Elon Musk has waded into Germany’s election campaign by backing the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, marking the latest intervention by the US billionaire entrepreneur into politics around the world.
Musk, a close adviser to Donald Trump, on Friday retweeted a video by a German rightwing activist, adding: “Only the AfD can save Germany.” Alice Weidel, the AfD’s leader, responded: “Yes! You are perfectly right.”
The AfD, classified as a suspected extremist organisation by Germany’s domestic intelligence, is poised for big electoral gains in elections scheduled on February 23. The vote, triggered by the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition last month, comes as Europe’s biggest economy comes under heavy strain.
Polls suggest the AfD could win only about 19% of the vote, while the Christian Democrats (CDU) led through Friedrich Merz, who are expected to get around 30%.
Musk used X to make his political perspectives explicit and magnify right-wing voices. Since purchasing the platform in 2022, the director of Tesla and SpaceX has attacked liberal leaders in countries such as the United Kingdom, Brazil and Australia, while criticizing populist leaders such as Argentina’s Javier Milei.
After recently meeting Musk in Florida, Nigel Farage on Tuesday said the billionaire was giving “serious thought” to providing a donation to his Reform UK party.
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Germany has been a common target of Musk’s comments: he mocked former Chancellor Angela Merkel and disparaged Social Democratic candidate Scholz. But he has shown interest in AfD politicians such as Björn Höcke, the debatable nationalist who led the party to victory in elections in the eastern state of Thuringia in September.
On Friday Musk retweeted a video by Naomi Seibt, a 24-year-old climate change sceptic dubbed the “anti-Greta Thunberg”, which criticises Merz for ruling out forming a coalition with the AfD.
A spokesman for Merz declined to comment. A spokesman said he had “taken note”.
Despite Elon Musk’s support, the AfD is unlikely to prevail in Germany, as all other parties have said they will not work with it. Founded in 2013 amid the eurozone debt crisis, the party has since had a radical nationalist, anti-immigration movement advocating Germany’s exit from the EU.
The German domestic intelligence agency has designated its branches in Thuringia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt as “rightwing extremist”.
Some of its politicians have caused controversy. Höcke was fined 30,000 euros this year by two other courts for banned Nazi slogans. In 2017, he described the Holocaust memorial in Berlin as a “monument to shame. ”
In an interview with the Financial Times in May, AfD MEP Maximilian Krah said of the SS, the organization that ran Adolf Hitler’s extermination camps: “Before labeling someone a criminal, I would like to know what they did personally. “
Additional reporting by Laura Pitel and Guy Chazan