The F-word and the R-word

Photo by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash

Dear Reader,

Ahead of the 2017 election, I sat down for an interview with Alice Weidel, who was running as the AfD’s lead candidate for the first time.

Unlike her abrasive public persona, she was polite and friendly—at least to begin with. At some point, I committed the faux pas of referring to the AfD as rechts (right-wing), at which point she corrected me, saying her party was bürgerlich.

Genuinely curious as to why she was so reluctant to use the word rechts, I asked her to explain herself—at which point she broke off the interview. To my bewilderment, she stood up and left, fuming that I was trying to put her into a box she didn’t want to be in.

It was a tough reminder that it’s not just hypersensitive Gen Zers who struggle when you ignore their preferred labels. But, what she interpreted as an affront was, in truth, an innocent question on my part.

I hadn’t been in Germany long enough to appreciate linguistic taboos. For me, links and rechts were si…