AfD leader
“Fake”: Weidel apologizes to Faeser for false quotes
AfD party leader Alice Weidel
© Michael Kappeler / DPA
Alice Weidel quoted an alleged statement by Interior Minister Nancy Faeser in a speech. The problem: The statements were fake. The AfD leader has now apologized for them, but the false information is still circulating.
In the debate about the consequences of the Mannheim knife attack, AfD party leader Alice Weidel apologized for incorrect quotations from Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD). “A press release I quoted in a speech did not come from the #BMI (Federal Ministry of the Interior) – we fell for a fake when researching it, which we are very sorry about,” Weidel wrote on the platform X.
The ministry was outraged: “We are firmly opposed to #disinformation and to the instrumentalization of the terrible act of violence in Mannheim,” X said. Despite corrections, the false information continues to spread.
Alice Weidel quotes fake news – the audience cheers
A corresponding video of a Weidel speech at the AfD Donnersberg “Palatinate meeting” on Saturday in Kirchheimbolanden, Rhineland-Palatinate, was not shown on AfD channels on Sunday, but copies of a video with the “AfD TV” logo continued to circulate online. In it, Weidel quotes from an obviously made-up press release by Faeser in front of a cheering audience.
According to the portal “T-Online”, the fake was created by ChatGPT, a speech generator with artificial intelligence. The AfD initially left a request for information about the background unanswered. The fictitious press release states, among other things, that a video of the knife attack in Mannheim should not be distributed any further because it could benefit the AfD. Weidel had read excerpts from it verbatim in the speech and described the fact that “people like that” like Faeser are still in office as “disgraceful” and “disgusting”. She now wrote on X that the “tenor” of her comments about the Interior Minister “remains correct nonetheless”.
“I find it bitter and just embarrassing”
According to a statement, the parliamentary manager of the SPD parliamentary group, Katja Mast, said on Sunday that the “fantasizing in the AfD” was becoming more and more absurd. “I find it bitter and just embarrassing that Alice Weidel fell for a statement she made up herself.”
Six people and the perpetrator himself were injured in a knife attack by a 25-year-old man of Afghan origin on Friday in Mannheim at a rally of the anti-Islam movement Pax Europa. A police officer’s life was still in danger on Sunday. The perpetrator was not yet fit to be questioned; officers had previously searched his apartment and seized items to determine the motive and planning of the crime.