The latest in the tech billionaire’s campaign to mobilize support for conservative candidates across Europe and North America, Elon Musk hosted a live event on his social media platform X on Thursday featuring a leader of the German far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD).
AfD co-leader Alice Weidel spoke with Musk, the world’s richest man, for over an hour, providing the anti-immigrant party with a high-profile boost ahead of next month’s national elections.
AfD, which has been excluded from mainstream German politics due in part to its leaders’ denial of Nazi atrocities, could benefit from Musk’s free publicity. Some AfD members support a two-tiered society where ethnic Germans are granted more rights than persons from immigrant backgrounds, according to a German court that upheld the country’s domestic intelligence agencies’ monitoring of the party for extremism last year.
Musk and Weidel had a fairly cordial interaction, which Weidel noted was not typical of her.
“I can just have a normal conversation without being interrupted or negatively framed, which is a completely new situation for me,” she said. Musk was described by her as a visionary.
Since acquiring X, formerly known as Twitter, in 2022, Musk has turned the app into a political megaphone, contributing to President-elect Donald Trump’s triumph last year. Additionally, Musk has restored the accounts of neo-Nazis who had previously been suspended, enabling them to thrive on the platform with premium features, the chance to profit from ad sales, and the ability to sell subscriptions.
According to stats on X, over 11 million accounts viewed the X post where the debate took place, and over 100,000 accounts were listening to the audio-only chat at any given time. The number of accounts in Germany was unclear.
For X in Europe, the incident might have regulatory repercussions. In a statement released on Tuesday, the Party of European Socialists expressed disapproval of Musk’s ambitions and called on the European Union to take every legal action to defend democracy from false information and outside meddling on social media. X is now being investigated for possible infractions of the Digital Services Act of the union.
A request for comment on the possible repercussions was not immediately answered by X.
Referencing the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla without specifically naming him, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro S. Sanchez claimed on Wednesday that the ultra-right was being led by the wealthiest man on the planet and that the organization openly supports the descendants of Nazism in Germany and incites hatred.
During the conversation, Musk mentioned the AfD’s stance on immigration reduction and energy policy, saying that to him, the party’s ideas were just common sense. However, he admitted that he and AfD had different opinions about the benefits of solar energy, with Musk being a strong supporter and AfD seeking to reduce.
Musk’s Tesla has a sizable facility outside of Berlin, and as it looks to grow, it has faced local resistance.
Since its establishment in 2013, even before Musk offered to help the group, AfD has experienced steady growth. AfD is leading the country in polls ahead of the February 23 snap elections, which were called in response to the fall of Germany’s left-led coalition government. The AfD was Germany’s first far-right party to win a state election since World War II last year.
Because of the AfD’s extremist stances, other German political parties have declined to form alliances with it.
The AfD disputes that it is an extremist party, dismissing the accusations as an effort by the establishment to keep it out of the political mainstream. However, its leaders have stated unequivocally that they do not think Germany should continue to apologize for the Holocaust and other Third Reich actions.
When Musk pressed Weidel to address criticism of the party, he stated that the AfD is quite different from Adolf Hitler’s party. “Left-wing political parties in Europe are antisemitic,” she claimed.
We would wish to free the state’s citizens, she said, adding that we have been falsely framed the entire time.
Musk has supported right-wing governments in a number of countries, including Italy and the UK, and he has been captivated by the notion of a future European civil war. Four European politicians decried Musk’s influence earlier this week.
Opponents from all political stripes are alarmed by the AfD’s rise, which is a part of a larger European far-right push. However, it is felt most keenly in Germany, where laws prohibiting Holocaust denial, Hitler support, and Swastikas still harken back to the country’s 80-year-old Nazi past.
AfD opponents point to statements made by officials like AfD co-founder Alexander Gauland, who was heavily criticized in 2016 for remarks against German soccer player J r me Boateng, whose father is from Ghana, as additional proof. According to Gauland, Germans enjoy him as a football player. However, they do not choose to live next to a Boateng.
According to Gauland, the Nazi era was merely a blip in the more than 1,000 years of prosperous German history.
And when regional leader Bj rn Hcke called a planned Holocaust memorial in Berlin a legacy of shame in 2017, it sparked outcry. Last year, Hcke was also fined 13,000 euros, or about $13,400, for appropriating Hitler’s Brownshirt SA paramilitaries’ famous slogan, Alles f r Deutschland, which translates to “Everything for Germany.”