A sign of the ambitions of this group which attacks immigration and arms deliveries to Ukraine, this is the first time that the AfD has nominated a candidate for chancellor for a legislative election. “We are the second most important force in the national polls, and we clearly have a claim to govern,” Ms. Weidel told the party authorities who nominated her on Saturday.
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is credited with around 19% of the vote in the elections on February 23, behind the conservatives of the CDU/CSU (30%) and ahead of the social democrats of Chancellor Olaf Scholz. But its leaders have no chance of coming to power as long as the other parties continue to exclude any alliance with the extreme right.
Aged 45, Alice Weidel joined the AfD from its creation in 2013, when its members primarily fought the single European currency. But, unlike many of the founding academics of the AfD, who then left it, frightened by its xenophobic turn, this doctor in economics, who worked at the Goldman Sachs bank, remained.
Coming from a wealthy background, this former member of the Liberal Party (FDP), who often wears a white pearl necklace and a pantsuit, has said in the past that she had Margaret Thatcher and her forced restructuring of the economy as her model. British. It belongs, according to Professor Wolfgang Schroeder of the University of Kassel (central Germany), to the moderate branch of the AfD “which aspires to an independent existence, to the right of the conservatives” and not to the more radical “which defends a deeply ethnic, authoritarian and nationalist position”. “As a woman, from western Germany and homosexual, she has some problems making the connection with the ideology of her party,” comments Anna-Sophie Heinze, political scientist at the University of Trier (west). , in an interview with AFP. According to the researcher, she was accepted in the regions of the former GDR, where the AfD recorded its best scores, in particular by renouncing its criticisms against Björn Höcke, a figure of the resolutely homophobic, anti-migrant and radical movement. flirting with a certain nostalgia for the Nazi past.
Fluent in Mandarin, Alice Weidel, who has lived in China and the United States, has a significantly more international profile than many members of the AfD. Without ever having hidden being in a relationship with a woman with whom she is raising two adopted children, she diverts attention from this subject, by asserting herself to be anti-LGBT+. To those who criticize her for not defending gay rights, she responded Saturday that these detractors “have no idea of the reality of (her) life.” “I will not tolerate any interference in my life or my family,” she added.
For the electoral campaign, she adopted a resolutely nationalist tone by advocating an exit from the EU, a strict anti-migrant policy, anti-Islam, and a defense of conservative and Christian values. She does not hesitate to provoke, as in 2018 when she described refugees in a speech to the German Parliament as “women wearing veils, men with knives, living off society and other good-for-nothing people”.
“Compared to Marine Le Pen in France, or Giorgia Meloni in Italy, Alice Weidel has less experience” in political combat, notes Mr. Schroeder, “the first two play in the Bundesliga and she in the fourth division”. While Marine Le Pen has long begun to demonize the RN, distancing herself from the sulphurous legacy of her father Jean-Marie, Alice Weidel and the AfD “still have an anti-system posture,” notes Mr. Schroeder. The break between the AfD and the RN was also consummated in the spring of 2024 after a series of scandals. The two parties do not belong to the same group in the European Parliament. Relations had already been strained after the revelations in January of a meeting of several AfD leaders who had advocated a plan for the mass expulsion of foreigners, causing shock waves in Germany.
