Hundreds of far-right activists gathered in Portugal on Saturday for the annual “Remigration Summit” advocating for the mass deportation of immigrants. Former U.S. Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino and white nationalist leader Jared Taylor were VIP guests alongside elected officials from Germany and Spain’s far-right parties. In an interview ahead of the event, Bovino cited Nazi Germany’s lead general, Erwin Rommel, as an inspirational figure.
“Remigration is basically the policy response to the 'great replacement' conspiracy theory,” says Charles R. Davis, a journalist based in Vienna, Austria. Davis explains “great replacement” as a theory that there is a “global elite plot, typically by Jews,” to replace white people in Europe and North America with immigrants. “It’s an argument for mass deportations,” not just of recently arrived immigrants, but of “those who were allowed in over the last hundred years who were not really, as they see it, European or American,” says Davis. “This is basically rooted in Nazi ideology.”