Martin Sellner is an “Austrian hipster-right Identitarian leader” and an “Austrian identitarian activist” who “leads the ‘hipster-right’” group Identitäre Bewegung Österreich(IBÖ) or (Identitarian Movement Austria in English) according to Breitbart (March 11, 2018), (December 17, 2019). According to BBC News (September 20, 2018),
Martin Sellner is the European far right's newest poster boy. The group he leads in Austria has attracted huge publicity. However, Sellner's insistence that his movement is non-racist and non-violent doesn't have everyone convinced.
In the same article, BBC News reports that it is typical of Sellner
to deliver a monologue about the evils of multiculturalism and how Muslims want to take over Europe.
Martin Sellner is married to “YouTube political commentator and author”1Brittany Sellner (formerly Brittany Pettibone).2 At the time of their report on September 20, 2018, BBC News reported that Sellner and Pettibone were engaged and reported furthermore of Sellner that he is the leader of Generation Identity (GI) which they characterized as “a far-right group”. In the same report, they write,
He is often joined in his videos on YouTube by his fiancee, Brittany Pettibone, an alt-right vlogger and conspiracy theorist. Her posts about a so-called "white genocide" and a paedophile ring connected to Hillary Clinton led the Anti-Defamation League to place her on its list of hate groups.
Earlier this year Sellner and Pettibone were both banned from entering the UK. The Home Office said that when "the purpose of someone's visit to this country is to spread hatred, the Home Office can and will stop them entering Britain".
Sellner isn't just GI's leader in Austria. He's also a poster boy for the Europe-wide Identitarian movement, which is fiercely opposed to Muslim migrants - claiming that they threaten Europe's identity and will eventually replace the indigenous populations. The movement began in France in 2012 and has expanded to nine countries including Germany, Italy and recently the UK. It doesn't have many members but gets publicity through confrontational and expensive stunts.
In the summer of 2017, GI raised over £150,000 through crowdfunding to charter a boat in the Mediterranean to target non-governmental organisations that patrol the sea to rescue migrants in peril. GI said it would arrest illegal migrants and sink their boats - its campaign received the backing of a neo-Nazi website, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and a leading American white supremacist.
It didn't quite go to plan, though. GI's boat was detained and the captain was arrested, accused of having illegal Sri Lankan refugees on board and false documents. They were all later released.
A few months later, GI paid for a red helicopter to land on the crisp white snow of the French Alps. Flanked by 100 activists from across Europe, a massive poster was laid out telling migrants to go home. This stunt cost more than £50,000.
But the organisation's actions in Austria have landed it in deep trouble.
Supporters of Sellner confront anti-fascists at Speaker's Corner, London. Image source, Getty Images
The Austrian authorities think that actions like the protest at the University of Vienna theatre and Generation Identity's accompanying rhetoric amount to incitement of hatred against Muslims, foreigners and refugees. It's why they have taken the unprecedented step of charging GI with being a criminal group, rather than the non-governmental organisation it says it is.
The Austrian prosecutor compiled evidence from stunts GI carried out in the past two years.
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For years, GI was dismissed by its critics as a bunch of wannabe hipster Nazis - but Natasha Strobl, an author and researcher, has long thought their actions and rhetoric pose a threat to the country.
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"They paint refugees as invaders, as dangerous soldiers of Islam who come here to destroy Europe. It really destroys society," she says. As a result of this rhetoric, she adds, "people get aggressive, people harass Muslim women on the streets".
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Martin Sellner grew up in an affluent suburb outside of Vienna. In his teenage years, Strobl says, he was drawn to the nationalist fringe in Austria. "He was part of the neo-Nazi scene and the most well-known figure of the neo-Nazis, Gottfried Kussel, was his mentor," she says.
At the time Kussel had already been to prison for trying to revive Nazism. He was arrested again in 2011 and later jailed for nine years for continued far-right activity. It was after this, in 2012, that Martin Sellner set up the Identitarians in Austria.
Image source, Sean Gallup, Image caption, Sellner at Europa Nostra, a GI gathering in Dresden, German, in August 2018
We meet him inside their offices in a scrappy apartment in the centre of Vienna. It's fairly basic apart from a room full of cameras, laptops and lights where they make and edit their videos. Sellner is relaxed and confident; the day before he had been acquitted, along with 16 other GI members and supporters, of belonging to a criminal organisation.
"I really think we were vindicated and I hope that this verdict will also have an effect beyond this case and beyond Austria in the rehabilitation of GI," he says, sipping from a glass of sparkling water.
The prosecutor is appealing against the acquittal and is investigating GI's finances.
GI likes to stress it's not violent or racist, but what of Martin Sellner's past?
He admits he was involved with neo-Nazis when he was younger because, he says, "there was no alternative. There was no right-wing patriotic movement".
When asked bluntly: "So you weren't a racist?" his fluency falters.
"I don't think I was."
Image source: Martin Sellner: The new face of the far right in EuropebySimon Cox and Anna Meisel for BBC (September 18, 2018), captioned, “Sellner on a torch-lit march near Vienna in September 2017”, credit: Getty Images.
Source: Twitter suspends more than 50 white nationalist accounts, NBC News (July 10, 2020), captioned, “The leader of the Identitarian Movement (IBO) far right group, Martin Sellner, in Vienna, Austria.Georg Hochmuth / AFP - Getty Images file”
Image source: Austria cracks down on far-right Identitarian Movement, Aljazeera, (May 22, 2018), captioned, “Martin Sellner, the group's de facto spokesperson, was among those arrested in Austria [File: Antonio Parrinello/Reuters]”
