The businessman and billionaire Martín Varsavsky has detailed on the first day of the year how the idea of offering a platform to fellow billionaire Elon Musk was forged last weekend in the German Sunday newspaper. Welt am Sontag —the conservative version Welt which is published on Sundays—under the title ‘Only AfD can save Germany’.
Varsavsky, who describes himself as “a friend of Elon” and who is part of the Supervisory Board from the German publisher Axel Springer SE since 2014, has revealed on the social network
The Argentine technology entrepreneur affirms that he saw public support for the German far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) of the founder of companies such as SpaceX or Tesla as “an opportunity” for Musk to argue his points of view. “in a more thoughtful and detailed way.”
“I contacted Jennifer Wilton, editor-in-chief of Die Weltto gauge their interest in an Elon editorial on the matter. After carefully considering it, he agreed that an article like that would have great news value and was worthy of publication,” says the entrepreneur, who reveals how he himself contacted Elon Musk, explaining “the potential impact” of this “opportunity to clarify your position.”
The result: “He liked the idea, wrote the article and Die Welt “he published it,” in the words of Varsavsky, who took the opportunity to share the text from his South African friend’s opinion forum again.
Martín Varsavsky, founder of Jazztel, ya.com or FON, has spoken out on numerous occasions against taxes on large fortunes in Spain and has made public numerous criticisms of the Spanish Government.
One of its most striking controversies occurred in 2020 when, due to the health measures approved by the Executive due to the Covid-19 pandemic, decided to leave for several months to live in Berlin.
Furthermore, after the elections last November in the US, he published an image with the maps of that country, Argentina and Spain and the words “MEGA Make Spain Great Again. Next goal: Save Spain!!”, in reference to the motto Make America Great Again of the MAGA movement that supports Donald Trump in the North American country.
In the article in question, Musk expresses his support for the German far-right party, located in second position in the polls and a month and a half before the legislative elections, and elaborates on the reasons for his blessing to the party, which remains under the surveillance by the federal secret services for suspicions of extremism.
The text delves into the idea that the tycoon had already openly expressed in mid-December when, in a message on the ultra agenda promotion platform in versions from all latitudes – wrote: “Only AfD can save Germany”, a phrase that gives the title to his article in the German newspaper.
In the column, Musk defines the party as “the last glimmer of hope,” before advocating the goodness of his ideas. “Traditional parties have failed in Germany,” defends Musk. “AfD, although it is called extreme right, represents a political realism with which many Germans identify who feel that their concerns are ignored by the establishment”, he adds in an intervention that has encouraged fears in Germany of interference in the electoral campaign and a discussion about the limits of freedom of expression.
Criticisms of Die Welt and resignations
The debate began in the same editorial office of Weltwhere the opinion leader presented her resignation at the close of the newspaper’s edition. “I have always liked running the Opinion section of Welt and Welt am Sonntag. Today an article by Elon Musk appeared in Welt am Sonntag. Yesterday I presented my resignation after the publication,” Eva Marie Kogel wrote in
As we have learned at the start of the year, the decision to publish Musk’s article was not made by the head of Opinion, but rather came to the newspaper through Jennifer Wilton, editor-in-chief of the newspaper since 2022 and who lived in the early 2000s. in Spain, where he combined his studies with collaborations with several international media, including the newspaper El País.
Musk’s text appeared accompanied on December 28 by another column signed by journalist Jan Philipp Burgard, who will take over this Wednesday as editor of the Axel Springer group’s newspaper, to which the tabloid also belongs. Bild or the American media Political either Business Insider. “Musk’s diagnosis is correct, but his therapeutic approach, that only the AfD can save Germany, is fatally wrong,” wrote Burgard, without this preventing the storm that the publication of Musk’s text has unleashed inside and outside the newspaper. .
The German Journalists Association (DJV) published a note in which it accused the newspaper of having given Musk “carte blanche to advertise the AfD” and of having relativized in Burgard’s text the accusations leveled at the ultra formation by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the intelligence services for the interior of the country.
“Everything that could have been done wrong, those responsible for ‘Die Welt’ have done,” stated the president of the DJV, Mika Beuster, in this statement. “Election advertising from a far-right party packaged as journalism, a flattering distancing that is not, and the silencing of the editorial staff’s internal critics. Incredible!”.
The response of the main parties
Representatives of the main German parties have also mentioned possible US electoral interference. “I do not remember, in the history of Western democracies, that there has been a comparable case of interference in the electoral campaign of a friendly country,” said the CDU’s candidate for chancellor, Friedrich Merz, in an interview with the group’s newspapers. Funke Media.
“Let’s imagine for a moment the justified reaction of Americans to a comparable article by a prominent German businessman in the New York Times supporting an outsider in the US presidential election campaign,” he added. Merz also reminded Musk that, if it were up to the AfD, his electric car gigafactory in Brandenburg would not exist, “since they were the ones who most opposed this plant.”
Saskia Esken, co-leader of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), also denounced Musk’s interference. “We say it clearly: Our democracy is defensible and cannot be bought,” Esken told Reuters. Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, also of the SPD, wrote in X: “The fact that political power can now be bought more and more easily will be very detrimental to democracy. If the newspapers join in, they will be digging their own grave and will be no better than social networks.”
The current chancellor Scholz had already expressed himself when Musk had written on his social network his support for the AfD. Asked during a press conference with his Estonian counterpart, he stated: “We have freedom of opinion; This also applies to billionaires, but freedom of opinion also means that things can be said that are not correct and that do not contain good political advice.”
“Indeed, Elon Musk is trying, with his statements, to influence the elections to the Bundestag,” the deputy spokesperson for the Executive, Christiane Hoffmann, said this Monday. Hoffmann did not want to assess what weighs more in this case, freedom of opinion or the attempt to interfere from abroad in the German elections. “Freedom of opinion is a valuable asset. And here we are seeing an attempt to exert influence. Whether it is achieved or not is another thing. “We see an attempt to exert influence,” he noted, in statements reported by EFE.
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