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Mainstream politicians target far-right candidate in fiery German election debate
The Financial Times ^ | February 16, 2025 | Anne-Sylvaine Chassany

Posted on 02/16/2025 5:50:30 PM PST by MinorityRepublican

The co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany praised Donald Trump as the “right man” to end the war in Ukraine and urged her country to remain a “neutral mediator” in a heated four-way televised debate ahead of general elections next Sunday.

Europe’s largest country is entering its final week of campaigning as it grapples with a stagnating economy, a fraught immigration debate and profound angst over the fast-deteriorating transatlantic relationship under the new Trump administration, which has openly swung behind the AfD. During a two-hour primetime show, AfD candidate Alice Weidel emerged as the prime target of Social Democratic chancellor Olaf Scholz, Green party candidate Robert Habeck and Christian Democratic party leader Friedrich Merz. One by one they confronted the far-right politician on topics including the war in Ukraine and her party’s association with Nazi ideology.

Weidel boasted about the support she received from US vice-president JD Vance, who met her on the sidelines of the annual Munich Security Conference at the weekend. The 46-year-old politician welcomed Vance’s speech to the conference participants urging Europe’s mainstream politicians to engage with far-right, anti-establishment parties.

“Vance has confessed that you can’t build firewalls to exclude millions of voters from the outset. He made it clear that we need to talk to each other,” Weidel said.

Weidel, whose party is predicted to win a record 20 per cent of the vote on February 23, has seized on US support since Trump’s return to the White House. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a close adviser to Trump, has repeatedly used his X social media company to promote the AfD, a party suspected of right-wing extremism by Germany’s intelligence agency. Weidel was also hosted in Budapest by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who described her as “the future”.

(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...


TOPICS: Germany
KEYWORDS: afd; election; germany

1 posted on 02/16/2025 5:50:31 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
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To: MinorityRepublican

Do you ever see the term far left in any of these stories?


2 posted on 02/16/2025 6:05:20 PM PST by Parley Baer
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To: MinorityRepublican

Alice Weidel’s personal history does not sound very “far-right” to me: she worked for the Bank of China, lived in China for six years, and is married to another woman.


3 posted on 02/16/2025 6:08:48 PM PST by Steve_Seattle
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To: Steve_Seattle

About half of the lesbians I have ever known were flat out conservative.

Ymmv


4 posted on 02/16/2025 6:16:36 PM PST by Uncle Miltie (Nitzy: New and Improved! Now with only 66% anti-semitic posts!)
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To: Steve_Seattle
So she's a liberal.

She's "far-right" because she's against illegal immigration.

5 posted on 02/16/2025 6:25:27 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
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To: MinorityRepublican

Polling from yesterday shows that the CDU/CSU and SPD can’t even get to 50% with another ‘grand coalition’.

CDU/CSU - 29.2
AFD - 21.3%
SPD - 15.7%
Greens -13.2%
Left (former communist party) - 5.6%
BSW (far left but anti-immigrant) - 4.4%
FDP - less than the margin of error

https://www.reuters.com/graphics/GERMANY-ELECTION/POLLS/akveedlravr/


6 posted on 02/16/2025 6:59:40 PM PST by PAR35
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To: MinorityRepublican

Right now immigration is the only issue that matters.


7 posted on 02/16/2025 7:02:13 PM PST by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: MinorityRepublican

I’m hoping all this whining by the socialists, combined with high energy costs, which lead to de-industrialization and unemployment and ticked off residential consumers, and muslim freeloaders and murdering rapists, will finally convince enough people to be rational again.

However, Dunning-Kruger is hard to overcome.


8 posted on 02/16/2025 7:17:07 PM PST by VanShuyten ("...that all the donkeys were dead. I know nothing as to the fate of the less valuable animals)
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To: MinorityRepublican
I saw some of the interviews she did in Germany. All the other parties keep trying to paint her party as "far right". If the interviewer tries to suggest this she tells them that Adf is more libertarian and moderate and common sense. She points out that Hitler was actually LEFT ("Links" Ger. ) which of course means that the people critizing her party have more in common with Hitler than she does.

I was mostly impressed with her, but she had at least one interviewer who kept trying to talk over her, like the media people did with Trump.

9 posted on 02/16/2025 8:15:48 PM PST by Pete from Shawnee Mission
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To: dfwgator
Right now immigration is the only issue that matters.

Agree. The events of the last 24 hours in Munich and in Austria have been met with the political establishment doing backflips in trying to blame "the extreme right wing" for the murders done by invaders. Nobody's buying it.

10 posted on 02/16/2025 8:20:16 PM PST by Billthedrill
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To: MinorityRepublican

I've read the AfD platform, it's not "far right".
Perhaps the other parties in Germany should ask themselves why the AfD is getting so popular, and try to solve the issues that their many voters seem to care about.


11 posted on 02/16/2025 9:24:00 PM PST by chud
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To: MinorityRepublican

Any party in Germany that will not put that Stasi whore Merkel on trial and call for the trial/execution of any living former Stasi is not fit to serve


12 posted on 02/17/2025 2:58:29 AM PST by nonliberal (Russia is not my enemy.)
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