The AfD won a shock election in Germany. Elon Musk was thrilled

 

The AfD won a shock election in Germany. Elon Musk was thrilled

 

The billionaire and the party have developed a symbiotic relationship to spread their far-right views both in Germany and the US

 

Nick Robins-Early

Sun 13 Sep 2026 07.00 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/sep/13/afd-germany-elon-musk

 

The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party rattled European politics this week after a convincing victory in a German state election, which placed it only a few seats away from forming the country’s first state-level far right government since the second world war.

Elon Musk was thrilled.

“Gut gemacht!” Musk posted on X a week ago, using the German phrase for “well done” as he congratulated AfD party leader, Alice Weidel. It was one of at least a dozen posts the Tesla and SpaceX CEO made about the AfD following the result.

The AfD reciprocated Musk’s praise, with the party’s Saxony-Anhalt leader, Ulrich Siegmund, thanking the tech mogul for his support. Siegmund, who wants German schools to focus less on responsibility for the second world war and whose top staffers include four former members of a banned neo-Nazi youth group, called Musk a “visionary”.

Musk has become a central figure in the global far-right in recent years, using his support and influence to back anti-immigrant activists, illiberal leaders and nativist parties. Along with a preoccupation with race in the UK, much of that attention has been focused on the AfD, and the major results in the Saxony-Anhalt election, and Musk’s jubilation at their win, have revived scrutiny of his connections to it.

Musk’s ties to the AfD and German far-right predate the Saxony-Anhalt vote and coincide with the billionaire’s own public rightward drift. His views on immigration, politics and race, which he expresses relentlessly on X, have over the years become indistinguishable from many AfD policies. In boosting the AfD and receiving their adulation in return, Musk and the party have developed a symbiotic relationship to spread their far-right views both in Germany and the US.

Boosting the international far right

As Musk became more involved in politics in 2024, backing Donald Trump’s reelection with over $100m of his own money, he formed alliances with several other international far-right leaders who hold anti-immigration views and antipathy for democratic institutions.

Musk has appeared onstage with Argentina’s chainsaw-wielding Javier Milei, presented an award to Italy’s ultraconservative prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, then attacked Italian judges ruling on migrant rights and gave a livestreamed speech at UK anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson’s rally where Musk claimed immigration was causing “the destruction of Britain”.

Musk also connected with Naomi Seibt, a German climate crisis skeptic and anti-immigration activist who frequently posts on X and was 24 years old at the time. Musk began personally messaging her after seeing her posts, Seibt told reporter Paul Ronzheimer of Axel Springer’s Global Reporters Network, and she promoted the AfD to him in their chats.

In late 2024, Musk wrote an opinion column for the German outlet Die Welt expressing his own support for the AfD. Musk’s op-ed claimed that Germany was on the brink of “economic and cultural collapse” that could only be solved by the AfD, which he called “the last spark of hope” for the country. He also argued that the party wasn’t extreme, giving the example that its leader Weidel has a same-sex partner who is from Sri Lanka.

“Does that sound like Hitler to you?” Musk wrote.

As Musk took a prominent role in the second Trump administration at the beginning of 2025, he used his platform and newfound political power to further boost the AfD. In early January of that year, Musk hosted a livestream for Weidel that researchers found gave her a huge boost on the platform as well as translated to a jump in German-language media coverage.

“Musk did in fact have an agenda-setting effect on traditional media in Germany,” said Jan Rau, a researcher at Research Institute Social Cohesion and Leibniz-Institute for Media Research. “You could very clearly see it. There was a huge spike of attention from traditional media for Weidel in that moment, and a lot of this attention was actually connected with Musk.”

Weeks after hosting the livestream with Weidel, Musk also appeared via livestream at an AfD rally. Only days after causing an uproar for delivering fascist-style salutes at a Trump inauguration rally, Musk told the AfD crowd in Germany that there was “too much focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that”. His remarks drew condemnations from Jewish leaders and accusations that he was attempting to normalize the far-right.

The limits of Musk’s influence

Musk’s close proximity to Trump and prominent role in the White House following the 2024 election magnified his political power, as well as fears from foreign governments that he was interfering in their national affairs.

After acquiring Twitter in 2022, Musk made several changes that helped boost the divisive, far-right politics of parties like the AfD. He reinstated previously banned far-right accounts, such as pro-AfD, anti-immigration Austrian activist Martin Sellner – who has taken credit for mainstreaming nativist “remigration” policies – and often promoted international right wing accounts through reposts.

“The changes Musk made to the platform has made it much easier for far-right communication,” Rau said. “That’s helpful for the AfD in many ways.”

But researchers including Rau also argue that the rightwing bubble Musk has created on X has its limits. Only around 5% of Germans use X to find news, according to a 2026 Reuters Institute survey, and many mainstream figures in the country have publicly given up on using the platform. While some of Musk’s backing of the AfD crossed over to mainstream attention, much of it in recent months has been confined to his captive audience on X.

Today, Musk is deeply unpopular in Germany, with a YouGov poll last year finding that only 19% of the country had a favorable view of the multibillionaire. Fewer still, only 13%, viewed his attempts to influence German politics acceptable. Even within the AfD, Musk is not an entirely welcome presence.

“Musk’s boosting, in some quarters, is not particularly helpful,” said Oliver Marsh, an independent researcher formerly at the nonprofit Algorithm Watch. “A lot of the party are traditional German nationalists and don’t really approve of an American billionaire weighing in on German politics”.

While the AfD’s ascendance has more to do with Germany’s domestic politics and social dynamics than it does with Musk, it did not stop him from taking some credit for their success. Musk reposted a claim from a Germany rightwing media commentator that the tech billionaire’s ownership of X had caused a “vibe shift” that led to the AfD’s victory.

Musk defends the ‘far center’ AfD

In the days after the AfD’s election success in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, Musk both celebrated the result and tried to claim that the party was not far-right at all but ideologically moderate. Musk posted that the party, which Germany’s own domestic intelligence agency last year labeled a rightwing extremist group, should be considered “far center”.

Musk also sought to reject American news media’s descriptions of the AfD being far-right, despite the party’s well-documented and extreme views on issues such as immigration, Islam and LGBTQ+ rights. Musk posted multiple replies to the Wall Street Journal and CBS News following the state election, attacking the outlets for using “far right” in their coverage.

“You are lying by calling AfD ‘far-right’,” Musk responded to a CBS News post on X, adding in another post that “‘far right’ is a propaganda term”.

The AfD party platform includes bans on public displays of Islamic beliefs; opposes same-sex marriage and adoption, despite Weidel’s long-term domestic partnership with a woman, which includes children; emphasizes ethnic-German identity and calls for mass deportations. AfD leaders also have received criticism over the years for downplaying the Holocaust and making provocative references to Nazism, with one of the party’s top members convicted in 2024 of using a Nazi paramilitary wing slogan during a rally.

Weidel has meanwhile claimed there is “a holy war against the German population” while calling for “remigration”, a term for mass expulsions once popular in far-right and white nationalist circles that has now been embraced by nativist parties as well as Musk and Donald Trump.

Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz responded to the AfD’s win this week by warning that the party’s true goals amounted to ethnic cleansing, a characterization which the far-right party denounced.

“If what is being advocated here, namely ‘remigration’, were to become reality, ⁠it would be nothing other than a synonym for ethnic cleansing based on origin and skin colour,” Merz said.

Musk once again defended the AfD, reposting a user criticising Merz’s allegation to his more than 241m followers.

Musk’s views, which include a fixation on race and vocal opposition to immigration, have come to closely resemble those of Weidel and the AfD.

“Anyone who opposes remigration is a traitor,” he posted in July.