the former Goldman analyst leading Germany’s far-right

Alice Weidel could not have hoped for a better backdrop for her coronation as chancellor candidate for the far-right Alternative for Germany party.

Fresh from a highly promoted online chat New Elon Musk fanHe thanked the Tesla CEO and ally of incoming US President Donald Trump for his willingness to live stream the AfD conference on his X social media platform.

“Freedom of speech”. he announced in English before entering fiery anti-immigration speech at a gathering in the small eastern German town of Riesa this weekend.

Weidel’s wooing of the world’s richest man is part of an effort to tap into the global populist wave that brought hard-right Giorgia Meloni to power in Italy in 2022 and won Marine Le Pen’s national rally in November in the first round of French elections.

Senior members of the AfD party were also shaking with excitement on the far right a historic breakthrough in Austriawhere last week the leader of the Freedom Party was given the opportunity to form a government.

“It’s part of a tectonic shift in Western democracies,” said Andreas Roeder, a historian at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. “The pendulum is swinging to the right, and that’s what the AfD is all about.”

In Germany, the party has already secured a number of historic successes, coming second in June’s European elections and winning 33 percent in regional elections last fall, with a strong showing in three eastern states, including Saxony, where Riesa is located, even after allegations of links between high-ranking party members and party members.Russian and Chinese espionage.

Polls now show the AfD, which criticizes Muslims, criticizes “woke” culture and wants to lift sanctions on Russia, on course to claim its first runner-up in the February 23 federal election with a record 20 percent of the vote. to vote

45-year-old Weidel does not fit the stereotype of a right-wing radical. He is married to Sara Bossard, a Swiss film producer born in Sri Lanka, with whom he lives in Switzerland with their two adopted children. After graduation, he spent time as an analyst at Goldman Sachs in Frankfurt and later wrote a doctoral thesis on the Chinese pension system.

Analysts see Weidel as the party’s attempt to present a more palatable face to the public in a country where many still take it very seriously to avoid repeating the mistakes that led to his dark Nazi past softer than some of the far-right radicals in his party.

But there was little of his lighter side on display during a 20-minute speech in Rizeza, where he appealed to the party faithful, criticizing the “leftist crowd” of protesters who delayed the start of the conference for two hours.

He embraced the highly loaded term “migration” as he promised “large-scale deportations of immigrants” and railed against a series of attacks by migrants and asylum seekers in recent years.

Many saw his inflammatory language as a concession to firebrand Bjorn Hocke, who led the party to victory in regional elections in the eastern state of Thuringia in September and was condemned for invoking the nationalist language of Adolf Hitler’s storm troops.

In the party’s latest attempt to break the law in the Nazi era, another regional party leader encouraged the crowd to chant “Alice für Deutschland”, a pun on the banned slogan “Alles für Deutschland”, which means “for everything”.

Those who knew Weidel during her career in finance two decades ago struggle to reconcile the woman with today’s far-right leader.

Jim Dilworth, an American banker living in Germany who worked with him at Goldman and later at Allianz Global Investors, said he did not have right-wing views at the time was his skepticism about a common currency,” he said.

Dilworth added that when he later expressed surprise at his decision to join the AfD, he told him it would “take 20 years” to make the same progress in the more centre-right Christian Democratic parties. “That’s why he chose this party. I think there was a lot of opportunism there.”

The AfD co-chairman denied making such a statement, he told the Financial Times through a spokesperson. “I never said that. It makes no sense. No one, and certainly not then, joined the AfD for their career.”

Weidel’s political persona is one of carefully controlled conservatism. He wears crisp white shirts, often with pearls, and his hair in a neat, low bun. He insists his party is not right-wing, but rather conservative liberal.

Asked to explain the apparent discrepancy between his personal life and his party’s “gender and awakened ideology” in 2023, he said: “I’m not weird. I’m just married to a woman I’ve known for 20 years.” Or, as one of the high-ranking party officials said. “He’s just biologically gay, but not politically.”

AfD lawmaker Kay Gottschalk, who first met Weidel when she joined the national executive committee in 2015, said she was “perfect” for groups where the party has traditionally underperformed, including women voters.

His critics warn that it is an act. The co-leader of the ruling Social Democrats, Lars Klingbeil, has described him as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”.

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

Deep public discontent over Angela Merkel’s 2015 decision to take in nearly 1 million migrants and asylum seekers helped the AfD expand from early 2013 as a one-sided anti-euro party.

the deep unpopularity of SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s tripartite “traffic light” coalition; which collapsed in Novemberhas also been vital in sending new voters to the AfD.There is also a lukewarm attitude toward the election leader, Christian Democratic Party leader Friedrich Merz, as well as widespread anger about the stagnant German economy and the future of the country’s manufacturing industry.

“There is a lot of resentment towards other parties,” said a high-ranking AfD official.

However, Weidel, who has been co-leader of the AfD since 2019, has also proven to be a survivor in an outfit known for infighting. Insiders say he is adept at leading the party’s radical wing.

No matter how well it performs, the party has little hope of taking power in Berlin after next month’s vote because of a “firewall” built by Germany’s main parties, all of which have ruled out forming a coalition with the AfD.

But its officials are already looking ahead to the next round of elections, scheduled for 2029, when they hope for more voter disillusionment, particularly inspired by Austria’s Herbert Kickl, who was asked by the country’s president last week to form a government after a trial. Centrist parties overthrew his Azatutyun party.

“It looks like a pattern, and they’re using it,” says historian Roeder. “It’s Germany in four years.”