Tesla CEO Elon Musk entered foreign policy by supporting the right-wing Alternative für Deutschland party ahead of the February 2025 German election.
AfD is broadly considered a right-wing or far-right party. It is mainly characterized by its anti-immigration stance, which has won laudits among Germans disillusioned with the country’s immigration system. It has surged in the polls this year, winning its first election in September in the formerly communist state of Thuringia.
Ahead of Germany’s snap elections in February, triggered by the collapse of the ruling Social Democratic Party, Musk threw his support behind the resurgent party.
“Only the AfD can save Germany,” Musk said.
Musk had flirted with the party previously, expressing confusion in June as to why it was considered controversial.
“Why is there such a negative reaction from other people about the AfD? They keep talking about ‘far right’, but the AfD policies I’ve heard about don’t seem extremist,” he said. something. “
AfD spokeswoman Alice Weidel welcomed Musk’s support, directing him to an interview she did with Bloomberg. In it, she accused “socialist Merkel” of ruining Germany and referred to the European Union as the “Soviet European Union.”
He followed up with a video message voicing Musk and President-elect Donald Trump.
“Dear @elonmusk, thank you very much for your rating,” he said. The Alternative for Germany is in fact the only option for our country; our newest option. I wish you and President Donald Trump all the best for the next one. “term! And also, I wish you and all other Americans a satisfied #Noël and a Happy New Year.
Although welcomed by the AfD and other right-wing parties, Germany’s status quo parties have expressed displeasure with Musk’s support.
“We have freedom of opinion; that also applies to billionaires, but freedom of opinion also means that you can say things that are correct and imply intelligent political advice,” the chancellor said. The German Olaf Scholz. “I say emphatically that all democratic parties in Germany see things differently. “
Other establishment figures were more obvious.
“It is threatening, irritating, and unacceptable for a key figure in the future U.S. government to interfere in the German election campaign,” Dennis Radtke, a European Parliament member of the center-right Christian Democratic Union, told Handelsblatt.
Radtke, who called X a “slingshot of disinformation,” called Musk a “threat to democracy in the Western world. “
The AfD has gained popularity since former Chancellor Angela Merkel made the decision to take in large numbers of refugees, mostly Syrians, in 2015. Although the party has done well in the polls since 2015, it has been excluded from the government due to a deal. among all the primary parties that would not collaborate with the AfD, considering it too extreme.
This could also be repositioned in February, when the party took second place in the polls, ahead of the ruling SPD. Another burgeoning party, the eclectic left-wing populist alliance Sahra Wagenknecht, or BSW, has indicated it would possibly be willing to work with the AfD in a coalition.
Even if the other parties managed to form a government coalition with the AfD, the latter would still disrupt parliament if it received a sufficiently gigantic percentage of the votes.
The AfD’s shock September victory in Thuringia sent shockwaves through the German political scene, with some analysts declaring it the first victory for a far-right party since the creation of the modern German state.
The exact label of the AfD Party is itself a source of controversy. Left-wing critics openly accuse it of being a neo-Nazi group. Der Spiegel called the victorious Thuringia AfD leader Björn Höcke a “Clandestine Hitler.”
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The party has consistently rejected the far-right label, with its leaders saying the party stands for “the liberal democratic order and has nothing to do with this suspected neo-Nazi grouping.”
Other analysts take a more nuanced view, painting the party as a coalition of different broadly right-wing ideological factions.