When Vice President JD Vance criticized his German hosts last week for sidelining far-right parties, he did not mention by name the Alternative for Germany, known as the AfD.
But soon after his speech at the Munich Security Conference, in which he stunned the room by comparing democracy in today’s Europe to Soviet-era totalitarianism, Mr. Vance met with Alice Weidel, the leader of the AfD.
A former investment analyst who is raising two sons with her Sri Lankan-born wife in Switzerland, Ms. Weidel, 46, has become the unlikely face of the AfD. Her nationalist party campaigns on a platform that is anti-immigrant and defines family as a father and a mother raising children.
A favorite of the new American administration — receiving an endorsement from Elon Musk — she has been essential to AfD’s effort to break into the mainstream, helping to vault the party into a comfortable second place ahead of Sunday’s national election.
Ms. Weidel, whose turtleneck sweaters or open-collared shirts and pearl necklaces have become signatures, has lent a more cosmopolitan image to a party that has been linked to neo-Nazis and plots to overthrow the state.
But her AfD is no less extreme. “With Alice Weidel at the helm, the AfD has steadily become more radical,” said Ann-Katrin Müller, an expert on the AfD who reports for Der Spiegel, one of Germany’s most prominent news outlets.
