Musk Wades Into German Election, Giving Platform to Far Right
(Bloomberg) -- US tech billionaire Elon Musk spoke with Germany’s far-right candidate Alice Weidel on his X social media site in what amounted to an unpaid advertisement for the Alternative for Germany party ahead of a federal election next month.
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The discussion, which ranged from Hitler and Stalin to aliens and a human settlement on Mars, lasted for just over an hour. Musk has more than 211 million followers on X and 105,000 people were listening in before the event kicked off.
The X spaces event was Musk’s latest foray into European politics, where he has become a loud advocate for far-right parties.
In its campaign platform for the Feb. 23 snap election, the AfD calls for a German exit from the European Union and the euro zone, moves that would mark a major shift in German policy and unwind decades of political and economic integration. The party also calls for a crackdown on undocumented migrants, including expelling hundreds of thousands of people.
The AfD currently ranks second in the polls with about 19% support behind the CDU-led conservative bloc with 32%. Scholz’s governing Social Democrats rank third with 17% before their coalition partner, the Greens, with 12%.
The European Commission said it would monitor the chat and analyze it for any potential breaks of the EU’s Digital Services Act. Germany’s anti-corruption initiative LobbyControl said that the discussion could be viewed as an illegal party donation, since Musk has clearly stated that his goal is to boost the AfD.
Three AfD state chapters are classified as extremist and are under surveillance by Germany’s domestic intelligence service. The party says Islam doesn’t belong in the country, and former leader Alexander Gauland has called the Nazi period a mere blemish on Germany’s long history.
Musk largely steered clear of asking critical questions about the AfD’s campaign platform. He did say he was in favor of solar panels after Weidel criticized the introduction of wind and solar energy in Germany. Tesla is a provider of residential power-packs, which store electricity from solar panels and provide a backup during outages.
--With assistance from Zoe Schneeweiss and Dana Hull.
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