The match AfD (Alternative for Germany), ideologically located on the extreme right, would have obtained this Sunday a unprecedented victory in East Germany since World War II: for the first time since the post-war period, it has won Thuringia and was second in Saxony, according to the polls. How is this party that has achieved exceptional results?
The AfD leader is Alice Weidelan unclassifiable 45-year-old feminist leader who she lives her lesbianism openly with his partner, a Swiss producer from Sri Lanka named Sarah Bossardwith whom he shares two children.
Exactly Alice Weidel, makes use of his sexual condition and his multiracial family at AfD rallies in Germany, to explain the danger faced by family units like his before the “uncontrolled invasion of immigrants” who, she said, “attack people” like her.
For this reason, she is not a typical leader of the AfD, a party in Germany where, on the other hand, they coexist. racism and homophobia. His defense of German nationalism has led some media to compare the AfD to neo-Nazism. But the party categorically denies this. In fact, the AfD prohibits its members from having ties to neo-Nazi parties.
Alice Weidel is an economist. Was financial analyst of Goldman Sachsand after spending several years in China, he now lives between Switzerland and southern Germany. This fact has made her the target of criticism who accuse her of not paying taxes in Germany but in Switzerland.
On the other hand, Weidel defends a total and absolute blockage for five years after the entry of immigrants and asylum seekers in the country and the granting of German citizenship. “I demand an immediate halt to all immigration, the reception and nationalization of immigrants, for at least five years,” he declared during the election campaign.
Recent jihadist attacks in Germany, in some cases carried out by immigrants who arrived in the country as refugees, have provided fertile ground for shifting the vote in both regions to more right-wing positions.
AfD seduces East Germany
It is precisely for this reason that the AfD seems to have been seduced in East Germany by its strong speech against immigration and for also calling on NATO and the West stop supplying weapons to UkraineThe latter point is particularly sensitive, given that both regions belonged to the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), which means that they still live in fear of another war.
The deep inequalities that persist in both regions after reunification in 1990 also provide fertile ground for an AfD victory.
Alternative for Germany has been criticized in Germany for rreceive donations from Russia across Switzerland. And the party has also been condemned for the links with neo-Nazism of some of its leaders or for having whitewashed Nazism.