Always dressed to the nines, Alice Weidel speaks slowly, clearly, always with guns in her eyes. Demure white blouse, navy blue blazer and pearl necklace, she has the look of a governess. The coldness of the president and candidate of the German far right in the legislative elections of February 23 earned her the nickname “ice princess”. But deep inside, she is boiling. With voting intentions exceeding 20%, far ahead of Chancellor Scholz’s SPD and the environmentalists, Alice Weidel has never been so ardent and self-confident. Twelve years after its creation, the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) is preparing to become the second political force in Germany. After having decreed, in 2017, that “political correctness belonged to the dustbin of history”, the AfD candidate took it up a notch at the congress in Riesa (Saxony) on January 11. She is now one of, as Chancellor Olaf Scholz says, “those right-wing populists who dream of playing politics with a chainsaw”.
“We are going to raze all the wind turbines, raze them all! Raze these windmills of shame!”, she promised in front of enthusiastic activists. His campaign program can be summed up in three words: isolate, destroy, expel. “When we are in power,” she insists, “we will hermetically close all borders, we will restart nuclear power plants, we will reopen Nordstream [NDLR : le gazoduc reliant la Russie à l’Allemagne] and we will fire all the professors who work on gender”. Without forgetting the return of the Deutsche Mark and “Dexit”, Germany’s exit from the European Union. The high point of the congress show de Riesa was his ode to remigration, a term reserved until now for the identity wing to describe Germany’s ethnic cleansing plan Weidel wants “mass expulsions”. call it remigration, so let’s call it RE-MI-GRA-TION”, she conceded, distinctly articulating this word that has long been taboo among the “moderates” of the party.
A traditional model in contradiction with his personal life
Consumed by ambition, Alice Weidel could have joined any party to make a career in politics. But she chose the AfD, a party dominated by men (11% of deputies in the Bundestag are women) who glorify a “traditional” image of the family and ideas of identity. A decision that is a priori surprising, since his private life is in total contradiction with these values. A declared homosexual, she has lived for 17 years with a woman, a brown-skinned director of Sri Lankan origin with whom she is raising two children. This “rainbow” family, who lives in Switzerland, embodies the diversity and ethnic mix abhorred by misogynist and homophobic activists. “A family is a father, a mother and if possible many children,” said Krzysztof Walczak, an AfD delegate to the Riesa congress.
Alice Weidel, however, did not hesitate to approve the motion on this reference family model in the party’s electoral program. In her defense, she assures that she did not join the AfD in 2013 despite but because of her homosexuality. “I’m not queer. I’m married to a woman I’ve known for almost 20 years,” she says to justify herself by deploring the lawless areas “overwhelmed by Muslim immigration where homosexuals can no longer go”. Originally from West Germany, Alice Weidel began her career in investment banking at Goldman Sachs and wealth management at Allianz Global Investors. She obtained her doctorate focusing on the pension system in China where she spent six years (she speaks Mandarin). With Margaret Thatcher as a model, she embodies international finance demonized by AfD activists who take aim at “globalist elites” encouraging, according to them, immigration and endangering German security and culture.
Allegiance to the identity wing
If this woman attracted by the summits agreed to submit to the identitarians, it is so as not to suffer the same fate as her “moderate” predecessors. All were unceremoniously ousted by former history professor Björn Höcke, president of the Thuringian federation – a man monitored by the intelligence services for his connections with neo-Nazis. Since his electoral triumph on September 1 (with a score of almost 33% of the vote), Höcke has served as shadow president of the AfD. In 2017, Alice Weidel declared herself in favor of his exclusion because of his relations with neo-Nazi circles and his statements on the “African reproduction strategy” and Russia seen as a “natural ally of Germany”.
Weidel’s “chainsaw” speech in Riesa was interpreted as an act of allegiance to the identity wing of his party. Radicalization led to the divorce between the AfD and the RN during the European campaign when the head of the list, Maximilian Krah, declared that the SS were “not all criminals”. The identitarians recalled him for the legislative campaign in the region of Saxony, the bastion of the German extreme right. Weidel said nothing. “They took control,” insists Jörg Meuthen, the last of the “moderate” presidents who threw in the towel in January 2022.
Elon Musk’s support was a godsend to continue the normalization of the party and expand its audience. “The AfD is the only party that can save Germany,” declared the American tech multibillionaire. Alice Weidel used the exclusive interview he gave her on January 9 on his X platform to present herself as the victim of a campaign of denigration and ostracization by “stupid German politicians.” “We are not Nazis. Hitler was a communist,” she explained to Elon Musk before adding: “We are the only ones capable of protecting the Jews of Germany.”
“Weidel allows the AfD to present itself with a more respectable face to voters. She is on the line of Giorgia Meloni and Viktor Orbán,” analyzes Gerd Mielke, political scientist at the University of Mainz. She nevertheless knows that she has no chance of becoming chancellor on February 23, as no party wants to ally with the AfD. But it maintains a long-term objective, that of replacing the CDU, a “party of crooks”, as the leading political force in Germany. For her, the sanitary cordon is “undemocratic”. He won’t be able to last long. She is convinced that German conservatives will eventually give in, as in the United States, Austria or France. As proof, in the East, the political situation has become untenable. Impossible to govern without the AfD in the regions of the former GDR. In regional parliaments, the CDU is now forced to ally with the pro-Putin party of Sahra Wagenknecht (BWS) to block the far right. “With Weidel, the normalization of the AfD is underway and should make it possible to reach 30%. In 2029, it could be able to form a government with the conservatives,” says political scientist Gerd Mielke. With her as chancellor.
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