German politicians and media reacted to Donald Trump’s election victory in the United States by aggressively trivializing fascism. At the start of the year, the influential newspaper World on Sunday published an article by Elon Musk, an American oligarch rich in hundreds of billions of euros and a supporter of Trump, entitled “Why Elon Musk supports the AfD” (Alternative for Germany).
In this article, where Elon Musk openly makes electoral propaganda for the fascists, we can read: “Germany finds itself at a critical moment: its future is on the verge of economic and cultural collapse.” Only the AfD could prevent Germany from “becoming a shadow of its former self. It can lead the country toward a future in which economic prosperity, cultural integrity and technological innovation are not just pipe dreams, but reality.”
At the center of Elon Musk’s comment is a call for unlimited economic deregulation, which he associates with the AfD program but which is in fact shared by all ruling parties. Musk writes that the AfD has “understood that economic freedom is not only desirable but necessary.” The AfD’s approach to reducing government overregulation, lowering taxes, and deregulating the market mirrored the principles that made its own companies, like Tesla and SpaceX, successful.
While Musk has amassed a fortune of nearly $500 billion in recent years, for Tesla workers, that “success” literally means kill yourself at work (article in English) under brutal operating conditions.
The World Socialist Web Site defined Trump’s presidency as a “violent realignment of the American political superstructure to correspond to the actual social relations existing in the United States.” The American ruling class is counting on the fascist Trump to advance its agenda of social counter-revolution, mass deportations, dictatorship and world war in the interests of the oligarchy.
A corresponding phenomenon is occurring in Germany. February’s snap parliamentary elections, called by the German ruling class, aim to prepare the ground for a far-right government that will brutally impose the interests of German capital at home and abroad. The publication of Musk’s election advertisement for the AfD by one of the flagship newspapers of the right-wing press of the Springer group and the reactions it provoked from politicians and the media make this clear.
Many media comments openly praised Elon Musk and defended Musk’s decision. Welt and therefore also election advertising for the benefit of the AfD. A comment from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called criticism of “Elon Musk’s interference in German politics” “idiocy about Musk.” Aside from “his crude comments about X”, he “summed up in one word what needed to be said in the German election campaign”
In a comment accompanying Elon Musk’s article in World on Sundaythe paper’s new editor-in-chief, Jan Philipp Burgard, hailed Musk as “the greatest entrepreneurial genius of our time.” Elon Musk’s “diagnosis” was “correct, but his proposed therapy that only the AfD can save Germany is fatally wrong.” As a reason, Burgard does not cite the AfD’s fascist program, with which he generally agrees, but rather the party’s lack of aggressiveness towards Russia and China.
“Demands such as reduced bureaucracy, deregulation and tax cuts are not bad because they come from the AfD,” Burgard writes. But Elon Musk seemed to “neglect the geopolitical framework in which the AfD wants to position Germany”. This sought “a rapprochement with Russia” and had “more friendly words towards China than the United States”.
When German politicians criticize Elon Musk’s attacks on government officials – among other things, he called German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) an “anti-democratic tyrant” – they do so from a similar point of view . The head of the SPD parliamentary group, Rolf Mützenich, called on the German government to clarify after Trump’s inauguration “whether the repeated disrespect, defamation and interference in the election campaign were also expressed in the name of the new American administration. It had to be “clarified” because “international challenges can only be met within the framework of a serene relationship between us and the United States”.
The meaning of this statement is unambiguous. Despite growing transatlantic tensions and Trump’s trade war threats targeting Germany and Europe, the German ruling class is seeking – at least for the moment – to ally with American fascists in order to intensify the policy of war against Russia and the rest of the world and to impose the interests of German imperialism. It is precisely this policy that ultimately requires the establishment of an authoritarian regime and the rehabilitation of fascism in Germany itself.
In the current editorial of the weekly news magazine The mirrorthe magazine’s editor-in-chief, Dirk Kurbjuweit, laments that Germany “shrank” last year. It could no longer consider itself a middle power and was on the verge of becoming a dwarf in world politics. Making “this observation” was “the essential task of the new government which will take office in the spring. A turn towards growth is necessary, both economically and politically.”
Kurbjuweit identified “a crude mixture of history obsession and historical amnesia” as one of the “main reasons” for Germany’s “stunting.” In this country, “history dictates policy more strongly than elsewhere, which often leads to self-binding.”
For example, “inadequate supply of long-range weapons to Ukraine […] is also justified by the fact that Nazi Germany invaded and devastated the Soviet Union. Therefore, German missiles must not be allowed to hit Moscow.
Like the slogan “We must dare more Elon Musk”, launched by Christian Lindner, the leader of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and taken up with enthusiasm by the media, Kurbjuweit’s comment could be entitled “He “We must dare no more Hitler.” What Germany lacks, he writes, are “thoughtful, rational strategies, grand strategies, in the essential areas of politics.” The next federal government “should, in addition to internal security, focus on sustainable growth and Germany’s position in the world.”
The fact that the call for Germany to play a greater role in the world and Turning point («new era ») in domestic and social policy which accompanies it comes precisely from Kurbjuweit emphasizes that the turn of the ruling class towards world war and fascism was prepared (article in English) for a long time. It was Kurbjuweit who, shortly after representatives of the then Grand Coalition (CDU-SPD) proclaimed the end of military restraint at the Munich Security Conference in 2014, published in The mirror the infamous essay “The question of guilt divides historians today..
In this article, Kurbjuweit attacked the historian Fritz Fischer, who had carefully shown in his work Grabbing world power (The war aims of Imperial Germany) that the German Reich had been one of the main culprits in the First World War. Kurbjuweit cited Humboldt University professor emeritus Herfried Münkler who said that Fischer’s arguments were “in principle, senseless.”
Regarding German crimes during World War II, Kurbjuweit brought Nazi apologist Ernst Nolte, who died in 2016, into the debate. Historian dispute (historians dispute) in the 1980s, Nolte had already declared that the Holocaust was a justified reaction to the Soviet Union. Kurbjuweit quoted Berlin historian and Nolte supporter Jörg Baberowski as follows: “Hitler was not a psychopath, and he was not cruel. He didn’t want people talking about the extermination of the Jews at his table.”
Some eleven years after this disgusting trivialization of Hitler and Nazism, the warnings made at the time by the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP, Socialist Equality Party) and its youth organization IYSSE have been fully confirmed. The trivialization of the historical crimes of German imperialism serves to revert to an imperialist policy of world war and the establishment of a fascist regime to defend the privileges of the capitalist oligarchy against the growing opposition of the working class.
This development clearly puts enormous class struggles on the agenda. THE massive layoffs 35,000 workers and salary cuts (article in English) of almost 20 percent at Volkswagen, agreed shortly before Christmas between politicians, management and the union bureaucracy, are only the prelude to an open war against the working class, aimed at destroying all social gains remaining.
“The decisive question” is how to endow the growing mass opposition with “revolutionary leadership and a socialist perspective,” emphasizes the SGP electoral manifesto. “Only if the masses independently intervene in the political process, expropriate the big banks and corporations and bring them under democratic control can the war and social catastrophe be stopped.”
(Article published in English on January 4, 2025)
