Alice Weidel: the lesbian against gay rights

The AfD is known for its highly controversial ideas about, for example, immigrants and same-sex marriage. Often they are accused of having racist ideas. The identity of their leader Alice Weidel, being a lesbian woman, does not exactly match the image of the extreme-right party. The question why she chooses to be part of the homophobic AfD has been posed many times since her membership. However, even though her personal identity might seem to not match the party's ideas and people think this controverse can not be beneficial for the party, it actually is. By investigating her style and what issues she mostly addresses, we try to get a clear idea of in what way she wants to be seen and how she creates a political image for herself that fits the AfD perfectly.

Communicating tolerance

On 22 April 2017 at the Alternative fur Deutschland party congress in Cologne, Alice Weidel gave a speech in which, for the first time, she addressed her homosexuality. In this speech she gave an answer to the question that she gets often, namely why, as a lesbian woman, she is member of a homophobic party. However, she is being sarcastic in giving her answer. The fact that she is a lesbian and member is a political message, because it is used to state that she and her party cannot be homophobic.

Her answer, in short, is that the AfD will provide safety for homosexuals by tackling the immigration problem, because, according to her, violence against gays comes especially from ‘Muslim gangs’ (Alice Weidel speech on AfD: 6:47). During the speech she gives examples of violent acts by Muslims against homosexuals in Germany and uses these to provide evidence that a compromise between Islamists and the German people, which Angela Merkel and her party are pleading for, is not possible.

The issue of aggression by Muslims against homosexuals is something Weidel wants to emphasize in her speech. 'Issues' are the topics that politicians need to address, such as unemployment, the debt-ceiling, same-sex marriage etcetera. Mentioning certain issues and leaving others out is a way of establishing a political Message, as Lempert and Silverstein explain it. To be exact, Political Message is defined by them as ‘what the politician seems to communicate about his or her identity and personal values through selectively taking up some issues and avoiding others’ (p. 2, 2012).Not only is it which issues the politician addresses, but also how. The way someone speaks, moves and dresses can .

For example, she opens her speech by stating that she is a lesbian. She tries to do so in a humorous way, as she says ‘I am homosexual’ and after that pulls a fake-shocked face and starts laughing (Alice Weidel speech on AfD, 0:49). In this way, she signs it would be ridiculous if anyone was shocked by this, by which she says: ‘I am tolerant and I know that you are, too’. The public starts applauding. Here and throughout the rest of the speech, this Message of her, the party and their voters as being tolerant, non-discriminating people is very prominent. She does not state it literally, but makes it clear in different ways.

However, in Weidel’s case, tolerance is not something she has to ‘prove’ that much as other AfD members would have had to. She uses the fact that she is lesbian in a political way, as it immunizes her political position regarding LGBTQ rights. The suggestion is that lesbians or gays cannot be intolerant towards LGBTQ people, which is gold for a party that denies equal rights for gays. Alice' Weidel's identity, her homosexuality, is an inherent part of her Message: she is not intolerant, and neither is her party.

This is also why, after she said that she is homosexual in her speech, she continues: ‘I have waited, but it seems no one is leaving. This is somewhat surprising, because the AfD is a homophobic party. I read it daily’ (1:00). The ‘I read it daily’ indexes that this is not correct, but it is what people think about them. However, she and her supporters know the truth, which would be that the AfD is not homophobic at all as she, as a lesbian, is one of their leaders.

Through understanding her Message, we also know that Weidel wants to create the image of being a tolerant, rightful lesbian woman who acts to ensure safety and equality for all. This image is something that she had managed to hold up for a while already, since she was often referred to as the ‘moderate voice’ of the AfD (Connolly, 2017). However, truth is that the AfD is a highly discriminating party and ‘moderate’ can only be relative.

Protecting our way of life

The AfD party is officially against gay marriage, which Weidel mentions as well. This is obviously not convenient if you want to create an image of tolerance. However, she says, ‘the gays and lesbians in this country will not care at the end of the day whether their relationship is a ‘registered life partnership’ or ‘marriage’ when they do not dare to go out on the street, arm in arm’ (5:27). Although she does mention the issue that the AfD does not allow gay marriage, she avoids the issue of why they oppose this, or that this is in fact also homophobia, just like that of the ‘Muslim gangs’ she mentions. By stating that it does not matter to gays that the AfD opposes gay marriage, as long as they tackle the ‘real cause’ for the hate against homosexuals, Weidel makes sure she does not have to explain it in her speech. But also, she does not have to explain herself because of her identity; she is a lesbian herself, which stresses tolerance and is ‘proof’ that they do not stand for discrimination against homosexuals. Weidels makes her public forget the AfD’s homophobic ideas, and therefore it becomes irrelevant in her speech and in their political agenda over all.

It is understandable that at first it seems surprising that many AfD voters are LGBT people, as it can be hard to understand why these people choose to vote for a homophobic party. Beate Kupper, a social psychologist who studies the far right in Germany, explains the phenomenon of ‘homonationalism’ by saying that ‘a party like the AfD gives people from minorities an offer of social identity. If you identify strongly with a group and you have an 'out-group' that you can position yourself against, that is a good feeling for your personal belonging’ (Shubert, Schmidt and Vonberg, 2017). In this case, that ‘out-group’ that the homonationalists are positioning themselves against are the Muslims.

Since Alice Weidel is a lesbian herself, many LGBT people might be more likely to identify with her and to trust that she and her party understand their needs. With Weidel as a party leader, the AfD has a higher potential to create an image of a party that is tolerant towards homosexuals and even wants to fight for their rights, despite of the fact that their policy includes some homophobic ideas. As Volker Beck, member of the German parliament, said, ‘they are using it to portray their radicalism as a little bit softer’ (Wildman, 2017). And it works.

The issue that Weidel addresses very prominently in her speech is that of violence against homosexuals by Muslims in Germany. Around 6:45, she starts talking about these 'Muslim gangs' and continues giving examples of violent acts by Muslims for several minutes. It seems as if her speech functions to make people angry and afraid, as she becomes very angry in her speaking while discussing these examples. By shedding such an extremely negative light on immigrants, and solely on them, people start to believe it eventually. Especially those who already feel unsafe and afraid for such attacks, such as homosexuals, are affected by words like these. In this way the AfD is able to persuade LGBT people to vote for them, especially when the words come out of Weidel’s mouth.

How Weidel's identity immunizes her ideology

The fact that Weidel is gay is instrumentalized to create support for their anti-immigration. This anti-immigration stand, and especially their anti-Muslim migration, is an important ingredient of their ideology. After the party won enough votes to enter the Bundestag this year, they stated that they would ‘fight an invasion of foreigners’ (Stone, 2017). They had campaigned a lot around this issue during the past years of their existence. Through Alice Weidel, this idea is immunized from left wing criticism: because one sells it in name of 'gay rights'. The seemingly progressive stance serves a right wing goal. The fact that Weidel is lesbian, does not alter their anti-immigration rhetoric, and it does not alter their conservative view on the natural order of things.

Not only do they want to stop new immigrants from entering Germany, they also plead for sentencing foreigners who commit crimes in Germany to foreign prisons and treating 12-year old children as adults for certain crimes (Chase, 2017). Also, the AfD argues that Germany has been ‘Islamified’, and that this is wrong because they should not lose their traditional Christian ideas.

The AfD supports Christianity and ‘traditional families’, so families with a father and a mother (Wildman, 2017). They believe that the ‘traditional gender roles’ that belong to males and females should not be undermined (Knight, 2016), and even once stated that ‘state broadcasters should be made to ‘present marriage and family in a positive way’.

As the AfD values this ‘traditional’ form of a family so much, they are automatically opposed against same-sex marriage, and have often stated that gay couples should not have the right to adopt. This second statement is actually impossible for her to agree with as she and her partner have two adopted children (The Guardian, 2017). However, she tries to give the impression that she does not really care about the AfD having these ideas. For example, when Germany recently decided to approve same-sex marriage, Weidel tweeted that a ‘'marriage for all’ debate while millions of Muslims illegally immigrate to Germany is a joke’ (Wildman, 2017). In this way she does not contradict herself and her identity, but she does not do so towards her party either. She simply states that it is an unimportant progression and that the AfD focuses on what actually matters.

Over all, the image that Weidel wants to hold up for herself is in great contradiction with the ideas and statements of her party, but still she succeeds. Having her as a ‘moderate’ voice in their party clearly helps the AfD in gaining votes, especially from the LGBT community as these people are more likely to trust her because of her lesbian identity. It' is a big reason for why her Message, of the AfD being tolerant and not homophobic, is so strong, because it matches her sexuality.

Even though it is obvious that Weidel’s identity does not match with homophobic statements made by other AfD members, she is able to take the attention off of this fact. She mainly does so by stating that they are the only party that is focusing on what truly matters to the LGBT community, namely tackling the immigration problem, and people believe her.

Alice Weidel serves to give the AfD an image of being not as radical as everyone thinks they are. Having her as leader of the party has appeared to be a very strategic move.