Closing Germany’s borders to illegal immigration, exiting the euro zone, getting rid of windmills, and turning nuclear power plants back on—those are the top priorities named by right-wing opposition Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party at its congress over the weekend.
AfD is polling strongly in second place and—according to the latest opinion polls—has the support of 22% of the electorate. If the predictions were to turn into reality at the national elections on February 23rd, it would be a strong showing for the party, receiving only 10% in 2021.
This, of course, does not mean a role for the party in the government, as it is being blocked on a national and state level by all other political forces—ranging from the far-left to the centre-right CDU/CSU alliance, which is projected to win the elections in February.
Despite the AfD being labelled an “extremist” organisation by the country’s domestic intelligence, its election programme seems more like the manifesto of a conservative party. A programme that would not have seemed out of place by any establishment centre-right party 20 or 30 years ago.
But times have changed, and, as Alice Weidel, the co-leader of the AfD told the publication Junge Freiheit: the Christian Democrats now support the “whole left-green woke madness,” and are responsible for the fact that the German borders are still open and that no one is being deported.
Indeed, it was under the government of former chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) that Germany opened up its borders and allowed millions of people from Africa and the Middle East—many of them undocumented—to enter the country. Merkel steered her party to the left, espousing left-wing policies and turning its back on its traditional conservative voters.
AfD wants to capitalise on these mistakes,with the ultimate goal, as Weidel emphasised, to “become the strongest force in Germany.”
The party has already made big strides, winning its first-ever state election last year in Thuringia, as well as coming second in Saxony and Brandenburg. Voters have had enough of the radical green and pro-migration policies embraced by the outgoing left-liberal government, whose parties are on course to be severely punished.
The 45-year-old Weidel was officially chosen as her party’s lead candidate and nominee for chancellor at the AfD’s congress on the weekend.
One of the focal points of her speech was migration. She said the first one hundred days of a government containing the AfD would see the “total closing of Germany’s borders and the turning back of anyone travelling without documents,” as well as “large-scale repatriations.”
I say to you quite honestly, if this must be called remigration, then let it be called remigration.
The AfD has been falsely accused of wanting to deport not only rejected asylum seekers, but German citizens of a migrant background, but the party understands “remigration” as the “repatriation of foreigners who are obliged to leave the country in accordance with the law.”
The party also wants to make it much more difficult to acquire German citizenship. Children born in Germany would no longer automatically receive a German passport.
Weidel advocates a return to nuclear energy and more coal power stations, as well as relaunching the Nord Stream pipelines for Russian gas. She branded wind turbines “windmills of shame” and promised to tear them all down.
In a recent conversation with Elon Musk, Weidel said the green policies, the closing of all of Germany’s nuclear power plants, and the decision to stop importing cheap Russian gas resulted in manufacturing production plummeting because of high energy costs.
