The lesbian leader of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, lives a life that her political party rejects, yet she was just elected as the party’s first-ever candidate for chancellor. Alice Weidel’s rise to prominence within a party known for its anti-LGBTQ+ and nationalist rhetoric highlights a glaring contradiction as Germans prepare to head into a federal election on February 23.
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At the AfD’s weekend conference in Riesa, Saxony, delegates unanimously elected Weidel to lead their charge for power. Simultaneously, they adopted policies excluding families like hers from their definition of “acceptable.” The delegates included the sentence “The family, consisting of father, mother, and children, is the nucleus of society” in their election program. Initially, The draft program only stated: “The family is the nucleus of our society.”
German newspaper Rheinische Post reports that Thuringian AfD politician Wiebke Muhsal said, “Children do not come from anywhere, but family is where a man and a woman have children together.” Hamburg delegate Krzysztof Walczak added that formulating a guiding principle does not imply rejecting other ways of life and family models. On Sunday, the party voted to enshrine a so-called traditional definition of family—consisting of a father, mother, and children—into their platform. The move directly conflicts with Weidel’s own family life. She shares a home in Switzerland with her female partner, Sarah Bossard, a Sri Lanka-born Swiss filmmaker, and their two young sons.
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Weidel is getting support from the wealthiest man in the world. She participated in a live-streamed interview on X (formerly Twitter) with tech billionaire Elon Musk on Thursday. According to NPR, roughly 200,000 users tuned in as Musk endorsed Weidel and praised her as “a very reasonable person.” Musk’s alignment with the AfD has drawn international criticism, particularly given the party’s classification as a suspected right-wing extremist group by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency. During the chat, Musk urged Germans to support the AfD, warning that “things are going to get very much worse in Germany” if they do not.
Weidel, 45, has a doctorate in economics and spent six years in China, where she learned Mandarin and researched the country’s pension system, Deutsche Welle reports. According to the outlet, she admires former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for her neoliberal policies and resilience, reflecting similar views in her own platform advocating welfare cuts and privatization.
The AfD’s recent state election successes, particularly in Thuringia with nearly 33 percent of the vote, have bolstered its confidence. DW reports that national polls show the party at 20 percent, fueled by economic frustrations and dissatisfaction with the current government’s immigration policies. Much like in the U.S., where President-elect Donald Trump is set to take power next Monday with his party controlling all arms of government largely because Americans are dissatisfied with the economy and immigration, Weidel is selling a populist message to gain support in Germany.
