Election campaign: Weidel and Wagenknecht: Hitler dispute on TV

AfD leader Alice Weidel and BSW boss Sahra Wagenknecht had a heated exchange on the ARD program “Maischberger,” which also became personal. Both accused each other of arrogance and had heated exchanges over Weidel’s much-discussed statement that Adolf Hitler was a communist.

“Fangirl” accusation against Weidel because of Musk

Moderator Sandra Maischberger quickly directed the conversation to the recent virtual meeting between Weidel and tech billionaire Elon Musk on his platform X. Wagenknecht then accused Weidel of seeming like a “submissive fangirl” there.

In the direct encounter, Wagenknecht accused the AfD leader of not having had a critical conversation with Musk on an equal level, “just like when someone meets their idol and idolizes him.” She found that “somewhat embarrassing”. “Well, I think saying that I’m a fangirl of Elon Musk is a bit too short. That was a dialogue. I’m a fangirl of freedom of expression,” replied Weidel.

Violent dispute over Weidel’s Hitler statements

As the conversation progressed, the tone between the two became increasingly harsh. Weidel called the BSW “socialist”, Wagenknecht said that the AfD stands for an elbow-to-elbow society from which the state is withdrawing everywhere.

When asked about her much-discussed statement from the Musk conversation that Hitler was a communist, the AfD leader explained that there are of course parallels with communism and socialist systems. “He was a leftist in spirit,” Weidel said. Wagenknecht spoke of a monstrosity towards Hitler’s victims. He sent thousands of communists and social democrats to concentration camps and prisons and killed them.

Weidel asked the counter question: “How many millions of people did the communists and Stalin kill? (…) You ran after these people.” She accused Wagenknecht of having, as a former member of the left’s “communist platform”, “gone after the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin”, which she vigorously rejected.

Wagenknecht sees radical development at Weidel

Wagenknecht replied that she doesn’t have to be ashamed of being a communist as a young woman in the 1990s. “Today I see things differently and I would say that with you the development is more in the other direction,” she added and accused Weidel of initially being a right-wing conservative politician but of having “developed quite radically”.

“Stop this arrogance!”

The war of words culminated in both party leaders, who largely agree on the issues of migration, gas deliveries from Russia and the rejection of US missiles in Germany, accusing each other of arrogance.

Weidel said that Wagenknecht had “dismantled” her predecessor party, the Left, and added, with a view to the BSW poll numbers, “now they are scratching the 5 percent hurdle.” The BSW boss countered: “Stop this arrogance!”, which in turn led Weidel to say: “You have destroyed your own party. (…) That is arrogant.”

Weidel and the AfD are at 20 percent in the polls. Wagenknecht wants to try to get her party, which is only one year old, past the 5 percent hurdle into parliament in the federal election on February 23rd.