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After calling the German Chancellor and leader of the Social Democrats, Olaf Scholz, stupid, Elon Musk once again casts his gaze on Germany and, from the other side of the Atlantic, sends a message of love to the German ethno-identitarian ultra-right. “Only AfD can save Germany,” wrote X, the Pretoria-born techno-billionaire and now Donald Trump's alter ego, on his platform yesterday.
Influence him
Musk's is a comment on a two and a half minute video, in which the German influencer Naomi Seibt attacks the CDU leader Friedrich Merz. Seibt, 24, has links to the AfD, has stood out for her attacks on Greta Thunberg, denies climate change and criticizes migration. In 2021, his YouTube channel was shut down for violating misinformation and harassment guidelines. He reopens it in 2024, when however his favorite platform has become X, where he no longer runs these risks since Musk has been at the helm. Today he has over 310 thousand followers, maybe tomorrow there will be more.
The far right that doesn't want Tesla in Brandenburg
This isn't the first time Musk has shown appreciation for Alternative für Deutschland. The party's branches in Thuringia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt have been classified as right-wing extremist organizations by German authorities. The same thing was about to happen in Brandenburg in November, but the judgment of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution was suspended in view of the early vote in February, after the fall of the Scholz Government.
Representatives of the AfD (which is second in the polls at 19%, behind only the CDU) are accused of using slogans that echo Hitlerian and Nazi ones, if not actually copying them. For this reason, the other parties have created a cordon sanitaire around the movement, refusing any political collaboration. Not only that, 113 deputies from the CDU, Greens, SPD and Linke have signed a motion that aims to have the entire party declared anti-constitutional and banned.
At the center of the Alternative für Deutschland program is remigration: not only must Germany close to immigrants, but it must send back those who are already in the country, but have “little ability and will to integrate”, as he puts it in black and white a resolution of the congress of the Bavarian branch of the party on 23 November. A theme that may find an echo in Trump's political program.
