Inside Elon Musk’s assault on Germany’s political establishment

Elon Musk has been using X to shake up Germany's political establishment. (Reuters)
Elon Musk has been using X to shake up Germany's political establishment. (Reuters)

Summary

The world’s richest man set out on a quest to boost the European powerhouse’s far-right opposition.

In December, American billionaire and Trump confidant Elon Musk posted a six-word sentence on his social-media platform, X, that jolted Germany’s political landscape.

“Only the AfD can save Germany," he wrote, embracing the far-right populist Alternative for Germany party, which calls for expelling illegal migrants, leaving the European Union and getting closer to Russia.

Musk endorsed the party—which campaigned against his own factory in Germany and has senior members who are vehemently anti-American—after a conversation in Mar-a-Lago with President Trump, Vice President JD Vance and others. During the meeting, Trump, Vance and Musk bashed the leaders of Germany’s more mainstream parties, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

The episode shows how offhand comments by Trump and members of his inner circle are ricocheting around the world, amplified by Musk’s control of a social-media platform and his own enormous following. Musk, who has sought to use X to shake up the European political establishment, had been souring on Germany and its leaders for some time as he spoke to entrepreneurs and others he met through his social-media platform, according to Musk’s public statements and some of those who spoke to him. But his public effort to boost the AfD began hours after the Mar-a-Lago meeting in mid December.

During the meeting, Trump told his guests he had recently taken a call from German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and said he found him boring, according to two people familiar with the conversation. One of Trump’s confidants then said that Scholz had endorsed Kamala Harris in the U.S. presidential election, and that his conservative rival and Germany’s likely next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, had criticized Trump, these people said.

Scholz and Merz wouldn’t be invited to the inauguration, Trump said, adding disparaging remarks about the German leaders and the country’s trade practices, the people said. Musk pitched in with his own criticism, as did Vance.

Hours later, Musk posted his message supporting the AfD on X. He followed up with an opinion article backing AfD in a German newspaper and an interview with the party’s leader on X, during which he said the party’s platform is “just common sense."

Musk didn’t respond to requests for comment. The White House didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Musk’s critical view of Germany’s leadership had been forming long before the Mar-a-Lago meeting. Musk, whose carmaker Tesla has one of its largest factories in Germany, said in the interview with the AfD leader that his personal experiences dealing with government regulation in the country and his observations about its political culture had shaped his views. The billionaire had also been speaking to political activists who support the AfD and entrepreneurs who were frustrated with liberal German policies and what they see as burdensome regulation.

The AfD’s popularity has risen in Germany since the party’s creation 12 years ago. In September, the AfD scored its first victory in a state election, and polls show it now has the second-largest share of support from voters nationally, trailing the conservative bloc.

But the party is still seen as a political pariah by many mainstream German leaders, who have sought to keep it out of power. Germany’s domestic intelligence agency classifies some of the party’s regional chapters as far-right extremist organizations. Some senior figures are staunchly pro-Russian and anti-American.

Björn Höcke, one of AfD’s most popular figures who led the party to victory in the state elections in Thuringia last year, told The Wall Street Journal in 2017 that presenting Adolf Hitler as absolutely evil is a “big problem."

Musk began reaching out to others on X to discuss the AfD and Germany. In June last year, he connected with Naomi Seibt, a social-media activist who promotes the party to her nearly 400,000 followers on X. The 24-year-old dropped out of university and took to social media, initially to campaign against regulations aimed at slowing climate change and Covid vaccination mandates. She now writes about German politics.

Seibt said that Musk asked her about the AfD and German politics in general, and wanted to know why the party is considered extremist. He told her that he thought freedom of expression was coming under increasing pressure in Germany and the EU, she said.

“I explained that the Nazi stigma is wrong: The AfD has nothing to do with the national socialists and Adolf Hitler, who was an imperialist oppressor wanting to conquer other nations," Seibt said. “I told him ‘AfD is more like America First,’ like the Trump movement."

Musk also connected with other X users, including Stefan Tompson, a 31-year-old British-Polish national with South African roots. The Warsaw-based entrepreneur runs Visegrad24, a news channel that has 1.2 million followers on X. Tompson criticizes mass migration and supports Ukraine and Israel. Musk regularly shares his and Seibt’s posts.

“Musk knows that living in the West is an absolute privilege, and he wants western societies preserved," Tompson said. “He couldn’t build what he’s built in a country like South Africa."

Musk also spoke to a fellow entrepreneur about Germany. Martin Varsavsky, a Madrid-based tech investor, said he was a longtime friend of Musk’s who had met him at the home of Sergey Brin, the Google co-founder, nearly two decades ago.

Varsavsky founded Inception Fertility, one of the largest fertility clinics networks in the U.S. He told Musk about how he attempted to extend his fertility empire in Germany, but his venture proved untenable in the face of the country’s regulation of fertility clinics.

Varsavsky said Musk had become convinced that Germany, the economic engine of Europe, is facing its demise as a result of low birthrates, mass immigration, overregulation and fragmented mainstream politics. Musk was astounded that Germany pays welfare to illegal immigrants from the moment they arrive, which “almost filters for lazy people," Varsavsky said.

“Elon doesn’t see the world in terms of left or right, he sees it in terms of hardworking people and lazy people," Varsavsky said. “When it comes to migration, he only favors hardworking people."

Musk shared his own bad experiences with German bureaucracy. Varsavsky, like Seibt, told Musk that the German system needed disruption of the kind Trump was attempting in the U.S., and said the AfD could be the party to provide it.

Varsavsky, who sits on the supervisory board of Axel Springer, Germany’s largest news publisher, said he proposed that Musk elaborate on his endorsement of AfD in an opinion article for one of the company’s newspapers. Musk agreed, and penned a short article that was then published in Germany’s Die Welt newspaper.

Germany’s future is “teetering on the edge of economic and cultural collapse," because of bad policies including on mass migration, Musk wrote. “A nation must maintain its core values and cultural heritage to remain strong and united."

He also defended the AfD. Alice Weidel, the co-leader of the party, is married to a woman from Sri Lanka, he wrote, asking: “Does that sound like Hitler to you?"

Vance, who was then the vice-president elect, reposted the article on X on Jan. 2. He didn’t wish to interfere in German politics, he said, but added: “American media slanders AfD as Nazi-lite."

The opinion article set off a furor among German politicians and the staff at the newspaper. Many politicians, from the president to the chancellor and members of the opposition criticized it as an inappropriate interference in a German election. The newspaper’s opinion editor resigned in protest over its publication.

After the article published, Seibt said she proposed that Musk take his support to the next level and interview Weidel on X. Musk then contacted Weidel on X to offer a live broadcast interview, her spokesman said. Weidel, a Mandarin-speaking economist who made her money in finance, cuts an unusual figure in the party she leads.

On Jan. 9, Musk hosted a rambling live interview with Weidel, discussing topics ranging from German red tape (Musk complained he had to have a truckload of paperwork stamped for his Tesla factory there), to solar energy (both decried Germany’s carbon footprint) and Hitler (he was a socialist, Weidel said).

Days after the interview, polls registered a boost for AfD’s approval rates. “Musk is helping make the party palatable to a broad electorate," said Prof. Manfred Güllner, head of the Forsa polling institute.

Musk sparked fresh controversy in Germany again this week when he made what some interpreted to be a Nazi salute during a speech celebrating Trump’s inauguration. Musk dismissed the criticism on X: “The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired," he said.

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