Alice Weidel is currently in Hungary to meet with Viktor Orbán—and instead of advocating for German interests, she used the opportunity to badmouth Germany in front of the Hungarian press. She spoke of restricted freedom of speech and corruption in Germany, praised Orbán as the savior of Europe from migrants, and lauded his policies. One can’t help but wonder - what on earth has she been smoking today?
That the AfD likes to paint the picture of a “suppressed Germany” is nothing new—but to attack one’s own country so massively in front of a foreign press, while cozying up to an authoritarian regime, marks a new level of escalation.
The Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán has, over the years, established himself as a symbol of opposition to liberal democracy - he restricts press freedom, restructures the judiciary, defames political opponents, and propagates a racist blood-and-soil ideology. His statements about the “mixing of races” in Western Europe are nothing less than ethnic nationalism that harks back to the darkest chapters of history.
And this is exactly the man Weidel throws herself at. She practically begs for approval from a head of government who, just a few weeks ago, referred to the AfD as “a movement with crazy people and ideas.” And why? Because Orbán—just like the AfD—dreams of a völkisch, authoritarian Europe without liberal values.
Yet even Orbán considers Weidel and the AfD an incalculable risk. Unlike Herbert Kickl’s FPÖ, the AfD was not included in his new far-right EU alliance “Patriots for Europe.” Why? Because Orbán still wants to maintain economic ties with conservative circles in Germany—and because he knows that the AfD has long since become a toxic actor. Its openly far-right factions and its ties to groups that advocate “remigration” and authoritarian coups are too extreme even for a right-wing populist autocrat like Orbán.
But none of that seems to deter Weidel. She uses her platform in Hungary to continue spinning the tale of the persecuted AfD in Germany. The fact that the AfD is under surveillance by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is not because it is being “oppressed,” but because its leading figures increasingly flirt openly with far-right and anti-constitutional ideologies.
The AfD calls itself a “patriotic party”—but when Alice Weidel appears abroad, she does not represent Germany. She represents a caricature of Germany.
She flatters an autocrat who has no qualms about embracing racist theories, while at the same time badmouthing her own country.
Orbán himself considers the AfD an unpredictable movement with radical elements—and yet Weidel eagerly allows herself to be used for his purposes.
Anyone who votes for a party whose leader disparages their own democracy abroad while praising a dictatorship must understand—there is no Germany of freedom, democracy, and the rule of law with the AfD. There is only a country that follows Orbán’s model. And that means less freedom of speech, less rule of law, less democracy.
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