Germany’s
far-right AfD attempts to rebrand as real power comes within reach
Some
Alternative for Germany leaders are trying to soften the party’s extremist
image. Despite the effort, the mask keeps falling.
This
article is also available in: French
December
1, 2025 4:00 am CET
By
Pauline von Pezold and Gordon Repinski
BERLIN —
Before Leif-Erik Holm became one of the German far right’s leading figures, he
was a morning radio DJ in his home state in eastern Germany celebrated, by his
station, for making “the best jokes far and wide.”
Ahead of
regional elections across Germany next year, Holm, 55, is now set to become the
Alternative for Germany (AfD) party’s top candidate in the state of
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, a largely rural area bordering Poland and the
Baltic Sea.
With
polls showing the AfD in first place at 38 percent support in the state, it’s
one of the places where the party — now the largest opposition group in
Germany’s national parliament — is within striking distance of taking
significant governing power for the first time since its formation over a
decade ago.
Holm
embodies the type of candidate at least some AfD leaders increasingly want at
the top of the ticket. With an avuncular demeanor, he eschews the kind of
incendiary rhetoric other politicians in the party have embraced and says he
seeks dialogue with his political opponents. Asked what his party would do if
it takes power in his state next year, Holm rattled off some innocuous-sounding
proposals: invest more in education, including STEM subjects, and ensure
children of immigrants learn German before they start school.
“I’m
actually a nice guy,” Holm said.
Underneath
the guy-next-door image, however, there’s a clear political calculus. National
co-head of the party, Alice Weidel, is attempting something of a rebrand,
believing that the AfD won’t be able to make the jump to real political power
unless it moves away from candidates who embrace openly extreme positions.
That
means moving away from controversial leaders like Björn Höcke — found guilty by
a court for uttering a banned slogan used by Adolf Hitler’s SA storm troopers —
and Maximilian Krah, who last year said he would “never say that anyone who
wore an SS uniform was automatically a criminal.”
Instead,
the preferred candidate, at least for Weidel and people in her camp, is someone
like Holm, who can present a more sanitized face of the party. But the makeover
is proving to be only skin deep, and even Weidel, despite her national
leadership role, can’t prevent the mask from slipping.
New look,
same politics
Since its
creation in 2013 as a Euroskeptic party, the AfD has grown more extreme,
mobilizing its increasingly radicalized base primarily around the issue of
migration. Earlier this year, Germany’s federal domestic intelligence agency —
which is tasked with surveilling groups found to be anti-constitutional —
deemed the AfD an extremist group.
Weidel is
now trying to tamp down on the open extremism. The effort is intended to make
the AfD more palatable to mainstream conservatives — and to make it harder for
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s center-right alliance to refuse to govern in
coalition with the party by maintaining the postwar “firewall” around the far
right.
Weidel’s
push to present a more polished party image isn’t necessarily supported by
large swaths of the AfD’s rank and file — especially in its strongholds in the
former East Germany — who point to the fact that the party’s political ascent
coincided with its radicalization. The argument isn’t without merit. Despite
its rising extremism, the party came in second in the snap federal election
early this year — the best national showing for a far-right party since World
War II. The party is now ahead of Merz’s conservatives in polls.
Weidel is
nevertheless pressing ahead with her drive to try to soften the AfD’s image. As
part of this effort, Weidel has tried to somewhat shift her party from its
proximity to the Kremlin — seeking closer ties with Republicans in the U.S.
From now on, the party will “fight alongside the white knight rather than the
black knight,” a person familiar with Weidel’s thinking said.
In
another remake attempt, earlier this year, an extremist youth group affiliated
with the AfD dissolved itself to avert a possible ban that might have damaged
the party. Last weekend, a new youth wing was formed that party leaders will
have direct control over.
Other
far-right parties across Europe have made their own rebranding efforts. In
France, far-right leader Marine Le Pen has attempted to normalize her party —
an effort referred to as dédiabolisation, or “de-demonization” — ditching the
open antisemitism of its founders. As part of that push, Le Pen moved to
disassociate her party from the AfD in the European Parliament. In Italy, Prime
Minister Giorgia Meloni has moderated her earlier anti-EU, pro-Russia stances.
For the
AfD, however, the attempted transformation is less a matter of substance — and
more a matter of optics. Underneath Weidel’s effort to burnish her party’s
reputation, many of its most extreme voices continue to hold sway.
The
polished radical
Perhaps
no AfD leader embodies that tension more than Ulrich Siegmund, the lead
candidate for the party in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, where it is polling
first at 40 percent support ahead of a regional vote next September. It’s here,
in this small state of just over 2 million people, where AfD leaders pin most
of their hopes of getting into state government next year — possibly even with
an absolute majority.
Like
Holm, Siegmund too tries to cultivate a regular-guy persona. Even members of
opposing parties in the state parliament describe him as friendly and
approachable. With over half a million followers on TikTok, he reaches more
people than any other state politician in Germany.
At the
same time, Siegmund is clearly connected to the extreme fringe of the party. He
was one of the attendees at a secret meeting of right-wing extremists in which
a “master plan” to deport migrants and “unassimilated citizens” was reportedly
discussed. When news of the meeting broke last year, it sparked sustained
protests against the far right across Germany and temporarily dented the AfD’s
popularity in polls.
Speaking
to POLITICO, Siegmund minimized the secret meeting as “coffee klatsch,”
claiming the real scandal is how the media overblew the episode. He described
himself not as a dangerous extremist — but as a regular guy concerned for his
country.
“I am a
normal citizen, taxpayer and resident of this country who simply wants a better
home, especially for his children, for his family, for all of our children,”
Siegmund said. “Because I simply cannot stand by and watch our country develop
so negatively in such a short time.”
Yet, when
pressed, Siegmund could not conceal his extremism. He defended the use of the
motto “Everything for Germany!” — the banned Nazi phrase that got his party
colleague, Höcke, into legal trouble.
“I think
it goes without saying that you should give your all for your own country,”
Siegmund said. “And I think that should also be the benchmark for every
politician — to do everything they can for their own country, because that’s
what they were elected to do and what they are paid to do.”
Siegmund
also took issue with the notion that the Nazis perpetrated history’s greatest
crime against humanity, so therefore Germans have a special responsibility to
avoid such terms.
“I find
this interpretation to be grossly exaggerated and completely detached from
reality,” he said. “For me, it is important to look forward and not backward.
And of course, we must always learn from history, but not just from individual
aspects of history, but from history as a whole.”
Siegmund
said he couldn’t judge whether the Nazis had perpetrated history’s worst crime,
relativizing the Holocaust in a manner reminiscent of some of the most extreme
voices in his party. “I don’t presume to judge that,” he said, “because I can’t
assess the whole of humanity.”
One
lesson from Germany’s history, Siegmund added, is that there should be no
“language police” or attempts to ban the AfD as extremist, as some centrist
politicians advocate. “If you want to ban the strongest force in this country
according to opinion polls, then you’re not learning from history either,” he
said.
International
nationalists
The AfD’s
national leaders privately smarted at Siegmund’s comments for making their
faltering rebrand more difficult. (Holm did not respond to a request for
comment on the statements.)
That’s
especially the case because Weidel and other AfD leaders are increasingly
looking abroad for the legitimacy they crave at home and fear such rhetoric
will complicate the effort.
Weidel
and people in her circle have sought to forge closer ties to the Trump
administration and other right-wing governments, seeing connections with MAGA
Republicans in the U.S. and other populist-right parties in Europe as a way of
winning credibility for the AfD domestically.
In
Europe, Weidel has repeatedly visited Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at
his official residence in Budapest. The party is also making an effort to
reestablish connections with members of Le Pen’s party in the European
Parliament, according to a high-ranking AfD official.
Not
everyone in the AfD, however, sees eye to eye with Weidel on the attempt to
moderate the party image, especially when it comes to relations with Moscow.
The AfD’s
other national co-leader, Tino Chrupalla, recently told an interviewer on
German public television that Vladimir Putin’s Russia poses no threat to
Germany. Chrupalla’s rhetoric is much more friendly to the Kremlin, and he’s
the preferred party leader among many of the AfD’s most radical supporters in
eastern Germany — where pro-Moscow sympathies are more prevalent.
Many of
the AfD’s followers in the former East Germany, where the party polls
strongest, see Weidel, born in the former West Germany, as too mild in her
approach.
Ultimately,
the direction of the AfD — in next year’s state elections and beyond — may well
depend on which leader’s vision prevails.
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