Race for Germany's next chancellor/DW: Alice Weidel, a "heavyweight" within the AfD

Alternative for Germany has put its leader as its lead candidate for the 2025 federal elections. Weidel often polarizes – even within her own ranks.

She belongs to a very small minority: Alice Weidel is one of nine women in the parliamentary faction of the populist and partly extremist right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD). The rest: 69 men. Percentage of women: 11.5 percent. No other party has such a low percentage. The percentage ranges from 25.4 percent (CDU/CSU) to 59.3 percent (Greens).

Politically, Weidel is a heavyweight within the male-dominated AfD: She shares the party and parliamentary faction leadership with Tino Chrupalla. The same situation was also the case in the 2021 federal elections, where the two entered the race together. The result was disappointing for the AfD: 10.3 percent compared to 12.6 percent in 2017. Since then, the polls have gone almost in one direction: up. In regional elections, the AfD recently achieved results of 18.4 percent (Hesse) and 32.8 percent (Thuringia). This success at all political levels has prompted the AfD to nominate a candidate for chancellor for the 2025 federal elections: Alice Weidel.

The 45-year-old chancellor candidate
was elected in January at a national party congress in Riesa (Saxony). In opinion polls, the AfD, which the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) has labeled as suspected of right-wing extremism, is in second place with around 20 percent. "From here we clearly derive our right to govern," says Weidel.

However, the chances of her becoming Chancellor of Germany are zero. Even if the AfD becomes the largest political force, it would most likely not find any party that would cooperate with it.

Chancellor candidate role model: Margaret Thatcher
Weidel can only dream of following in the footsteps of her role model: Margaret Thatcher. “I am impressed by her biography, swimming against the current, even when the situation becomes uncomfortable,” the AfD leader said in an interview with the German newspaper “Bild” about the British prime minister from 1979 to 1990.

Thatcher's nickname was the "Iron Lady" because she pursued a radical liberal economic course against all odds. Her principles: low taxes, fewer state subsidies, privatization. A course that fits with Weidel's ideas as a former corporate consultant. "Thatcher took over Great Britain when the country was in economic crisis and put it on the right track."

“We are trying to reform the EU”
When Weidel joined the AfD in 2013, just a few months after its founding, the party had a Eurosceptic and nationally liberal program. According to the candidate for chancellor, this has not changed: “We are trying to reform the EU,” she told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper in August. If a reform of the European Union fails, each country should have the opportunity to vote in a referendum on its EU membership.

In the same interview, Weidel denied any right-wing tendencies within the party and defended the leader of the party's extremist wing, Björn Höcke. The AfD leader in Thuringia has been convicted several times for publicly using Nazi slogans. Despite this, Weidel claims: "The very provocative element in him has been tempered. He is doing an excellent job in Thuringia. I find the criminal proceedings ridiculous and questionable."

Weidel once wanted to expel Björn Höcke from the AfD. This
is how the senior AfD politician speaks about a man who, according to a court ruling, can be called a “fascist.” Moreover, his own party accused him in 2017 of “ideological proximity to Nazism.” For this reason, Weidel agreed to his expulsion from the party. But the leadership’s request was rejected by the party’s arbitration committee.

Weidel openly admits that she likes to provoke. In 2018, she called refugees and asylum seekers “men armed with knives” and Muslim children “girls in headscarves” in the Bundestag. For this, she was publicly reprimanded by then-Parliamentary President Wolfgang Schäuble.

“Polarization is a way to start a debate,” she justified the vocabulary used at the time in an interview with the newspaper “Neue Zürcher Zeitung.” With the term “girl in a headscarf,” she said she wanted to draw attention to a problem with conservative Islam, which, according to her, is incompatible with the German Constitution.

Weidel and her personal contradictions
Alice Weidel, the provocateur? A woman who, because of her private life, probably faces prejudice within her own party? Because she is in a relationship with a woman from Sri Lanka and has two adopted children. This is far from the ideal image of the AfD. In its program, the party declares: “In the family, mother and father take care of their children together.”

The AfD's designated candidate for chancellor, with residences in Germany and Switzerland, does not represent her party's worldview at all. For Alice Weidel, this is not a problem, as she herself said in 2017: "It can happen that someone has prejudices, but this also happens in other parties."/DW