31 Facts About Martin Sellner

Martin Michael Sellner was born on 8 January 1989 and is an Austrian far-right political activist, and leader of the Identitarian Movement of Austria, which he cofounded in 2012.

Martin Sellner is considered to be a key figure in the Neue Rechte in the German-speaking countries.

Martin Sellner is deemed to be part of the alt-right movement.

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entering Germany for 3 years, because of his speech on "remigration" at the 2023 Potsdam far-right meeting, that ban was revoked by a German court in late May 2024.

Also in March 2024, Martin Sellner was arrested by Swiss police while he was giving a speech at an event of the Swiss organization Junge Tat in Tegerfelden.

Martin 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.

Martin Sellner became involved in nationalist politics as a teenager, being part of Austria's neo-Nazi scene.

In 2006, at the age of 17, Martin Sellner admitted to placing swastika stickers with another person on a synagogue in Baden bei Wien, Lower Austria.

Martin 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.

Martin Sellner has said that, until 2011, he was a neo-Nazi.

Martin Sellner copied their aesthetics, the black-yellow logo and the central term of "saving European identity".

Martin Sellner dropped out of law school, and by 2016 was studying philosophy in Vienna.

Martin Sellner said that he had broken with neo-Nazism, and that the rising popularity of Nazism was a failure of society.

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

In February 2017, Martin 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.

Martin Sellner intended to deliver an address at Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park, London.

Martin Sellner apparently had been warned and managed to delete all emails with Christchurch shooter Tarrant 40 minutes before the raid.

Martin Sellner's computer, mobile phone, all data storage devices and cash cards were confiscated on suspicion that he was a member of a terrorist organization.

Also in March 2019, US authorities canceled his permit to travel without a visa to the United States according to Martin Sellner, thus preventing him from visiting Pettibone, now his wife.

Martin Sellner has said he wants to be allowed into the country so he and his fiancee 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.

Investigators had wrongly suspected Martin Sellner of forming a terrorist organisation.

In June 2019, Martin Sellner was permanently excluded from entering the UK on security grounds in a letter sent to him by the Home Office.

The Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, feared that Martin 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, Martin Sellner proposed a plan to "remigrate" millions of people from Germany to North Africa at the 2023 Potsdam far-right meeting.

On 29 January 2024, Martin Sellner entered Germany from Austria in a leased car.

On 19 March 2024, Martin Sellner was banned from entering Germany for three years.

The ban came after it was reported that Martin Sellner had given a speech on "remigration" to politicians from the AfD and the CDU in Potsdam on 25 November 2023.

On 16 March 2024, Martin Sellner was arrested in Switzerland while he was giving a speech at an event organized by the Swiss Identitarian organization "Junge Tat" in Tegerfelden.

The documentary claimed that Martin Sellner stated that Jews were a problem in the 1920s and made references to the "Jewish question".

Martin Sellner said that the domination of the American alt-right by the "Jewish question" is a "complete strategical and theoretical failure".

Martin Sellner responded by calling the documentary a "hit piece", and that the statements were taken out of context.