The Alternative for Germany (AfD) congress which opens this Saturday January 11 promises to be a consecration for Alice Weidel. The one who has co-led this far-right party since 2017 will be confirmed as head of the list for the legislative elections on February 23 and “candidate for chancellor”a title never granted by his party. Proof that, this year, the AfD believes in its possibilities of approaching power, with 21.5% of voting intentions, according to a survey published this week. A record.
Alice Weidel is expected to play a central role in the very short campaign, particularly on social media. This 45-year-old politician is already making numerous political clips, playing on the image of an idyllic Germany, « a danger » in the face of illegal immigration. This January 9, she will also get to know her new supporter, Elon Musk, during a live broadcast on the X platform.
“A more liberal vision”
The latter recently estimated that the AfD could not be described as a right-wing extremist party, with such a leader. In fact, Alice Weidel thwarts many codes of the extreme right. A woman in a party dominated by men, she is in a relationship with a Swiss director of Sri Lankan origin, with whom she is raising two adopted boys, even though her party refuses marriage for all and adoption for same-sex couples. Although she never highlights her sexual identity, Alice Weidel admits to having a “more liberal vision” of family policy than his party. To those who ask her if her cosmopolitanism – she lived for six years in China and her family lives in Switzerland – is in line with the AfD program, she replies that it “does not contradict the fact of wanting respect for state principles”notably “national borders”.
Another dissonance, this West German, finance expert, who worked for the investment bank Goldman Sachs and considers the liberal Margaret Thatcher as a model, leads a party very established in the east of the country and which is running as the representative of “people from below”. However, these apparent contradictions do not play a decisive role. Alice Weidel is first perceived as a consensual personality. “She is a moderate who has shifted to the right over time, comments Kai Arzheimer, from the University of Mainz. She is a fairly weak co-president, and that is what her base is demanding, which does not want a dominant personality. Its strength is to exclude no one, unlike its predecessors. »
The AfD without a potential ally
With her navy blue blazer, her white blouse and her pearl necklace, Alice Weidel brings a certain respectability to a party considered too radical, even by Marine Le Pen. If she avoids controversial outings, Alice Weidel multiplies sharp attacks in the Bundestag. Among his favorite targets, Olaf Scholz, “the worst chancellor in the history of the country”the environmentalists who would lead the country to “deindustrialization”, “girls wearing headscarves”, “idle foreigners benefiting from social assistance”. Without forgetting the classic right (CDU/CSU), accused of “copy the AfD” more than “betray the German vote” by refusing any alliance. “Alice Weidel seems angry all the time, Constate Kai Arzheimer. This is part of her strategy, because she knows she has no possible partner. »
The leader nevertheless says she is certain of being able to lead her training, sooner or later, towards power. Like what is currently happening in neighboring Austria, where the far-right FPÖ is trying to form a government with the conservatives.
