Billionaire Trump adviser said his ‘significant investments’ in the country justified his wading into German politics
Guardian staff and agencySat 28 Dec 2024 16.19 CET
The tech entrepreneur and close adviser to Donald Trump Elon Musk has taken a stunning new public step in his support for the far-right German political party Alternative for Germany (AfD), publishing a supportive guest opinion piece for the country’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper that has prompted the commentary editor to resign in protest.
The commentary piece in German was launched online on Saturday ahead of being published on Sunday in the flagship paper of the Axel Springer media group, which also owns the US politics news site Politico.
Musk uses populist and personal language to try to deny AfD’s extremist bent and the piece expands on his post on the social media platform X that he owns, on which he last week claimed that “only the AfD can save Germany”.
Translated, Musk’s piece said: “The portrayal of the AfD as rightwing extremist is clearly false, considering that Alice Weidel, the party’s leader, has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka! Does that sound like Hitler to you? Please!”
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has classified the AfD at the national level as a suspected extremism case since 2021.
Shortly after the piece was published online, the editor of the opinion section, Eva Marie Kogel, used the US tech mogul’s own platform to post on X that she had submitted her resignation.
“I always enjoyed heading the opinion department at Welt and Wams. Today a text by Elon Musk appeared in Welt am Sonntag. Yesterday I submitted my resignation after printing,” she posted.
She included a link to the Musk commentary article.
The AfD has a strong anti-immigration stance and, like incoming president Donald Trump in relation to the US, is calling for mass deportations from Germany. Earlier in December, Musk not only posted in favor of AfD but the party’s hard line on immigration appeared to resonate with the incoming US vice-president, JD Vance, MSNBC reported.
Senior Welt Group figures weighed in on Saturday.
“Democracy and journalism thrive on freedom of expression. This includes dealing with polarising positions and classifying them journalistically,” the newspaper’s editor-in-chief designate, Jan Philipp Burgard, and Ulf Poschardt, who takes over as publisher on 1 January, told Reuters.
They said discussion about Musk’s piece, which had about 340 comments several hours after it was published, was “very revealing”.
Underneath Musk’s commentary, the newspaper published a response by Burgard.
“Musk’s diagnosis is correct, but his therapeutic approach, that only the AfD can save Germany, is fatally false,” he wrote, referencing the AfD’s desire to leave the European Union and seek rapprochement with Russia as well as appease China.
The AfD backing from Musk, who also defended his right to weigh in on German politics due to his “significant investments”, comes as Germans are set to vote on 23 February after a coalition government led by the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, collapsed late this fall.
The AfD is running second in opinion polls and might be able to thwart either a centre-right or centre-left majority, but Germany’s mainstream, more centrist parties have pledged to shun any support from the AfD at the national level.
(c)THE GUARDIAN 2024
If you Google Alice Weidel’s Ukraine position, you get :
“Alice Weidel, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) candidate for chancellor, has called for an immediate end to all German funding and arms supplies to Ukraine.”
That tells you why comrade Ivan Muskovy is a fan of this filthy putlerist party.
Well I just want to say how disappointed I am in you Scradge.
I looked all the way through my copy of Karma Sutra (For Dykes) and found no such thing as the ‘Ukrainian Position’.
I have therefor emailed the aforementioned Alice ‘No Phallus’ Weidel telling her in no uncertain terms I expect photos of her and her Lesbo mate Lezzing each other off by return of Post.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8a0c7867-a296-4be2-af1f-639ea74e6a02_1290x1387.png
Very fitting, Larry!
Musk-ovitz is a fascist and an asshole, plain and simple. Every democratic person should stop buying his ugly and overpriced vehicles. Let the Nazis do that.
elon musk is EVIL