Following the dissolution of the German parliament last week, new legislative elections will be held in February to designate the new chancellor who will succeed Olaf Scholz. In the meantime, the proximity between Elon Musk and the far-right AfD party is worrying the German political class.
American billionaire Elon Musk “is trying to influence the elections” German legislative elections scheduled for the end of February with his repeated support for the far-right AfD party, the German government said on Monday. “Elon Musk is trying to influence the federal elections with his statements”, said Christiane Hoffmann, deputy government spokeswoman, during a regular press briefing.
“He is free to express his opinion,” but this is equivalent, she stressed, to “an electoral recommendation for a party that is being monitored” by German domestic intelligence, “because he is suspected of being far-right” and has already “been recognized” by the courts as such.
A column that had been strongly criticized by the other parties but also by journalists' associations, denouncing a “electoral advertising” by the newspaper. Even the new editor-in-chief of the newspaper declared that “even a genius can make mistakes”.
The AfD, a far-right party under surveillance
This qualification in Germany for a political movement can justify police surveillance due to fears of undermining the constitutional order. On Saturday, the daily Welt published a joint column in which the boss of X, spaceX and Tesla assures that the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is “the last glimmer of hope” for Germany. He considers his classification as far-right “clearly false”.
200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000
Only AfD can save Germany https://t.co/8TNZVEZGh5
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 22, 2024
The richest man in the world reaffirmed a position already expressed on December 20 in a tweet that had created unease in the country in the midst of the election campaign. The AfD is credited with an average of 19% of voting intentions in the polls, second behind the conservative opposition, which leads with 32%.
The embarrassment in Germany is a measure of the growing influence that the multi-billionaire seems to have on the future Trump presidency, in which he is to head the “Department of Government Efficiency”.
Scholz's party compares him to Vladimir Putin
On November 8, he had already called Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz a “crazy”, in the wake of the breakup of the government coalition. And on December 20, after the car attack on the Magdeburg Christmas market, he called him an “incompetent idiot” and called on him to resign. “Freedom of expression also includes the greatest absurdities,” his spokesperson Christiane Hoffmann said. Social Democratic Party chairman Lars Klingbeil compared Musk's behavior to that of Russian President Vladimir Putin: “both want Germany to be weakened and plunged into chaos”.
Well-placed to become the next chancellor, conservative Friedrich Merz also castigated Musk's pro-AfD column, which he deemed “intrusive and pretentious.” “I don't remember that in the history of Western democracies there has been a comparable case of interference in the election campaign of a friendly country”, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) told the group's newspapers Funke, known for his very Atlantic positions.