Elon Musk has done it again. For the second time in less than a month, the billionaire who has already become the right-hand man of the elected president of the United States, Donald Trump, has managed to monopolize the political debate in Germany with just over a month and a half left before crucial elections.
He has done so, once again, expressing his support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, second in the polls, behind the conservatives of the CDU. In a forum published this weekend by the Welt am Sonntagthe Sunday edition of the conservative newspaper Die WeltMusk elaborated on the reasons for his blessing to the formation, which remains under surveillance by the secret services for suspicion of extremism.
The text delved into the idea that the magnate had already openly expressed two weeks ago when, in a message on all latitudes – wrote: “Only AfD can save Germany.”
In the column, Musk returned to the same concept, defining the party as “the last glimmer of hope,” before listing the goodness of his ideas. “Traditional parties have failed in Germany,” Musk wrote. “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 added in an intervention that has encouraged fears of interference in the electoral campaign and a discussion about the limits of freedom of expression. A debate that began in the same editorial office of Weltwhere the opinion leader presented her resignation.
“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
Musk’s text appeared accompanied by another column signed by journalist Jan Philipp Burgard, who will take over this Wednesday as editor of the Axel Springer group newspaper, to which the tabloid also belongs. Bild and the American media Political. “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,” says the president of the DJV, Mika Beuster, in the 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!”.
Beuster also called on all editorial teams not to allow themselves to be exploited in the parliamentary election campaign and to treat guest contributions with great care: “The German media must not allow themselves to be misused as mouthpieces for autocrats.” and his friends.”
“There is something that happens with many media outlets and it is the fallacy of believing that all opinions are published and the truth is somewhere in between. And what Elon Musk says is published to show that campaign, but in reality it is giving voice to a person who supports a radical right-wing party that is at odds with democratic values, that seeks to erode the rule of law and that is an ally of other similar parties around the world. Which raises serious doubts about whether this decision by a media outlet makes any sense, this idea of listening to all opinions and then making decisions. I think it is a problem,” comments Franco Delle Donne, author of the book AfD Factor and director of the Epidemia Ultra podcast.
“What the head of Opinion of Welt It is a political position that shows that within the newspaper and in all the media there is no single opinion and that there are journalists who do their job, they do it conscientiously and that there are limits,” he adds.
The response of the main parties
The representatives of the main parties have also spoken of 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. In his text, Musk claimed the right to intervene in the debate in Germany due to the large investments made in the country where Tesla has opened an electric car gigafactory in Brandenburg, on the outskirts of Berlin. A factory that would not exist if it were for the AfD, Merz snapped, “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 said: “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 attempted interference from abroad in the German elections. “Freedom of opinion is a valuable asset. And here we are seeing an attempt to exert influence. Whether that is achieved or not is another thing. “We see an attempt to exert influence,” he noted, in statements reported by EFE.
Meanwhile, there are many, inside and outside Germany, who are beginning to believe that, as the journalist from Der SpiegelMarina Kormbaki, in her column this Saturday, “whoever wants to govern Germany must put Elon Musk in his place.”
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