Germany has a new political problem.
Dangerously Informed with Evie
The far-right Alternative for Germany just won nearly 44 percent of the vote – more than twice its previous result and just three seats short of a majority.
If you’ve never heard of the AfD before, let me give you a quick introduction.
They’re fiercely anti-immigration. They want a return to more traditional German values. One of their state programmes says children are best raised by a mother and a father, complains about the promotion of “non-reproductive lifestyles” and describes some of them as “sexual deviations.”
Oh, and when Germany legalised same-sex marriage, the AfD parliamentary group later introduced a bill trying to repeal it.
So. Who do you think leads this party?
A lesbian mother of two.
Alice Weidel (ah-leese vai-dil) has been with the same woman for around twenty years. Her partner is of Sri Lankan descent. They have two children.
She is also the leader of everything I just described.
Which initially made me think: Alice… babe… have you read the manifesto?
But Alice has noticed the contradiction. She just doesn’t think it’s a contradiction.
She believes the traditional heterosexual family can be society’s ideal while her own family should be treated equally. And most surprisingly, she has argued that she didn’t join the AfD despite being gay.
She joined partly because she is gay.
Alice Weidel might actually tell us something much bigger about the modern far right: who gets to belong, who doesn’t, and how a movement can change what it looks like without necessarily changing what it believes.
I Found Out Why Germany’s Anti-Gay Party Is Led By a Lesbian
