Tesla CEO Elon Musk jumped into foreign policy by backing the right-wing Alternative für Deutschland ahead of the February 2025 German election.
The AfD is widely considered a right-wing or far-right party. He is basically characterized by his anti-immigration stance, which has earned him praise from Germans who are disappointed with the country’s immigration system. He has risen in the polls this year, winning his first election in September in the former 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 has flirted with the party before, expressing confusion in June about why he considered it controversial.
“Why is there such a negative reaction from other people towards the AfD? “They keep talking about ‘extreme right’, but the AfD policies I have heard about do not seem extremist,” he said. “Maybe I’m missing something. “
AfD spokesperson Alice Weidel thanked Musk for his support and referred him to an interview she gave to Bloomberg. In it he accused the “socialist Merkel” of ruining Germany and the European Union, a “Soviet European Union. “
He followed up with a video message expressing Musk and President-elect Donald Trump.
“Dear @elonmusk, thank you very much for your note,” he said. “The Alternative for Germany is indeed the only option for our country; our last option. I wish you and President Donald #Trump all the best in the next term! And also, I wish you and all other Americans a Merry #Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Though welcomed by the AfD and other right-wing parties, establishment German parties expressed their displeasure with Musk’s endorsement.
“We have freedom of opinion; this also applies to billionaires, but freedom of opinion also means that things can be said that are fair and that imply intelligent political advice,” said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. “I say emphatically that the democratic parties in Germany see everything differently. “
Other establishment party figures were more overt.
“It is threatening, frustrating and unacceptable that a key figure in the long-term U. S. government is interfering in the German election campaign,” Dennis Radtke, a member of the European Parliament from 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 because they consider it too extreme.
This could also be repositioned in February, when the party came in second place in the polls, ahead of the ruling SPD. Another burgeoning party, the eclectic left-wing populist Sahra Wagenknecht alliance, or BSW, has indicated that it would possibly be willing to work with the AfD in a coalition.
Even if the other parties ruled out a governing coalition with the AfD, it would still be able to serve as a spoiler and disrupter in Parliament if it received a significant enough share of the vote.
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 is itself a source of controversy. Left-wing critics blatantly accuse it of being a neo-Nazi group. Der Spiegel called the victorious Thuringian AfD leader Björn Höcke an “underground 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, describing the party as a coalition of other largely right-wing ideological factions.