Alternative for Germany (AfD) co-leader Alice Weidel has claimed that government measures implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic were used to test public compliance with expanded state control.
In remarks made last week, Weidel said she believes pandemic policies served as a “trial run” to assess how far governments could go in restricting civil liberties and how readily the public would comply. She argued that authorities tested “repressive measures” and relied on what she described as media manipulation, agitation, and propaganda to secure public acceptance.
Weidel further claimed that these measures were coordinated by what she termed a “political-media complex” and described the pandemic response as being based on “one of the biggest lies ever.” She compared the tactics used during the pandemic to what she characterized as fear-based messaging around climate change, saying the same mechanisms were at work.
“I’m firmly convinced that what we witnessed during COVID policy measures was a test run, a trial run for something much bigger,” she said.
“They precisely tested systems to see how far they could go with repressive measures to restrict civil rights and to what extent people would comply through media manipulation, agitation and propaganda,” she said.
“This was all orchestrated by the political-media complex to completely break people down with one of the biggest lies ever, just like with climate change fear—it’s exactly the same mechanism.”
AfD has been polling strongly in national opinion surveys, often at or near its highest recorded levels. Recent polls have put the AfD’s support at around 26–27 per cent, at times ahead of the mainstream conservative CDU/CSU bloc in representative surveys, indicating it as one of the most popular parties in the country if a federal vote were held now.
