all emails with Christchurch shooter Tarrant 40 minutes before the raid. His computer, mobile phone, all data storage devices and cash cards were confiscated on suspicion that he was a member of a terrorist organization. Sellner denied any involvement in the attacks.

Also in March 2019, U.S. authorities canceled his permit to travel without a visa to the United States according to Sellner, thus preventing him from visiting Pettibone, now his wife. In 2019, the Republican Committee of Pettibone's home county of Kootenai County, Idaho, called on the American federal government to allow Sellner to travel to the United States. The move caused considerable controversy within the Republican Party and the State of Idaho. Sellner has said he wants to be allowed into the country so he and his fiancée could marry and live together in Post Falls, Idaho, rather than his native Austria; following this, their marriage was instead held in Austria later that year.

In June 2019, Austrian police expanded their searches of Sellner's property in connection with the March 2019 Christchurch shootings by Brenton Tarrant. According to media reports, Sellner commented that his electronic devices had been seized because police had a "strong suspicion of [Sellner] forming a terrorist organisation with Brenton Tarrant". A search warrant, which Sellner produced in a video on his YouTube channel, justified the search on the basis of Tarrant's "The Manifesto of The Great Replacement" and the suspicion of Sellner having collaborated with him. On 13 December 2019, a judge ruled that the searches were unlawful. Investigators had wrongly suspected Sellner of forming a terrorist organisation. According to the public prosecutor's office in Graz, inspection of Sellner's bank account was illegal for a lack of reasonable suspicion.

In June 2019, Sellner was permanently excluded from entering the UK on security grounds in a letter sent to him by the Home Office. A year earlier, Sellner had attempted to enter the UK via Stansted airport, but had been stopped by the authorities. The Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, feared that Sellner might try to enter the UK again to train the local branch of Generation Identity and carry out public stunts that would promote "anti-Islamic and anti-immigration narratives".

In 2023, Sellner proposed a plan to "remigrate" millions of people from Germany to North Africa at the 2023 Potsdam far-right meeting that included members of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) party, leading to debate on banning the AfD.

On 29 January 2024, Sellner entered Germany from Austria in a leased car. The police interrogated Sellner for nearly an hour before releasing him. On 19 March 2024, Sellner was banned from entering Germany for three years. According to German public media, Sellner had stated on his Twitter account that he would be "pushed back and punished" if he tried to enter Germany during the ban. The ban came after it was reported that Sellner had given a speech on "remigration" to politicians from the AfD and the CDU in Potsdam on 25 November 2023. A court in Potsdam revoked the ban in late May 2024 on Sellners application, declaring the original ban unlawful.

On 16 March 2024, Sellner was arrested by Swiss police while he was giving a speech at an event organized by the Swiss Identitarian organization "Junge Tat" in Tegerfelden. After an interrogation, Sellner was released on the condition that he leave the country immediately, which he did. According to media reports, a senior police officer in Zurich had warned Sellner in a telephone call the day before that the intended event "must not take place".

Views
In 2017, Wolfgang Ullrich suggested that there are connections between Sellner's worldview and the theories of the philosopher Martin Heidegger and the political theorist Carl Schmitt.

ITV's 2017 documentary film investigation Undercover – The New British Far-Right claimed the existence of undercover footage of Sellner discussing contacts between Generation Identity and white supremacist groups in the United States, but stated that these contacts must be hidden due to public relations. The documentary claimed that Sellner stated that Jews were a problem in the 1920s and made references to the "Jewish question". Sellner also said that the domination of the American alt-right by the "Jewish question" is a "complete strategical and theoretical failure". It claimed he said he was an antisemite in his youth, and that his friends made offensive comments about the Holocaust. He supports The Great Replacement conspiracy theory. Sellner responded by calling the documentary a "hit piece", and that the statements were taken out of context. In a statement released by Generation Identity and Sellner, they stated that the group wants to preserve European "ethno-cultural identity" and stated that the group has no hidden agendas.

As of 2017 Sellner has been regarded as a member of the alt-right movement.

Personal life
Sellner states that he grew up in a middle-class area and family. According to an interview of his from a 2017 documentary, Sellner's parents are understanding and supportive of his career, although they would have preferred him pursuing his studies in law and are concerned about possible politically-motivated attacks on him.

In August of 2019, Sellner married Brittany Pettibone, an American alt-right vlogger and conspiracy theorist. The couple had their first child, a son, in 2021.