Germany’s AfD vows ‘whole closure of borders for 100 days’ and ‘remigration’ that might see mass deportation of immigrants if the social gathering is profitable in forthcoming election

Germany‘s far-right AfD party has vowed a total closure of borders for 100 days and signalled it would enact mass deportations if it wins power in the upcoming election.

Alice Weidel, the co-leader of Alternative for Germany, announced the party’s election manifesto, endorsing a policy ‘remigration’ for migrants, regardless of their citizenship status, as supporters and opponents rallied in the eastern town of Riesa.

Weidel was approved as the party’s candidate for Chancellor on Saturday, just weeks away from the looming February 23 general election.

She told an audience at the party congress on Saturday that the first 100 days of a government containing the AfD would see the ‘total closing of Germany’s borders and the turning back anyone travelling without documents’ as well as ‘large-scale repatriations’, she said.

‘I say to you quite honestly, if this must be called remigration, then let it be called remigration,’ Weidel added, acknowledging the controversy around the term which critics have compared to ethnic cleansing.

Polling second in opinion polls at around 20 per cent, AfD has grown in stature over the last 11 years, but stands little chance of forming a government as working with the far-right remains a major taboo in German politics because of its Nazi past.

Weidel, who lives in Switzerland, was officially crowned as the AfD’s chancellor candidate at an upbeat party conference this weekend.

The AfD has long been polling in second place behind the conservatives but one survey on Saturday showed it had increased its vote share to 22 percent – a score that would be its highest ever result at the national level.

Despite Germany’s main parties long-standing agreement to work together to keep the AfD out of government, Weidel has managed to make a big mark on the election campaign since she was first nominated as the party’s pick for chancellor in December. 

Last week she was hosted by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a key Donald Trump ally, for a wide-ranging livestream on his X social media platform.

Musk also boosted the livestream of the AfD’s congress this weekend by sharing it on his own X account, helping it gain a worldwide audience.

Musk has attracted his own controversy for voicing support for a party long accused of flirting with neo-Nazi themes – and labelled a suspected extremist group by German intelligence.

Weidel, a gay woman who has two sons with her Sri Lankan partner, has decried allegations of fascism, and sought to distance herself from her awkward personal history as the granddaughter of a Hitler-appointed Nazi judge.

She maintains that her party is not far-right, but simply conservative.

Prominent AfD politician Bjorn Hocke, welcomed by the audiences on Saturday, was previously condemned for calling the Holocaust memorial in Berlin a ‘monument of shame’, calling for a re-evaluation of Germany’s relationship with its painful past.

He has also been accused of making references to speeches by Hitler and chief Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine said Weidel was ‘the perfect fig leaf’ for a party often accused of not being inclusive.

‘If someone accuses the AfD of being misogynistic, homophobic or racist, they can say they have Weidel… so the AfD cannot be all of those things, even though it is,’ the magazine said.

Often seen wearing a pearl necklace and a trouser suit, Weidel was born and educated in western Germany – while the AfD’s core voter base is in the country’s former communist east.

She later lived in China for a year, working at Bank of China, before moving on to Goldman Sachs.

Weidel first joined the AfD in 2013, the year it was founded, and unlike many other early members who quit as it became more overtly xenophobic, she stayed.

Weidel represents a more moderate wing of the AfD that ‘aspires to an independent existence to the right of the conservatives, with the possibility of forming a coalition’, according to Wolfgang Schroeder, a professor of politics at Kassel University.

Weidel has had ‘some problems connecting with the ideology of her party’, according to political scientist Anna-Sophie Heinze from Trier University.

But she has gained broader support by ‘slowly giving up her initial criticism’ of figures like Bjoern Hoecke, a lodestar for the radical right in the party, Heinze said.

She has also stood out for her ability to avoid being caught up in many of the controversies surrounding her party in recent years.

The conservative CDU/CSU is leading at 31 per cent while Chancellor Olaf Scholz’ Social Democrats sits on around 15 per cent.

The Greens are close behind at 14 per cent.

Rhetoric around migration to Germany, part of a legacy of welcoming refugees from Angela Merkel’s chancellorship, has seen the leading conservative faction swing more to the right in a bid to recoup votes lost to the AfD.

In September, the AfD celebrated an ‘historic success’, winning almost a third of the vote in the eastern state of Thuringia.

AfD took between 30.5% and 33.5% of the vote in the former East German state of Thuringia, with the conservative CDU coming in second place with 24.5% of the vote. AfD also performed well in Saxony.