Alice Weidel could not have hoped for a better return to her position as the chancellor candidate of the far-right Alternative for Germany.
New to the most popular online chat new fan Elon Muskthanked the chief executive of Tesla and ally of the incoming US president Donald Trump for agreeing to broadcast the AfD conference on his social media platform X.
“Freedom of speech!” he announced in English, before he started fiery speech against immigration at a rally in the small eastern German town of Riesa this weekend.
Weidel's affair with the world's richest man is part of an effort to tap into the global populist ave that propelled Giorgia Meloni to power in Italy in 2022, rallying Nationalist Marine Le Pen to victory in the first round of France's election this summer the past. and handed Trump re-election in November.
Senior members of the AfD party were also buzzing with excitement on the right a historic achievement in Austriawhere the leader of the Freedom movement last week was given the opportunity to form a government.
“It's part of a change in western democracy,” said Andreas Rödder, a historian at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. “The pendulum is swinging to the right and that's what the AfD has aligned itself with.”
At home in Germany, the party has already achieved a series of historic victories. It came second in the European elections in June, and last autumn it won up to 33 percent of regional votes in a strong performance in three eastern states – including Saxony, where Riesa is located – even after accusations about links between high-ranking members and Russian and Chinese intelligence.
Polls now suggest that the AfD – which attacks Muslims, lambasts “awakened” culture and wants to increase sanctions on Russia – is on course to claim first place in the federal election on February 23 with a record 20 percent of the vote.
Weidel, 45, does not fit the stereotype of a rightwing radical. He is married to Sri Lankan-born Swiss film producer Sarah Bossard, with whom he lives with their two adopted children in Switzerland. After graduating, he spent time as an analyst at Goldman Sachs in Frankfurt and later wrote a doctoral thesis on China's pension system.
Critics see Weidel as the party's attempt to present a sympathetic face to the public in a country where many are still deeply committed to avoiding repeating the mistakes that led to the dark past of the Nazis. During smiling TV interviews or videos posted on TikTok, his appearance is deliberately softer than other right-wing radicals in his group.
But little of his bright side was on display during his fist-pumping, 20-minute speech in Riesa, where he appealed to the party faithful by criticizing the “leftist mob” of protesters who delayed the start of the conference by two hours.
He embraced the highly charged term “immigration” as he promised “massive deportations of immigrants” and railed against several attacks in recent years by migrants and asylum seekers.
Many saw his inflammatory language as a nod to firebrand Björn Höcke, who led the party to victory in regional elections in eastern Thuringia in September and has been convicted of using the national language of Adolf Hitler's army.
In the party's latest attempt to refer to the Nazi era without going against the law, one local party chief encouraged the crowd to sing “Alice für Deutschland” – the banned slogan “Alles für Deutschland”, meaning “everything German”.
Those who knew Weidel during her financial tenure two decades ago struggled to reconcile the woman with today's far-right leader.
Jim Dilworth, a US banker living in Germany who worked with him at Goldman and later at Allianz Global Investors, said that he did not present any correct views at the time. “The most 'difficult' aspect of his views was his skepticism about the euro as a common currency,” he said.
Dilworth added that when he later expressed surprise at his decision to join the AfD, he told him that “it will take me 20 years” to make the same progress in the Christian Democrats. “That's why he chose this party. I think there's a lot of potential there.”
The AfD leader denied making such a statement. He told the Financial Times through a spokesman: “I didn't say that. It doesn't make sense. No one, and not at that time, joined the AfD because of their work. “
Weidel's political persona is one of carefully controlled conservatism. She wears pure white shirts, often with pearls, and her hair in a neat bun. He argues that his party is not on the right wing but is liberal.
Asked to explain the apparent disparity between his private life and his opposition party's “sex and ideology” in 2023, he said: “I'm not a skeptic. I just got married to a woman I knew for 20 years.” Or, as one senior party official put it: “You're gay by biology but not by political conviction.”
Kay Gottschalk, an AfD member of parliament who first met Weidel around the time she joined the national executive committee in 2015, said she was “perfect” for reaching groups where the party was underperforming, including female voters.
His critics warn that it is an act. The leader of the ruling Social Democrats, Lars Klingbeil, described him as “a wolf in sheep's clothing”.
Analysts and some of his allies within the AfD say that, as the party looks to double its support from 10 percent in the last federal election in 2021, Weidel could take part of the blame.
Deep public dissatisfaction with Angela Merkel's 2015 decision to accept around 1mn migrants and asylum seekers helped the AfD expand from its 2013 origins as a single-issue anti-euro party.
SPD chancellor Olaf Scholz's deep dislike of the three-way “traffic light” coalition, which fell in Novemberit is also important in sending new voters to the AfD. So do lukewarm attitudes toward the election's front-runner, Christian Democratic leader Friedrich Merz, and widespread anger about Germany's economic slowdown and the future of the country's manufacturing industry.
“The dissatisfaction of the other parties is great,” said a senior AfD official. “We benefit from that.”
Yet Weidel, who has been the leader of the AfD since 2019, has also proven to be a survivor of the notoriously embattled outfit. Insiders say he has worked professionally in managing the group's platform.
Regardless of how well it is doing, the party has almost no hope of taking power in Berlin after next month's vote because of the “fire” by Germany's main parties, which have all rejected forming a coalition with the AfD.
But its officials are already looking to the next election, scheduled for 2029, when they hope a stronger show could force other parties to stop opposing the alliance. They got some encouragement from Austria's Herbert Kickl, who last week was asked by the country's president to form a government after the main parties tried to form a coalition that excluded his Freedom Party.
Historian Rödder said: “It seems like a model, and they exploit it. “They point to Austria and say: 'It's Germany in four years'.