I'd recommend checking out some long form source material where you hear the people being described (smeared or slandered maybe?) talk about their policy ideas and the viewpoints inspiring them in their own words.

Alice Weidel, the party leader, has been on many a podcast speaking English I believe. There's the conversation with Elon Musk but there's more interviews in english out there in teh podcast world. Also there's some speeches that she gave in the bundestag available on to view on X with subtitles. Perhaps other places as well.

Haven't spent a ton of time looking into it but I did listen to the Elon interview as well as one other appearance on a podcast IIRC. I also listened to one or two complete speechs of hers at the bundestag. I think one of them was about 20 minutes long.

Based on that it seems to me AFD is a center right common sense party. Stop illegal immigration, deal with crime problems, focus on reliable energy, roll back censorship laws, cut back on government spending, try diplomacy with Russia etc.

Really not that extreme at all.