Elon Musk’s outings continue to cause discussion. The billionaire owner of Tesla has sparked a controversy in Germany with a endorsement to the far right of the country. “Only AfD can save Germany”, Musk wrote on “idea that Germany can follow the example of Elon Musk and Javier Milei” and “rejects any discussion with AfD”.
With the fall of Olaf Scholz’s government, which was voted out of confidence by the Bundestag on 16 December, the country has brought forward federal elections on 24 February.
Only the AfD can save Germany https://t.co/Afu0ea1Fvt
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 20, 2024
The leader of AfD (Alternative für Deutschland, Alternative for Germany), obviously welcomed Musk’s support. “Yes! You are absolutely right!”, Alice Weidel, the party’s chancellor candidate, wrote on the platform. Weidel then reposted a recent interview he gave about how “socialist Angela Merkel ruined our country” and how “the Soviet European Union” is destroying Germany. “There is freedom of opinion, which also applies to multi-billionaires. But freedom of opinion also means being able to say things that are not right and that do not contain good political advice”, was Scholz’s response.
The endorsement by Musk
Musk, who was a sort of right-hand man of Donald Trump in the US election campaign, has recently increasingly clearly supported European politicians of the radical right, including Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage. And it is not the first time that the Tesla owner has expressed his opinion on German politics: last November he used X to describe the Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz as a “clown”.
Afd soars in the polls
The AfD is a radical right-wing, Eurosceptic and anti-immigration party, partially classified as extremist by the German authorities themselves, and which according to polls could come in second place in the early elections next February. According to the Politbarometer poll published by the public broadcaster ZDF, the conservative bloc led by Merz drops by two points to 31 percent, while the AfD follows at a certain distance with 19 percent. Scholz’s Social Democrats remain at 16 percent.
However, the possibility of the AfD being part of the next government is not contemplated as the other parties maintain an agreement, known as the cordon sanitaire, not to collaborate with the far-right formation.
