The Anatomy of a Lie – How Alice Weidel Turns Fear Into a Political Weapon and Deceives Her Own Voters

When Alice Weidel writes, she doesn’t inform – she infects. Her recent claim that “everything you send via messenger, to friends or your partner, will be read by the EU” is not a misunderstanding. It is a deliberate falsehood, designed with intent. In a single sentence, the AfD parliamentary leader manages to transform a child protection initiative into a story of surveillance and oppression. It was never about truth. It was about control. The European initiative she refers to – colloquially called “Chat Control” – in no way allows the EU to read private messages. Its goal is to detect and delete known abuse-related data traffic on the internet – using encrypted detection systems that match digital fingerprints of already existing abuse images. It targets perpetrators, not parents or partners. Weidel knows this. And yet she tells the opposite story – one in which investigators become spies, Brussels becomes the enemy, and the state becomes the adversary of the people. It is the oldest pattern of demagoguery: to twist reality until protection looks like persecution. Her message is simple – and destructive. By redefining regulation as tyranny, she turns legitimate institutions into supposed oppressors. The EU becomes the monster, the press the accomplice, and she herself – the messenger of the lie – the supposed defender of freedom. It is a script tested in right-wing populist movements from Europe to America: exploiting digital fear, reducing complex politics to primal anxiety, and turning misunderstanding into a weapon. But what makes this deliberate distortion especially dangerous is its human cost. Weidel’s rhetoric undermines the very systems that help investigators uncover networks of child abuse. Every lie that destroys trust in these structures indirectly protects offenders. To claim surveillance where none exists is not only dishonest – it is irresponsible.

The German judiciary has begun to draw sharper boundaries between opinion and incitement. On April 12, 2023, the Munich Regional Court (Case No. 5 KLs 123 Js 8674/21) ruled that blanket attacks on “the government” or “the press” can be considered incitement of the people when they deliberately create enemies and turn citizens against one another. Weidel’s language follows precisely this pattern, constructing a moral battlefield where in truth there is only administration and law – replacing democratic tension with deliberate hostility. A legal review found the offense fulfilled. Her words are therefore no longer debate. They are destabilization, crimes. Each post turns trust into distrust, reality into paranoia. It is no exchange of ideas – it is the slow corrosion of the public sphere. Weidel has – perhaps better than her opponents – understood that disinformation feels powerful. It gives people the sense of recognizing something others do not see. It transforms confusion into identity. And it turns isolation into belonging. In the communication world of the far right, lies are not accidents – they are architecture. Her invocation of the “transparent citizen” – the idea of a population under permanent surveillance – resonates because it taps into a deeper unease: the fear of becoming invisible within systems of power. But this fear is misplaced. The only ones who truly hide are those who exploit children in the digital shadows. The law is aimed at them.

In reality, the EU is not a faceless monster but a complex union of laws, investigators, and institutions trying to preserve a fragile moral order. Those who declare it the enemy attack the very structures that protect the weakest. When Weidel tells her followers that Brussels wants to read their messages, she is not defending privacy. She is dismantling truth. And truth is the first freedom to die when it disappears from public life. Her words leave no bruises, but they still wound. They undermine trust in the shared foundation of democracy. They make people doubt reality – and hate those who still defend it. And they do what every effective propaganda does: they redirect anger toward the wrong target. The true danger is not that Alice Weidel lies. But that her lies work.

Therefore, it is essential to confront Ms. Weidel and the AfD decisively – not with slogans, but with truth. What must be shown again and again is what truly lies behind their messages: a strategy of deception and manipulation that uses fear as a tool, and in reality, this party understands nothing about the lives of ordinary people – except how to deceive its own voters.