At first glance, it is difficult to understand how Alice Elizabeth Weidel (Gütersloh, February 6, 1979), a person who has worked for Goldman Sachs, Allianz and the Bank of China, a country in which he lived for six years and whose pension system he dedicated his doctoral thesis, co-chaired -together with Tino Chrupalla– a party, Alliance for Germany (Afd), which demonstrates open hostility towards globalisation.
A first element of response is provided by its hard position on immigration.
It is enough to remember his allegations against the then chancellor Angela Merkel in the previous legislature.
For example, that day in 2018 when German public opinion was in shock after the murder in the heart of Chemnitza Saxon city devastated by the economic crisis, from an ordinary citizen at the hands of an asylum seeker.
Weidel, in the middle of a session of questions to the Government, did not stop at bars: «The murderer. I repeat: the murderer».
The person in question had not yet been tried, although it is true that he had entered Germany illegally and that the authorities had rejected the request.
The Afd co-president based herself on these two facts to, from the very minimalist lectern of the bundestag, snap at Merkel: «And this is not an isolated case. You, Mrs Merkel, represent the greatest risk to the security of this country.”
The face of the aforementioned was a poem. The onslaught was unconscionable and was harshly judged the next day by politicians and commentators.
Weidel did not give a damn: he knew that he was in agreement with an important sector of the citizenry, fed up with the dire consequences of the decision of merkel of letting in hundreds of thousands of migrants during the torrential flow of 2015.
It could be concluded that the chancellor provided massive political fuel to Weidel. It is, to a large extent, so.
And the Afd, through its co-president or other leaders, has used it to “spray” such leading groups as the Catholic and Lutheran Church, which Weidel herself, through another outburst, accused -with arguments insufficient from the historiographical point of view – of “behaving the same or worse than during Nazism” for criticizing the Afd, the “only Christian party in Germany». In his opinion, obviously.
It can also be concluded that this strategy of frontal clash with all kinds of institutions was counterproductive for Afd in the federal elections of 2021, in which it stagnated.
However, it cannot be denied that, since that date, and especially due to the new wave of insecurities unleashed as a result of the war in Ukraine –which considerably affects Germany–, the Afd, under the leadership of the Weidel-Chrupalla duo, it has been recovering positions: in some länder, its electoral records have been spectacular and in the polls at the federal level, it has been surpassing the social democrats of the current chancellor for some time Olaf Schölzbehind only the Christian Democrats.
It is already a consolidated trend. This is clear from the latest survey, published on July 31 by Politico.eu.
An improvement that Weidel is enjoying, a skillful maneuverer who, at each stage of the Afd’s short history, has known how to appear, strangely enough, as a representative of the moderate wing of the formation.
In these times, his posh and first-class airs – he always has been – complement the more populist projection of chrupalla,
Her lesbianism? He clearly assumes it: he shares his life with a woman of Sri Lankan descent with whom he is raising two children.
But he does it in a civil union regime, having opposed the approval of the gay marriage in 2017. Subtle way of taking care of the most conservative sectors of Afd.
That his very liberal convictions in economics could shock his blue-collar and middle-class voters, anxious about their job future? It is the same: at the moment the priority issues are immigration and crime. About them it’s time to surf.
