the former Goldman analyst who leads the far right in Germany

Alice Weidel couldn’t have wished for a better background for her coronation as candidate for chancellor of the right-wing extremist Alternative for Germany.

Fresh from a much talked about online chat with new fan Elon MuskShe thanked the Tesla boss and ally of the new US President Donald Trump for his willingness to broadcast the AfD conference live on his social media platform X.

“Freedom of expression!” she announced in English before starting a fiery anti-immigration speech at the meeting in the small East German town of Riesa this weekend.

Weidel’s courtship of the world’s richest man is part of an effort to tap into a global populist wave that brought far-right Giorgia Meloni to power in Italy in 2022 and propelled Marine Le Pen’s national rally to a first-round victory last summer French elections and ensured Trump’s re-election in November.

High-ranking AfD party members were also seething with excitement from the extreme right historic breakthrough in Austriawhere the leader of the Freedom Party was given the chance to form a government last week.

“It is part of a tectonic change in Western democracies,” said Andreas Rödder, a historian at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. “The pendulum is swinging to the right and the AfD has joined in.”

At home in Germany, the party has already achieved a number of historic successes. It came second in the European elections in June and won 33 percent in regional elections last fall with a strong result in three eastern states – including Saxony, where Riesa is located – even after allegations of links between high-ranking party members and Russians and Chinese espionage.

Polls now suggest that the AfD – which rails against Muslims, criticizes “woke” culture and wants to lift sanctions against Russia – is on track to win its first in the federal election on February 23 with a record 20 percent to achieve second place overall voting.

Weidel, 45, does not fit the stereotype of a right-wing radical. She is married to the Sri Lanka-born Swiss film producer Sarah Bossard, with whom she lives in Switzerland with their two adopted children. After graduating, she worked as an analyst for 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 sympathetic face to the public in a country where many still place great value on avoiding the mistakes that led to its dark Nazi past. In smiling television interviews or in videos posted on TikTok, her appearance is often deliberately gentler than some of the ultra-right radicals in her party.

But there was little of her brighter side during her rousing, 20-minute speech in Riesa, in which she appealed to party loyalty by sharply denouncing the “left-wing mob” of demonstrators that delayed the start of the conference by two hours see.

She used the highly charged term “remigration” when she promised “large-scale deportations of immigrants” and spoke out against a series of attacks by migrants and asylum seekers in recent years.

Many saw her inflammatory language as a concession to the fiery Björn Höcke, who led the party to victory in state elections in Thuringia in September and was condemned for invoking the nationalist language of Adolf Hitler’s stormtroopers.

In the party’s latest attempt to reference the Nazi era without breaking the law, another state party leader encouraged the crowd to chant “Alice for Germany” – a reference to the banned slogan “Everything for Germany,” which means ” “Everything for” means “Germany”.

Those who knew Weidel when she worked in finance two decades ago have difficulty reconciling this woman with today’s far-right leader.

Jim Dilworth, a German-based U.S. banker who worked with her at Goldman and later at Allianz Global Investors, said she did not display right-wing views at the time. “The most ‘radical’ thing about their views was their skepticism about the euro as a common currency,” he said.

Dilworth added that when he later expressed surprise at her decision to join the AfD, she told him that “it would take me 20 years” to make the same progress with the more center-right Christian Democrats. “That’s basically why she chose this party. I think there was a lot of opportunism.”

The AfD co-chairman denied having made such a remark. She told the Financial Times through a spokesman: “I never said that. It doesn’t make any sense. Nobody, especially not back then, joined the AfD because of their career.”

Weidel’s political personality is characterized by carefully controlled conservatism. She wears crisp white shirts, often with pearls, and her hair is tied in a neat, low bun. She argues that her party is not right-wing extremist, but rather conservative-liberal.

When asked to explain the apparent discrepancy between her personal life and her party’s opposition to “gender and woke ideology” in 2023, she said: “I’m not queer. I’m currently married to a woman I’ve known for 20 years.” Or as one senior party official put it: “She’s gay only by her biological nature, not her political beliefs.”

Kay Gottschalk, an AfD lawmaker who first met Weidel when she joined the federal executive board in 2015, said she was “perfect” for reaching groups where the party has traditionally failed to achieve success, including women voters.

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

Analysts and even some of their own allies within the AfD argue that even though the party is expected to double its 10 percent support in the last federal election in 2021, Weidel can only earn part of it.

Deep public dissatisfaction with Angela Merkel’s 2015 decision to admit about a million migrants and asylum seekers helped the AfD expand from its beginnings in 2013 as a single-issue, anti-euro party.

The deep unpopularity of SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-way traffic light coalition, which collapsed in Novemberwas also crucial in attracting new voters to the AfD. This also applies to a cautious attitude towards the Christian Democrats’ leading candidate, Friedrich Merz, as well as widespread fear about the stagnating German economy and the future of the country’s manufacturing industry.

“The dissatisfaction with the other parties is huge,” said a high-ranking AfD official. “We benefit from that.”

But Weidel, who has been AfD parliamentary group leader since 2019, has also proven to be a survivor in a force notorious for internal power struggles. Insiders say she was adept at managing the party’s radical flank.

Regardless of how well it does, the party has little hope of taking power in Berlin after next month’s election due to the “firewall” erected by Germany’s mainstream parties, which has all but ruled out a coalition with the AfD.

But its officials are already looking ahead to the next election in 2029, where they hope voters will be even more disillusioned – and are taking particular inspiration from Austria’s Herbert Kickl, who was asked by the country’s president last week to form a government after attempts by centrist parties to exclude his Freedom Party failed.

“It looks like a pattern, and they are exploiting it,” said historian Rödder. “They point to Austria and say: ‘In four years it will be Germany’.”