AfD candidate for chancellor: What makes Alice Weidel tick?
Published: Saturday, Dec 7th 2024, 08:50
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The CDU/CSU, Greens and SPD have already chosen their candidates for chancellor - the AfD is the last party to do so. Alice Weidel is to lead the right-wing party into the Bundestag elections as candidate for chancellor.
The AfD does not have a real chance of becoming chancellor with poll results of between 18 and 19 percent. There would be no majority for an AfD chancellor in the Bundestag due to a lack of support from other parties. Nevertheless, the party has chosen Alice Weidel as its candidate for chancellor in the Bundestag elections on February 23 to underline its claim to government. Who is Alice Weidel and what makes her tick?
She is repeatedly asked one question in a modified form - and it comes out of her ears, as Weidel once said in 2017: How does that fit together - AfD and in a registered partnership with a woman with a migration background and two children?
"Sarah, I love you!"
The last time this happened was at an event in Zurich. The moderator asks the question in question. She replies: "I have to tell you, I don't see skin color." This is followed by a demonstrative: "Sarah, I love you!" to her partner sitting in the audience. Later, in an interview with the CH-Media Group newspapers, Weidel explains her decision. She was not happy about the question about skin color. "That makes me go up inside." Her wife is Swiss, adopted, came from Sri Lanka when she was three months old and grew up in Appenzell.
Alice Elisabeth Weidel usually tries to keep her private life out of the public eye. "If you open the door, you can't close it," says the 45-year-old. She commutes between Germany and Switzerland, where she is raising two children with her partner, a film producer.
But how does that fit in with the AfD?
Weidel already gave her answer seven years ago in an election campaign speech. She was not in the AfD despite her homosexuality, but precisely because of it, said Weidel, making the connection to security and migration policy. Gays and lesbians could hardly dare to walk the streets arm in arm. There are no-go areas for homosexuals and "Muslim gangs" that hunt them down.
Political opponents as "shooting gallery figures"
On the political stage, the economist attaches great importance to a serious appearance: white shirt, pearl necklace, dark blue jacket. In interviews, she speaks in an elongated and emphatically calm manner, saying "Wiatschaft" in Westphalian dialect when she talks about the "economy". Nevertheless, her tone is sharp and sometimes contemptuous when she talks about the government and political opponents, calling them a "sausage cabinet" or "shooting gallery figures". She tries to appear cool, even though she is seething, says an AfD politician in the Bundestag.
Weidel fans praise "great humor"
People in the AfD who know her well and are on her side describe Weidel as a likeable person, a woman with a "great sense of humor" who can also be silly away from the public stage, not in the way she comes across in public. "Clever", "serious", "focused", "intelligent" are further descriptions. And words such as "assertive" and "strict" are also used. Weidel can come across as bossy when she reprimands people who have distracted or otherwise annoyed her during a conversation.
Short fuse? "Not at all," she says herself. You have to keep calm in all situations, but as a leader you also have to be clear. "Leadership also means not necessarily making yourself popular and sometimes making difficult, unpleasant decisions when necessary."
"Nickname ice princess"
Critics who have and have had a lot to do with her, but prefer to remain anonymous, have nothing good to say about Weidel and describe her as "self-centered" and "arrogant". She is not nicknamed the "ice princess" for nothing.
The AfD leader is also accused of incompetence and that she is primarily striving for power within the party. "She's only interested in being at the front." From the outside, she has been accused of being an "opportunist of the worst kind". Junge Union leader Johannes Winkel referred to the fact that Weidel had once campaigned for Björn Höcke to be expelled from the party and was now acting as if this had never happened. She now appears arm in arm with the leading representative of the AfD's far-right wing on the campaign stage.
©Keystone/SDA
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