The former Goldman analyst is the leader of the German far-right group

Alice Weidl, the far-right candidate for chancellor of Germany, could not have hoped for a better backdrop for her royal speech.

Fresh from the much discussed online discussion New fan Elon MuskShe thanked Tesla CEO and incoming US President Donald Trump for his willingness to live stream the African conference on his social media platform X.

“Freedom of speech!” He announced in English before starting inside. Fiery anti-immigration speech At a meeting this weekend in the small East German town of Risa.

Widdle’s engagement to the world’s richest man is part of an effort to ride out the global populist wave that has swept far-right Giorgia Meloni to power in Italy in 2022, where Marine Le Pen’s National Rally won the first round of French elections last summer. And he’s tipped for Trump’s re-election in November.

Senior members of the AfD party on the far right were also jubilant. A historic achievement in AustriaLast week, the leader of the Freedom Party was given the opportunity to form a government.

“This is part of a tectonic shift in Western democracy,” said Andreas Roeder, a historian at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. “The pendulum is swinging to the right and this is where the AfD has tied itself.”

In Germany, the party has already achieved many historic successes. He came second in European elections in June, and won up to 33 percent of the regional vote last fall in three eastern states – including Saxony, where Risa is based – even after allegations of ties between senior party members and allegations of Chinese and Russian spying.

Opinion polls now suggest the AfD – which denigrates Muslims, “revives” its culture and wants to lift sanctions on Russia – is on course for a record 20 percent in the February 23 federal election. Voting.

Weidel, 45, does not fit the mold of right-wing radicalism. She is married to Sri Lankan-born Swiss film producer Sarah Bossard and lives in Switzerland with their two adopted children. After graduating, she spent time as an analyst at Goldman Sachs in Frankfurt and later wrote a doctoral thesis on China’s pension system.

Analysts see Weidel as an attempt by the party to present a more palatable face to the public, with many still keen not to repeat the mistakes of its dark Nazi past. Whether in smiling TV interviews or videos posted on Tik Tok, her appearance is often deliberately softer than the extreme right-wing extremists in her party.

But Berisa’s lighter side was on display as she punched through her 20-minute speech, knocking down the “left group” of opposition demonstrators who delayed the start of the conference by two hours and appealing to the party faithful.

She has embraced the high-profile charge of “immigration” while pledging “massive refugee deportations” and protesting a series of attacks on migrants and asylum-seekers in recent years.

Many see it as a concession to firebrand Björn Hocke, who led his party to victory in the eastern state of Thuringia in September and was convicted of invoking nationalist language at Adolf Hitler’s storm troopers.

In the party’s latest attempt to refer to the Nazi era without breaking the law, another state party official encouraged the crowd to chant “Alice fur Deutschland” – a reference to the banned slogan “All for Germany”.

Those who knew Weidel from her financial career two decades ago struggle to reconcile that woman with today’s far-right leader.

Jim Dilworth, an American banker living in Germany who worked with her at Goldman and later Allianz Global Investors, said she had no right-wing views at the time. “The most ‘radical’ thing about her views is her skepticism about the euro common currency,” he said.

Dilworth later added that she was surprised by her decision to join Afdi, telling him that “it would take me 20 years” to make the same progress in the center-right Christian Democrats. “So that’s basically why she chose this party. I think there was a lot of luck there.

The AfD co-leader denied making such comments. Through a spokesperson, she told the Financial Times: “I never said that. It doesn’t make any sense. No one, and certainly not then, joined the AfD for the sake of their job.

Weidel’s political persona is one of carefully controlled conservatism. She wears crisp white shirts, often with pearls, and wears her hair in a neat low bun. She argues that her party is conservative liberal rather than right-wing extremist.

Asked to explain the discrepancy between her personal life and her party’s “Gender and Ideology” 2023 protest, she said: “I’m not queer. I am married to a woman I have known for 20 years. Or as one senior party official put it, “She is gay by biology but not by political conviction.”

In the year AfD lawmaker Kay Gottschalk, who met Wiedel when she joined the national executive committee in 2015, says she is “perfect” for reaching out to groups where the party has traditionally been ineffective.

Her critics warn that it is an act. Lars Klingbeil, leader of the ruling Social Democrats, described her as “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

Analysts and even some of her own allies in the AfD said that the party had Weidel can only take part of the credit, though he looks set to double his support from 10 percent in the last federal election in 2021.

Deep public resentment over Angela Merkel’s 2015 decision to take in around 1 million refugees and asylum seekers helped the AfD expand as a single-issue anti-euro party from its 2013 origins.

SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s deep disapproval of the three-way “traffic light” coalition; which fell on NovemberIt was also instrumental in sending new voters to the AfD. For Christian Democrat leader Friedrich Merz, who has been leading the polls, take a warm view of Germany’s stalled economy and the future of the country’s manufacturing industry.

A senior AfD official said, “The grievances against other parties are huge.” “We’re making a profit from that.”

Weidel, co-leader of the AfD since 2019, also proved a survivor in an outfit known for infighting. Insiders say she is cunning in leading the radical wing of the party.

No matter how well it performs, the party has virtually no hope of taking power in Berlin after next month’s election, due to the “firewall” put in place by Germany’s main parties, all of whom cannot form a coalition with the AfD.

But officials are looking forward to the next election, scheduled for 2029, where they hope a stronger showing will force other parties to end their opposition to a coalition. He was particularly inspired by Austria’s Herbert Kieckel, who was asked by the country’s president to form a government last week after centrist parties failed to form a coalition that excluded his Freedom Party.

“It seems like a pattern, and they’re using it,” said historian Roeder. They are pointing to Austria to say, “It’s Germany in four years.”