Alice Weidel, the AfD’s chancellor candidate, emphasized in an interview with the Bild-Zeitung that Germany should aim for good relationships with both the US and Russia, as well as China.
“We want very good relationships with our European neighbors. We want a very good relationship with the great powers and that includes Russia” she said.
The interviewers attempted to put her under pressure with very Russia-bashing questions, asking, for instance, “Why don’t you, as a German patriot, recognize that Russia has repeatedly threatened Germany with war?” Weidel responded, “Since the Second World War, German tanks have been rolling against Russia again and again. Absolutely history-denied, if you ask me.”
Germany had been turning the escalatory spiral, she said, citing the threatened delivery of Taurus tanks by Merz. “One must talk to one another. That is all the AfD has said, that we must enter into peace negotiations. And I hold that for serious politics.”
The polls would suggest a CDU-AfD coalition, but Merz ruled that out. “The voters simply must know that if they vote for Friedrich Merz, they will get the Greens and a Habeck as economics minister” she said.
Foreign policy, she emphasized, was also a matter of economic survival: “What we want is to end a sanctions policy that above all is: detrimental to our country. We have the world’s highest energy prices and we are no longer competitive.”
China and the US were, in fact, Germany’s largest and most important trade partners, she noted, adding that the “complete failure of leadership in Brussels” in these questions had fatal consequences: “We will no longer be taken seriously.”
The issue of freedom of opinion in Germany also played a role. The trigger was questions about her relationship to Björn Höcke, whom one could call a fascist. She replied that she considered him suitable for a ministerial post and that court decisions could “not be taken in at all” especially since the public prosecutors were not independent.
“We see that when we then call Habeck a dimwit and immediately the public prosecutor searches a retiree with a disabled daughter” she said.
Accusations that she did not run a constituency office in her electoral district were countered by the statement that she had not been able to find an office: “We have been looking for years, looking for years. No one rents to the AfD out of fear of attacks. We can’t even insure our constituency office.”
She did, however, criticize the NATO engagement, but only in the sense that a country must be capable of defense and reintroduce the draft: “And a country must be capable of defense with a reinforced military, so that it can, for example, enter the NATO alliance in a crisis and fulfill the alliance obligations applicable to Germany.”
Regarding migration, she called for border closure, the repatriation of the illegal and the deportation of criminals, but also stated, “People who work here, who pay taxes here, who are welcome here. We will gladly give them citizenship.