With a snap general election looming in the new year, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) will officially nominate co-leader Alice Weidel as its candidate to be chancellor on Saturday.
Founded in 2013 to oppose Germany’s membership of the European Union, the AfD has seen its support gradually rise in recent years as it has seized on fears about migration and a stumbling economy — especially in former East Germany.
The party is currently polling at around 18 percent in second place behind the conservatives ahead of the election in February, prompting it to name an official chancellor candidate for the first time.
Weidel, 45, was born and educated in West Germany and later lived in China for a year, working at Bank of China, before moving on to Goldman Sachs.
She now lives in Switzerland with her female partner, who is from Sri Lanka, and commutes to Berlin to take up her seat in the Bundestag lower house of parliament.
As someone born in West Germany who is openly gay and has a non-German partner, Weidel is in some ways a surprising choice as the AfD’s candidate for chancellor.
But Weidel has stood out for her ability to avoid being caught up in many of the controversies surrounding her party in recent years.
– Moderate wing –
Weidel, who has described former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher as her political role model, belongs to the more moderate wing of the AfD.
She first joined the party when it was founded in 2013 and unlike many other early members, who quit as it became more overtly xenophobic, she stayed.
Weidel’s faction within the AfD “aspires to an independent existence to the right of the conservatives, with the possibility of forming a coalition”, according to Wolfgang Schroeder, a professor of politics at Kassel University.
But governing together with the centre right is a distant prospect for the AfD since working with the far right remains a major taboo in German politics because of its Nazi history.
As a West German and a gay woman, Weidel has had “some problems connecting with the ideology of her party”, according to political scientist Anna-Sophie Heinze from Trier University.
But she has gained broader support by “slowly giving up her initial criticism” of figures like Bjoern Hoecke, a lodestar for the radical right in the party, Heinze said.
– ‘Anti-system attitude’ –
While Weidel has never hidden her relationship with her partner, with whom she has two children, she has distanced herself from the broader LGBTQ movement.
Ahead of the election campaign, Weidel has adopted a stridently nationalist tone, advocating an exit from the EU, a strict anti-immigration, anti-Islam policy, and a defence of conservative and Christian values.
Compared with other women at the top of far-right parties in Europe, however, Weidel has “less combat experience”, according to Schroeder.
While Marine Le Pen in France and Giorgia Meloni in Italy have made inroads into the mainstream, Weidel remains “the opposition within the opposition” in Germany, he said.
Le Pen’s National Rally distanced itself from the AfD after the German party was caught up in several controversies earlier this year, including accusations of illicit ties to Russia and China.
The leader of the French far right also announced that she was in “complete disagreement” with the AfD’s migration policy after the party was said to be planning mass deportations out of Germany.
While other far-right parties have sought to tack towards the middle or at least soften their image, the AfD “does not want to adapt”, Schroeder said.
“Weidel is still anchored in the anti-system attitude,” he said.
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