Musk
Doubles Down on Support for German Far-Right Party
The
world’s richest man, a key adviser to President-elect Donald J. Trump,
ridicules critics over his backing of the German extremist party AfD, as
Germany prepares for elections.
Christopher
F. Schuetze
By
Christopher F. Schuetze
Dec. 28,
2024
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/28/world/europe/musk-support-for-german-far-right-afd.html
Elon
Musk, the world’s richest man and a close adviser to President-elect Donald J.
Trump, shocked many in Germany last week by endorsing its far-right Alternative
for Germany party, which is under surveillance by domestic intelligence for
being extremist.
This
week, Mr. Musk entangled himself even more in the country’s snap election,
explaining in a newspaper opinion essay why he believes the far-right party is
the “last spark of hope” for Germany.
“The
traditional parties have failed in Germany,” Mr. Musk wrote in comments
published online by the daily Welt on Saturday. “Their policies have led to
economic stagnation, social unrest, and the erosion of national identity.”
Mr.
Musk’s opinion piece comes as Germany girds itself for an intense winter
election after Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition collapsed in
November. On Friday President Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany officially
announced the disbandment of Parliament and set Feb. 23 as the date for new
elections.
With four
mainstream and three extremist parties on the left and right vying for seats in
Parliament and government participation, polls are favoring the conservative
Christian Democratic Union. However, the AfD, with its anti-immigrant platform,
is polling in second place, with roughly 20 percent.
Mr.
Musk’s commentary was printed in the Sunday edition of the Welt, a conservative
daily owned by the Axel Springer media group, which also owns Politico in the
United States. Many of the paper’s journalists protested the printing of the
commentary, according to reports. Eva Marie Kogel, who had been the paper’s
head of opinion, resigned from her post after the printing, she confirmed on X.
In an
apparent acknowledgment that Mr. Musk’s thoughts on the AfD could be
controversial, the paper printed a response by Jan Philipp Burgard, the editor
in chief-designate on the same page.
“Musk’s
diagnosis is correct, but his therapeutic approach, that only the AfD can save
Germany, is fatally flawed,” he wrote.
Mr. Musk,
who was heavily involved in supporting Mr. Trump in the American presidential
campaign, has been known to meddle in foreign political campaigns as well. He
has engaged and supported right-wing causes both in Italy and the United
Kingdom in recent months.
The
provocative potential in Germany from Mr. Musk’s support of the AfD partly
reflects the party’s political stance, considered so far right as to be
anti-democratic. All other political parties in Germany have precluded working
with the AfD.
When news
broke that members of the AfD took part in a meeting with an Austrian
extreme-right personality, who has called for deporting migrants en masse, tens
of thousands of Germans took to the streets in protest this year. This spring
and summer, Björn Höcke, a state leader of the party, was twice convicted of
having used banned Nazi-era slogans during campaign stops. Sections of the
party, including its entire youth wing, are considered extremist by domestic
intelligence.
In his
commentary Mr. Musk dismissed any criticism that the party could be too
far-right by pointing to the private life of the party’s lead candidate. “The
portrayal of the AfD as far-right is clearly wrong considering that Alice
Weidel, the leader of the party, has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka! Does
that sound like Hitler to you? Come on!” he wrote.
For the
AfD the endorsement is viewed as a potential boon, even if it is too soon to
tell whether Mr. Musk’s initial posting on X had an effect on the party’s
polling. The party has been posting portions of the text on social media.
Christopher
F. Schuetze is a reporter for The Times based in Berlin, covering politics,
society and culture in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
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