Multipolar disorder in the AfD

After the AfD visited the US with a 20-member delegation in early December 2025, making headlines in the process, everyday life has returned to the party. The visit to the New York Young Republican Club (NYYRC) gala clearly showed that there is a strong alignment with Trump's policies within the party, which is hardly contradicted. The fact that both the AfD's leading candidate, Markus Frohnmaier, in the next state election (on March 8 in Baden-Württemberg) and members of the state parliamentary group from Saxony-Anhalt were invited illustrates the MAGA movement's intention to do everything in its power to support the AfD on its way to power in Germany.

But as early as mid-January 2026, Weidel criticized US President Trump for his policies toward Greenland and Venezuela. Trump had broken a “basic election promise” not to take action against other states. After her party colleague Frohnmaier had just accepted the Allen W. Dulles Award, named after an outstanding representative of US interventionism, was this now a distancing from such imperial policies? Co-leader Chrupalla, who was still delighted at the difficulties NATO countries were having in dealing with this “alliance case,” spoke of “Wild West methods” that should be rejected. Trump's friends, such as Maximilian Krah, immediately disagreed.

The fact that the new US administration is pursuing an interventionist foreign policy should not really come as a surprise to the AfD. The question of how aggressively the AfD will align itself with its unstable but always aggressive ally across the Atlantic depends more on the AfD leadership's electoral considerations and power-political opportunism than on anything else. Trump and his MAGA movement are keeping their protective hands over the AfD and speaking out loudly against a possible ban on the party. At the same time, you can't win an election in Germany with a US president who sends his military everywhere. So you could say that the AfD needs his power, but not his methods. There will continue to be voices within the AfD that are oriented toward different international power centers. To believe that this will lead to a split in the AfD, as some media outlets are suggesting, is wishful thinking.

Redaction: Ulli Jentsch