The German Government has accused American billionaire Elon Musk this Monday of trying to influence the elections scheduled for February with articles supporting the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, although he suggested they amounted to “nonsense.”
Musk, who is set to serve Donald Trump’s new administration as an external advisor, endorsed the AfD as Germany’s last hope in a guest op-ed for the newspaper ‘Welt am Sonntag’ that sparked the resignation of the comments editor in protest.
“It is true that Elon Musk is trying to influence the federal elections” with the X messages and the opinion article, said a German government spokesperson. Musk is free to express his opinion, the spokesperson said, adding: “At the end of the day, freedom of opinion also encompasses the biggest nonsense.” Musk, the richest person in the world, has defended his right to comment on German politics due to his “important investments”and has praised the AfD’s approach to regulation, taxation and market deregulation.
His intervention occurred when Germans were preparing to vote in a parliamentary elections on February 23 after the fall of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition government. Musk also called for Scholz to resign after a car plowed into a crowd at a Christmas market on December 20, killing five people.
The AfD is currently in second place in opinion polls, behind the main opposition conservatives, and could thwart a center-right or center-left majority in the elections. Germany’s main parties have pledged not to work with the AfD at the national level.
The government spokesman said Musk’s support for the AfD was “a recommendation to vote for a party that is being monitored (by national intelligence) on suspicion of being far-right and which has already been partly recognized as far-right.
German politicians have criticized Musk for his support of the AfD, and the co-leader of Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) He compared him to Russian President Vladimir Putin. «They both want to influence our elections and specifically support the AfD’s enemies of democracy. “They want Germany to weaken and fall into chaos,” Lars Klingbeil told the Funke news group on Monday. Friedrich Merz, leader of the opposition Christian Democrats and current favorite to succeed Scholz as chancellor, told Funke that Musk’s comments were “intrusive and pretentious.”
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