By avoiding the standard cliches, the far-right leader comes across as moderate even as she backs extremist rhetoric

“Alice? Who the fuck is Alice?” wondered European audiences in 1995 when the Dutch band Gompie landed an unlikely success by adding this risque line to Smokie’s 1970s hit Living Next Door to Alice. Thirty years on, the question is on many minds again, this time regarding the mercurial co-leader of Germany’s buoyant anti-immigration party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Ahead of the German elections on 23 February, many want to know: who exactly is Alice Weidel?

It’s a pertinent question. For the first time since the Nazi era, a far-right party has ambitions to head a German government. The AfD is fielding the 45-year-old Weidel as its first-ever chancellor candidate. She is unlikely to win office this time, but her party is polling in second place and set to double its vote share to over 20%.

Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian and journalist. Her latest book is Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990