The German far right is in high spirits.
On Saturday, as the conference got underway in the eastern Saxony town of Ries, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) outlined ambitions to close Germany’s borders, continue buying Russian gas and, effectively, break up the EU.
German media reported that the party’s agreed manifesto included plans to leave the Paris climate accord, exit the euro and create a new confederation of states.
AfD leader Alice Weidel has even publicly embraced the term “remigration” – a word widely understood to mean the mass “return” or deportation of people of migrant origin.
Thousands of anti-AfD protesters gathered on the streets of Riese on Saturday, trying to block access to the conference venue.
When Alice Weidel finally took the stage, she described the activists outside as a “leftist mob.”
And, in front of an enthusiastic conference hall of delegates, there was talk of “large-scale repatriations”.
“And I have to be honest with you: if it’s going to be called re-emigration, then it will be: re-emigration,” she said.
It’s a striking departure from just a year ago, when she tried to distance herself from a scandal that centered around a highly controversial concept.
There have been nationwide protests against the AfD after it emerged that senior party figures were among those at a meeting where “remigration” was allegedly discussed with Martin Sellner, an Austrian far-right activist with a neo-Nazi past.
Sellner wrote about “remigrating” asylum seekers, some aliens with residency rights, and “unassimilated” citizens.
A buzzword of Europe’s far right, some argue that legal residents would not be forced to leave. Critics say “remigration” is simply a euphemism for an openly racist mass deportation plan.
But Alice Weidel’s decision to personally coin the term, weeks after a snap federal election, shows her party’s growing radicalism and self-confidence.
She also promised to demolish wind farms, which she called “windmills of shame”, to leave the asylum system in the EU and to “kick out” gender studies professors.
The AfD is consistently second in Germany’s elections and has achieved success in recent regional elections in the east of the country – where the party is strongest.
However, it is very unlikely that it will win power because other parties will not cooperate with the AfD.
Parts of the AfD have been classified by domestic intelligence as right-wing extremists.
In 2024, the talisman of the AfD’s hard right – Björn Höcke – was twice fined for using the banned phrase of the paramilitary Nazi SA SA, “Alles für Deutschland” (“all for Germany”).
He called it an “everyday sentence” and denied that he was aware of its origin, even though he had previously been a professor of history.
Reports that members of the conference in Riesa this weekend chanted “Alice für Deutschland” drew swift comparisons in the German media.
However, AfD figures have often complained of being demonized and persecuted by the biased media and establishment.
And Alice Weidel’s party – of which she is co-leader and now candidate for chancellor – has weathered repeated storms and is now hovering around or even above 20% in national polls.
The 45-year-old economist, who previously worked for Goldman Sachs and is in a same-sex relationship, has sought to smooth over the rougher edges of her party.
But for those strongly opposed to the AfD, she is a fig leaf or – as one social democrat put it – “a wolf in sheep’s clothing”.
Regardless, she’s enjoying the new limelight after being in the spotlight he was invited by tech billionaire – Elon Musk – for a live chat on his X platform last weekwhere he wholeheartedly supported the party.
Her statement during this debate that Adolf Hitler was actually a communist drew condemnation, given the Nazi leader’s well-known anti-communism.
Critics have warned of Nazi revisionism – something the AfD has been accused of in the past.
Björn Höcke once called for a “180-degree turn” in Germany’s handling of its Nazi past, while a former co-leader, Alexander Gauland, described the Nazi era as “just a speck of bird droppings in more than 1,000 years of successful German history”.
Nonetheless, the AfD’s anti-establishment, anti-immigration and “revival” agenda is finding followers in Germany, which is heading to the polls on February 23.
