January 15, 2025 - 10:00am

Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has never been stronger. Riding high in the polls, it might become the second-largest party in the upcoming federal elections. While the prospect of political success has caused other Right-wing parties in Europe to moderate their profile, the AfD sees no reason to compromise.

At the party’s conference this weekend, leader Alice Weidel thundered that if the AfD were to gain power it would initiate “large-scale repatriations” of foreigners, tear down “all wind farms […] those windmills of shame”, “close down Gender Studies and kick out those professors”.

Weidel’s fiery speech was punctuated by rapturous applause and standing ovations. But for her, it was a marked retreat from the more cautious approach she had been promoting for months.

Ahead of the German snap election in February, Weidel has cultivated an image of respectability and moderation. In an interview with Bloomberg last month, she even rejected the idea that the AfD was “Right-wing”, arguing instead that “we are a libertarian-conservative party. We perceive ourselves as standing in the middle.”

Even on immigration, the AfD’s core issue, the draft manifesto for the elections was notably restrained. While many prominent members use the term “remigration” to call for mass deportations of foreigners from Germany, the document pointedly avoided the word.

“Remigration” is associated with the Austrian far-Right activist Martin Sellner, who has advocated the deportation of illegal immigrants as well as people with residency status or even citizenship. For Germany, Sellner suggested around five to six million citizens “might possibly be viable for the remigration policy”.

Last year, a report revealed that AfD figures attended a presentation by Sellner, which sparked large street protests. The federal party leadership then decided to drop the term.

But not everyone was happy with that. Vocal protests came from the radical wing spearheaded by former history teacher Björn Höcke, who leads the AfD in the state of Thuringia. The Bavarian chapter also ignored the directive and adopted a “Remigration Agenda” recently.

This week, a local AfD branch in the southwestern city of Karlsruhe also went further, distributing thousands of deportation notices to local residents with immigration backgrounds as an election stunt. The flyers were dated to 23 February, the day of the election, and read: “your home country is nice, too.”

Weidel never stood a chance of avoiding defeat on a motion to reinstate the term “remigration”. She doesn’t have the authority to bend the AfD to her will. Avoiding conflict rather than headlines so close to the election, she went on the offensive.

She told the conference that the AfD would close Germany’s borders, cut benefits for asylum seekers and “repatriate on a large scale — if that is to be called ‘remigration’, then that’s what it will be called: remigration”. The motion to re-adopt the term passed, with the manifesto now saying: “Our plan to reverse government failure on migration policy is called Remigration.”

Weidel’s faction also suffered a defeat on family policy. She lives in a same-sex relationship with her partner Sarah Bossard, whose two sons the pair raise as a family. Out of respect for her situation, the AfD draft manifesto omitted the party’s usual definition of “family” as “father, mother and children”. But an internal party poll revealed that three-quarters of the membership wanted to reinstate it.

Wiebke Muhsal, a Höcke ally and mother of five, said she was “astonished that we’re even having this discussion”. She fumed that she was “fed up with society-degrading sentences like ‘family is where kids are’ […] Family is where a man and a woman have children together!” Her colleague Pascal Pfannes agreed: “Our ideal remains father, mother and as many children as possible.” The definition went back in the manifesto.

Weidel may have finished the conference feeling “relieved” to have held the party together under her leadership. But it was made very clear to her and everyone else that the AfD is not for moderation.


Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian and writer. She is the author, most recently, of Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990.

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