She is definitely in the minority: Alice Weidel is one of only nine women in the Alternative for Germany (AfD) parliamentary group in the Bundestag. The rest of the group consists of 69 men. The quota of 11,5 percent of women is not so low in any other parliamentary group - in the current convocation of the German parliament, it ranges from 25,4 percent among the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) to 59,3 percent among the Greens.
Politically speaking, Weidel, however, is a heavyweight within the male-dominated AfD: together with Tina Krupal, she shares the duty of chairman, both in the party and in the parliamentary group in the Bundestag.
Their party won 2021 percent of the votes in the last parliamentary elections in 10,3 with that duo at the head. This was a slight decrease compared to 2017 (12,6 percent). But, since then, the party has managed to win more and more votes. In the recent elections in several German states, the AfD achieved much better results: in Hesse 18,4 percent, and in Thuringia even 32,8 percent.
Polls at the level of the whole of Germany show that up to 20 percent of citizens would vote for the AfD, a party that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitutional Order classified as a "suspicious case of right-wing extremism."
Chancellor Weidel? Just let the dream go!
Success at all political levels has prompted the AfD to nominate 2025-year-old Alice Weidel as a candidate for the position of chancellor of Germany for the parliamentary elections in September 45. This should be confirmed at the party congress next year.
However, the chances of that economist becoming that are essentially non-existent. Even if the AfD became the strongest political party in those elections, no other party would be ready to enter a coalition with it.
Alice Weidel, therefore, can only dream of achieving what her role model: Margaret Thatcher, once achieved. "I admire her biography, her swimming against the current, even when it's uncomfortable," the head of the AfD said in an interview about the former longtime British prime minister, who was in office from 1979 to 1990.
Margaret Thatcher was nicknamed the "Steel Lady" because, despite all opposition, she remained true to her radical economic-liberal course. Her credo was: low taxes, less state subsidies, privatization. It's a course that aligns with the beliefs of Alice Weidel, a former business consultant. "Thatcher took over Great Britain when the country was at the bottom economically. And she managed to pull it out," Weidel said.
"We strive to reform the EU"
In 2013, when Weidel joined the Alternative for Germany, founded a few months before, it was a Eurosceptic and national-liberal party. According to Alice Weidel, that has not changed until today: "We are trying to reform the European Union," she told the Welt newspaper in August. If the reform of the European Union fails, then every country should be given the opportunity to decide on remaining in the EU by referendum, according to Weidel.
In the same interview, she dismissed allegations of the party's shift to the right. She even came to the defense of her party colleague Björn Hecke, who is considered a representative of the party's extremist wing. The head of the AfD provincial committee in Thuringia has been convicted several times for publicly using National Socialist slogans. Weidel, however, claims: "That very provocative part has weakened in him. He is doing a great job in Thuringia. I find the court proceedings against him to be ridiculous and questionable."
Weidel and the "fascist" Hecke
This is how the leading AfD politician talks about a man who can be called a "fascist" by a court decision. Moreover, his own party accused him of "closeness to National Socialism" back in 2017 and intended to exclude him from its ranks, with the approval of Alice Weidel. However, that request was rejected.
Weidel herself publicly admits that she likes to provoke. In 2018, during a debate in the Bundestag, she called refugees and asylum seekers "men with alimony with knives", and described Muslim children as "wrapped up girls". The president of the Bundestag at the time, Wolfgang Schäuble, publicly criticized her for this.
"Polarization is a stylistic tool to start debates," Weidel justified her words a few days later in an interview with the Swiss newspaper "Noe Zircher Zeitung". She explained that with the term "wrapped up girls" she wanted to indicate that Germany has a problem with conservative Islam, which, in her opinion, is not in accordance with the Constitution.
A lesbian who lives with a dark-skinned woman of foreign origin
Alice Weidel - a provocateur who, because of her private life, could possibly face prejudice within her own party? Because her life partner is a woman from Sri Lanka. They also have two adopted children. This is far from the ideal picture as propagated by the AfD. In the party program, one of the main items is the maintenance of the traditional German family: "In a family, mother and father take care of their children with long-term responsibility."
A possible candidate for chancellor of the AfD with residences in Germany and Switzerland is in no way an embodiment of the worldview of her party. For Alice Weidel, this is not a problem, as she already stated in 2017: "It may be that some are indignant here and there, but there is that in other parties as well."
Bonus video:
