It's a tweet that's hard to beat in terms of its clarity. “Only the AfD can save Germany,” claimed Elon Musk on his Platform X on Friday morning – two months before the federal election. At the same time, the US entrepreneur distributed a video by AfD-affiliated influencer Naomi Seibt, who has contacts in the New Right.
Musk has 208 million followers on the platform and is the richest person in the world with a fortune of over $400 billion. The 53-year-old recently supported the election campaign of the elected US President Donald Trump with over 250 million euros. This made him the largest donor in the history of US politics. After the election, Trump appointed Musk to head an “efficient government” department.
According to media reports, Musk plans to soon donate up to $100 million to the party of right-wing populist British politician Nigel Farage. In Germany, according to party law, parties are not allowed to accept donations from abroad over 1,000 euros.
In April 2022, Musk posted: “For Twitter to earn the public’s trust, it must be politically neutral.” This effectively means “annoying the far right and the far left alike.” Musk's announcement at the time came a few days after his offer to buy the platform, later renamed X.
Musk had already shown himself to be impressed by the AfD on several occasions. So far, however, he has not yet made a direct election recommendation for the right-wing party. In the past few days he has intervened several times in the dispute over a US transition budget and called on members of Congress not to agree to a negotiated law for transition financing. Without an agreement, there would be a so-called shutdown, a standstill in government business.
German politicians are now criticizing Elon Musk sharply.
“To fear that this news is just the starting signal”
Reinhard Brandl, digital policy spokesman for the Union parliamentary group, told WELT that Musk's “political agenda is becoming more and more blatantly apparent.” “It is to be feared that this news is just the starting signal for further actions. Such a concentration of power and reach in one person is a serious threat to our democracy,” the CSU politician continued.
The CDU MEP Dennis Radtke posted on X: “Musk, celebrated vigorously by some here, is declaring war on democracy. This man is a threat. Trump, Farage and now the AfD.”
The SPD member of the Bundestag Axel Schäfer told the “Tagesspiegel”: “We are very close to the Americans, but now bravery in front of our friend is required. We ask for no interference in our election campaign.” Germany stands for a “rules-based, liberal democracy,” but Musk wants the opposite. “He wants an authoritarian, illiberal state run by billionaires,” Schäfer continued.
The Greens' campaign manager Andreas Audretsch also expressed clear criticism. “We must not allow the Elon Musks of this world to use their money and their digital power to shift the discourse in Europe and thus actively intervene in our democracies in Europe,” said the deputy leader of the Greens parliamentary group WELT.
FDP leading candidate Christian Lindner called for Germany to “dare to do a little more Musk” in December. On Friday afternoon he made Musk an offer to talk. “While migration control is crucial for Germany, the AfD is against freedom and the economy – and it is a right-wing extremist party,” the party leader posted on X. “Don’t jump to conclusions from a distance. Let’s meet and I’ll show you what the FDP stands for.”
Bundestag Vice President Wolfgang Kubicki (FDP) advised calm. “I don’t think that the Tesla drivers in Germany will let this expression of opinion influence their voting decision,” he told WELT. Musk is CEO of the electric car manufacturer Tesla. “It is a private expression of opinion. In principle it is no different from Luisa Neubauer’s election recommendation for Kamala Harris in the USA,” Kubicki continued.
However, the AfD is not politically on Musk's line: “Keywords: lived anti-Americanism, pro-Russian and no pronounced economically liberal profile,” said the deputy federal leader of the FDP.
Left-wing leading candidate Heidi Reichinnek clearly contradicted Kubicki. “His tweet is of course not a private expression of opinion,” she told WELT. “Elon Musk is the richest man in the world who bought a mass medium in order to impose his unfiltered opinion on millions of people and thus exert influence on the politics of various countries.” Social networks should “not be the playground of multi-billionaires,” said Reichinnek. The Left group leader in the Bundestag used the discussion to make a provocative demand: “In principle, there should simply be no billionaires.”
The AfD is of course happy about Musk's statement. “This is of course a very nice greeting to the X community for the AfD in the election campaign, which Ms. Weidel was happy about,” said the spokesman for the top candidate Alice Weidel, Daniel Tapp. Weidel had previously responded to Musk's posting on X. “Yes! You are absolutely right,” the AfD leader wrote in English.
The AfD has so far had a divided relationship with Musk. The Brandenburg AfD demonstrated several times against the Tesla factory in Grünheide. “After electric cars, Tesla founder Musk now wants to plant chips in humanity’s brain,” the state association posted in August 2020. “An impertinence for people and nature,” it was said in the same month about the Tesla factory that was planned at the time.
In December of this year, Brandenburg AfD state parliament member Kathi Muxel spoke of a “monster factory”. “Poison in the Tesla water?” it said in a podcast from the group. “So that Tesla boss Elon Musk can earn billions, will the water be turned off for the East Brandenburg allotment gardeners?” the podcast said in December 2021.
Political editor Frederick Schindler reports for WELT about the AfD, Islamism, anti-Semitism and justice issues. His column “Counter Speech” appears biweekly.