In this episode, host Manuel interviews Valeria, a 23-year-old from Colombia who completed an internship with the far-right AfD party in the German Bundestag. She shares her experiences navigating the contradictions of working for a party that opposes immigration while benefiting from international talent, and how the experience taught her to develop resilience.
Summarized by Podsumo
Valeria, a Colombian student, founded a language institute in Colombia to help migrants before coming to Germany as a scholarship recipient of the International Parliamentary Scholarship (IPS), a program that was established in the 1980s.
Despite hoping for any other party, Valeria was assigned to the AfD, a far-right party known for its anti-immigration stance, but chose to continue the internship as required by the program.
Her day-to-day work involved researching tourism policy, attending party-internal working groups (Arbeitskreise), and observing how 'politics is like a theater play' where politicians play predefined roles.
Valeria describes a 'paradoxical' relationship with her AfD boss: he praised her work but simultaneously advocated for no foreign workers in Germany, creating a deeply uncomfortable dynamic.
The experience, combined with a previous incident at Aldi discussed on the podcast, taught her to develop 'a thick skin'—a lesson she credits to an earlier episode of Easy German.
"He has given his view on migration, that everyone should stay in their own country... but he also told me, 'great work, you've done it'—as if I don't exist. German politics is like a theater play."
"I have learned that all people are just people. They also have fears. But just because you have fear, you don't have to attack someone. That's what I learned."
"I noticed that there are men who behave like that—it's a stereotype of a man. Classic toxic masculinity. You have to prove you're a man by being hard and aggressive on the outside."