London – ESI debates migration with the far-right on Al Jazeera’s ‘Head to Head’

11 June 2026
Gerald with Mehdi Hasan. Photo: ESI
Gerald with Mehdi Hasan. Photo: ESI

ESI’s Gerald Knaus travelled to London to take part in “Head to Head”, the debate programme presented by the British-American journalist Mehdi Hasan on Al Jazeera English. The episode, titled “Is the AfD a threat to Germany?”, brought Hasan face to face with Maximilian Krah, a member of the German Bundestag for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). Recorded in mid-June before a live audience at Conway Hall, it was broadcast on 25 June 2026 and has since been watched more than 1.2 million times on YouTube.

Gerald joined a small panel of experts alongside the author Deborah Feldman and the Austrian commentator Ralph Schoellhammer.

Much of the discussion turned on the AfD’s identitarian politics and its idea of “remigration”. Krah distanced himself from the concept as set out by the Austrian activist Martin Sellner, and insisted that his own use of the term had never referred to German citizens. When Hasan cited the AfD’s Thuringian leader Björn Höcke, who has claimed that Germany would still function with 20 to 30 percent fewer citizens, Krah declined to explain how that could work without deporting Germans.

Gerald challenged the party’s focus on ethnic origin, pointing to the strict limits that the German constitutional order places on dividing people along ethnic lines. The AfD, he argued, is not actually interested in solving crises.

While in London, Gerald also met with policymakers and local civil society.

On the AfD and "remigration". Video: Al Jazeera