The Diabolical of Alice Weidel
Alice Weidel, the leader of the AfD, is an angry woman. Her rage is directed against foreigners, against men, against leftists, against the uneducated and lazy, but above all against Germany.
by Serdar Somuncu
by Serdar Somuncu
In this conflict between disappointed love for her homeland and futile attempts to win German majorities, the speaker is increasingly becoming almost histrionic in her arrogance and superiority, which in many ways resembles that of a lonely child who wants revenge on his parents. But where does this unbridled anger come from and why does she find the AfD an ideal home?
Weidel was born in Gütersloh in 1979 and is the daughter of an office furniture dealer. After graduating from high school, she studied economics and business administration in Bayreuth and graduated with a degree in economics and business administration, and finally earned a doctorate in politics on the pension system in China. She worked at Credit Suisse in Singapore and later worked as a management consultant. In October 2013 she joined the AfD Baden-Württemberg and was elected to the party's federal executive board in July 2015. She is openly lesbian and lives with her partner in Einsiedeln in Switzerland and has two sons.
If you read her biography, Weidel fits the cliché of an aspiring conservative woman who, coming from the bourgeois milieu of her parents' home, has made a rapid career as a manager and also has remarkable ambition in her political activities, which quickly made her a leading figure in the right-wing nationalist AfD. But Weidel is nowhere near as harmless and safe as she likes to portray herself. It is precisely her ever-recognizable anger at the establishment and her downright hatred of the caste of what she sees as corrupt political leadership that are increasingly putting her in the position of a misunderstood representative of the people, who embodies mediocrity in her resistance to it and makes no secret of her own contradictions. If you measure Alice Weidel by her actions, everything she says in public is at least not above suspicion. Nevertheless, Weidel has for some time now managed to win the masses over to her side through a mixture of persistent denial of reality and aggressive self-assertion, and is thus primarily responsible for the AfD's ever-increasing success.
Voters obviously do not seem to hold it against her that she does not meet any of the criteria she sets for others, nor is their assessment based on content. Everything Alice does for Germany is admired and praised, as if she were a female Robin Hood fighting the Sheriff of Nottingham, here in the form of the middle class and the left-wing establishment in Germany. Her increasingly obvious flirtation with the views of the far right and her almost obsessive aversion to everything foreign are the driving force behind her actions. Weidel seems to be obsessed with the idea of a purely German Germany, which in reality does not even seem lovable enough to her, so that she prefers to live in Switzerland. From there she can certainly shoot at her homeland. And that is exactly what Alice Weidel is doing now, with a verve and a vagueness that almost seems amateurish, which she only conceals through her persistent denial of the actual circumstances and often even lapses into an offended sulk when she is contradicted. So the AfD leader has not only fought her way to the top of an opposition party whose identity lives on a permanent inferiority complex, she has also acquired a megalomania that means that her xenophobic fear of catastrophe has been joined by an ultra-national hubris that seems to be dooming the other opposition parties, at least before the election.
Because many not only fear the tone of the authoritarian political dominance, they also see their skins floating away in the fight for the favor of a reactionary electorate that would rather trust in the dictates of a demagogue than strive for conservative values that are beyond incitement and slander. Weidel is balancing almost like a dream on a fine line between credibility and idealization, while more and more people are putting their trust in her party and seeing it as the only true salvation for this nation. But where does the path that Weidel is showing lead? Is it nothing more than a defiant reaction to the development of globalization, which has long been suffering from the fact that injustice and exploitation are not being exchanged for fairness and solidarity? Or is it, as in other European countries, a turn to chauvinism, which is also repeatedly evident in Weidel's demeanor when she jovially puts her interlocutor over his mouth, insults him or lectures him? It seems to be a rollercoaster ride in a dark tunnel that a large part of her electorate is embarking on, in whichHope that their fears of foreign infiltration and economic decline will be allayed, and in the end it may be the breakdown and destruction of democratic traditions that we risk if we listen to and believe Weidel and her representatives too much. Nevertheless, there is no other option than to confront her views, perhaps even in a form that is as authoritarian as her own behavior.
However, most people lack both the courage and the ignorance needed not to be provoked by her and her polemics. But there is still hope. Perhaps a power struggle for leadership will arise within the AfD itself, in which her opponents gain power and Weidel loses strength. Paradoxically, one of these competitors would be the Thuringian state chairman Björn Höcke, whom Weidel still seems to have quite well under control, although not only has he become the AfD's leading figure through his flirtation with the extreme, but his election results as the most successful state politician have also brought him dangerously close to the AfD's leadership team. But wouldn't that be jumping out of the frying pan into the fire? Who knows, perhaps the people first need the excursion into unpredictability to understand that everything that Alice Weidel is hiding under the cloak of her self-righteous ideological stubbornness is nothing more than a desperate attempt to lead herself and this country on a path out of the political crisis and into power.
14.02.25
©Serdar Somuncu
Current program "Seelenheil" now available for download in the shop
*Serdar Somuncu is an actor and director
CLICK HERE FOR THE NEW BOOK
TICKETS FOR THE SHOW "SONGS & STORIES"
TICKETS FOR THE SHOW "HE\\'S BACK"
Weidel was born in Gütersloh in 1979 and is the daughter of an office furniture dealer. After graduating from high school, she studied economics and business administration in Bayreuth and graduated with a degree in economics and business administration, and finally earned a doctorate in politics on the pension system in China. She worked at Credit Suisse in Singapore and later worked as a management consultant. In October 2013 she joined the AfD Baden-Württemberg and was elected to the party's federal executive board in July 2015. She is openly lesbian and lives with her partner in Einsiedeln in Switzerland and has two sons.
If you read her biography, Weidel fits the cliché of an aspiring conservative woman who, coming from the bourgeois milieu of her parents' home, has made a rapid career as a manager and also has remarkable ambition in her political activities, which quickly made her a leading figure in the right-wing nationalist AfD. But Weidel is nowhere near as harmless and safe as she likes to portray herself. It is precisely her ever-recognizable anger at the establishment and her downright hatred of the caste of what she sees as corrupt political leadership that are increasingly putting her in the position of a misunderstood representative of the people, who embodies mediocrity in her resistance to it and makes no secret of her own contradictions. If you measure Alice Weidel by her actions, everything she says in public is at least not above suspicion. Nevertheless, Weidel has for some time now managed to win the masses over to her side through a mixture of persistent denial of reality and aggressive self-assertion, and is thus primarily responsible for the AfD's ever-increasing success.
Voters obviously do not seem to hold it against her that she does not meet any of the criteria she sets for others, nor is their assessment based on content. Everything Alice does for Germany is admired and praised, as if she were a female Robin Hood fighting the Sheriff of Nottingham, here in the form of the middle class and the left-wing establishment in Germany. Her increasingly obvious flirtation with the views of the far right and her almost obsessive aversion to everything foreign are the driving force behind her actions. Weidel seems to be obsessed with the idea of a purely German Germany, which in reality does not even seem lovable enough to her, so that she prefers to live in Switzerland. From there she can certainly shoot at her homeland. And that is exactly what Alice Weidel is doing now, with a verve and a vagueness that almost seems amateurish, which she only conceals through her persistent denial of the actual circumstances and often even lapses into an offended sulk when she is contradicted. So the AfD leader has not only fought her way to the top of an opposition party whose identity lives on a permanent inferiority complex, she has also acquired a megalomania that means that her xenophobic fear of catastrophe has been joined by an ultra-national hubris that seems to be dooming the other opposition parties, at least before the election.
Because many not only fear the tone of the authoritarian political dominance, they also see their skins floating away in the fight for the favor of a reactionary electorate that would rather trust in the dictates of a demagogue than strive for conservative values that are beyond incitement and slander. Weidel is balancing almost like a dream on a fine line between credibility and idealization, while more and more people are putting their trust in her party and seeing it as the only true salvation for this nation. But where does the path that Weidel is showing lead? Is it nothing more than a defiant reaction to the development of globalization, which has long been suffering from the fact that injustice and exploitation are not being exchanged for fairness and solidarity? Or is it, as in other European countries, a turn to chauvinism, which is also repeatedly evident in Weidel's demeanor when she jovially puts her interlocutor over his mouth, insults him or lectures him? It seems to be a rollercoaster ride in a dark tunnel that a large part of her electorate is embarking on, in whichHope that their fears of foreign infiltration and economic decline will be allayed, and in the end it may be the breakdown and destruction of democratic traditions that we risk if we listen to and believe Weidel and her representatives too much. Nevertheless, there is no other option than to confront her views, perhaps even in a form that is as authoritarian as her own behavior.
However, most people lack both the courage and the ignorance needed not to be provoked by her and her polemics. But there is still hope. Perhaps a power struggle for leadership will arise within the AfD itself, in which her opponents gain power and Weidel loses strength. Paradoxically, one of these competitors would be the Thuringian state chairman Björn Höcke, whom Weidel still seems to have quite well under control, although not only has he become the AfD's leading figure through his flirtation with the extreme, but his election results as the most successful state politician have also brought him dangerously close to the AfD's leadership team. But wouldn't that be jumping out of the frying pan into the fire? Who knows, perhaps the people first need the excursion into unpredictability to understand that everything that Alice Weidel is hiding under the cloak of her self-righteous ideological stubbornness is nothing more than a desperate attempt to lead herself and this country on a path out of the political crisis and into power.
14.02.25
©Serdar Somuncu
Current program "Seelenheil" now available for download in the shop
*Serdar Somuncu is an actor and director
CLICK HERE FOR THE NEW BOOK
TICKETS FOR THE SHOW "SONGS & STORIES"
TICKETS FOR THE SHOW "HE\\'S BACK"
Write a comment