Germany puzzles at Elon Musk’s embrace of its AfD populists

Summary
The billionaire tech entrepreneur has cast the far-right party as moderate, but many in Berlin beg to differ.BERLIN—During Elon Musk’s freewheeling conversation with the leader of a far-right German party last week, spanning Hitler, multiplanetary civilizations and the existence of god, the billionaire tech entrepreneur insisted that the Alternative for Germany was moderate.
“Hopefully, people can tell just from this conversation, like nothing outrageous is being proposed, just common sense," he said, during their live discussion on his X social-media platform.
That has been hard for many in Germany’s mainstream political parties to understand—much less accept.
After all, the party, also known by its German acronym AfD, is critical of Germany’s culture of Holocaust remembrance and several of its regional chapters are classified as right-wing extremist organizations by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency. An AfD leader in Thuringia was fined for repeatedly using a banned Nazi slogan—something he denied doing knowingly.
Even more perplexing for many in Berlin, some of the AfD’s goals clash with Musk’s own positions and with core U.S. interests.
The AfD is closer to Russia than some of its European peers. It has called for lifting sanctions on Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine and wants to resume Russian natural-gas deliveries via the closed Nord Stream 2 pipeline. It opposes the stationing of U.S. long-range conventional missiles on German soil, as recently agreed between Berlin and Washington.
The party has also criticized electric-car subsidies that have benefited Musk’s Tesla in the past. And it has called for Germany to leave the European Union—a decision that would make it harder for Tesla to export the cars it makes in its plant near Berlin.
“If Musk’s rocket science and knowledge of electromobility were as superficial as his analysis of German politics, then his cars wouldn’t drive, and his rockets wouldn’t fly," Jens Spahn, a center-right lawmaker and former government minister, told Germany’s Cicero magazine last week. “Is it really clever to support such a pro-Russia, pro-Putin, at its core anti-American party like the AfD?"
In many ways, Musk’s support for the AfD isn’t surprising. The party’s anti-immigration rhetoric, its rejection of wokeism and its populist style match Musk’s preferences as expressed in countless online posts. But the AfD is seen as more radical than many of the other European parties Musk has backed, such as Reform U.K. and Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy.
In May last year, the AfD’s European allies expelled the party from their joint group in the European Parliament after its top candidate at the European election told several newspapers that members of the SS weren’t all criminals. This echoed an earlier comment by Björn Höcke, the AfD leader in Thuringia, a state in eastern Germany considered a stronghold of the party’s right wing. Höcke had said in The Wall Street Journal that Adolf Hitler shouldn’t be considered “absolutely evil."
AfD leaders have sent mixed signals as to whether the party could tweak some of its positions to accommodate its U.S. backer.
The AfD has consistently opposed Tesla’s German factory in Grünheide, in the state of Brandenburg. AfD councilors last year voted against a plan to expand the plant, which they claimed endangers the water supply, brings excessive traffic and doesn’t create jobs for locals.
Kathi Muxel, an AfD lawmaker in the Brandenburg state parliament whose constituency includes Grünheide, said in an email that she wouldn’t drop her opposition “just because of Elon Musk’s supportive engagement with our national political goals."
Steffen Kotré, an AfD member of the federal parliament from Brandenburg, disagreed, saying local AfD representatives should “rethink their position…You won’t be able to separate this factory, whether you like it or not, from the engagement of its founder in favor of free speech."
But, he added, central political positions, such the push to resume Russian energy purchases or the rejection of policies to cut CO2 emissions, were nonnegotiable. “The AfD more than any other party should be very careful never to expose itself to accusations of corruption," he said.
In an interview with the American Conservative, a U.S. magazine, ahead of her conversation with Musk, Alice Weidel defended her party’s call for resuming Russian gas purchases regardless of the U.S.’s opposition to it, saying: “We will make our own decisions and [Donald Trump] must accept them, whether he likes them or not."
Unlike other right-wing parties in Europe, the AfD hasn’t softened its positions over the years to court broader appeal. Delegates at its national convention on Sunday toughened its immigration agenda, calling for the detention of asylum seekers and banning nonresidents from receiving welfare benefits unless they have worked in Germany for at least 10 years.
Stefan Möller, co-chair of the AfD in Thuringia, where the party won its first state election last October, said Musk and the AfD didn’t have to agree on everything to get along.
“Naturally, there are always intersections with other people where you share similar convictions. And then there are potential areas of conflict," he said. “Here, the shared political convictions clearly are the dominant focus."
Pollsters say it is too early to tell whether Musk’s endorsement can broaden the AfD’s appeal by unlocking new pools of voters.
A Forsa survey conducted between Jan. 4 and Jan. 6 showed support for the party was stable at 19%, while 74% of respondents said it was inappropriate for Musk to interfere in German politics. The party remains 10 points behind the front-runner, the center-right Christian Democratic Union, according to Forsa, and well off its peak of early last year before it was hit by a series of scandals.
“Musk doesn’t have a positive image," said Manfred Güllner, head of Forsa. “And Trump himself is incredibly disliked among Germans."
However, other polls published this month show the AfD’s ratings crossing the 20% threshold, continuing a slow but steady rise that started last summer.
Even if it caught up with the CDU and won February’s election, the AfD would be exceedingly unlikely to lead the next government because all other parties have ruled out joining it in a coalition. Yet, an AfD victory would still be a political earthquake, and one the party’s leaders think has now become a little likelier.
“People who are still sitting on the fence and are unsure if they can trust us," said Leif-Erik Holm, an AfD lawmaker. “They may look at someone like Musk, and if he supports us, then maybe they can too."
Write to Bertrand Benoit at bertrand.benoit@wsj.com