The tech billionaire is meddling in elections across Europe, and his latest move to support the AfD is proof he is determined to undermine democracy in a country that knows better than any what far-right dictatorship can bring, writes John Kampfner
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When the Germans entered a year full of apprehension, I remembered an episode ten years ago so absurd to me and that today I marvel at its foreknowledge.
I presided over an Internet Convention in Berlin, sponsored through Google, when one of the participants reported that the German government creates an internet public company. Silicon Valley, said fervently, was the prerogative of other American super rich people and we could not accept so true with him to say the fact or maintain democracy.
I scoffed at the concept, even though I was too well-mannered to say it. The medium of his research was, and still is, incredibly superseded and ridiculous. The concept of the state being trusted to provide an online platform for observation and data – In the very land of Goebbels and The Stasi, is beyond belief. But I have to admit that the speaker had foreseen Elon Musk’s malice long before me or anyone I know.
Musk conducts a hammer through politics in Germany, at its most delicious time, and enjoys the concern it attributes. The more colorful its insults (delivered through X, its non -public fief), the more indigenous is the political elegance S. is its purpose and that of its boss, Donald Trump.
Where can democracy be undermined than in a country obsessed with constitutional property?
Musk called Chancellor Olaf Scholz an “incompetent fool. ” In some other post he described him as “Olaf Schitz”. He filed complaints against all the other dominant parties. But it was his latest recent attack on the head of state, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, that drew the utmost offense, calling the alleged father of democracy an “anti-democratic tyrant. “
In theory, they all have the right to sue him. German law weighs freedom of expression against the right not to be insulted in public. The criminal code contains an entire category of “crimes of honour”, incorporating insults, slander, defamation and the propagation of false statements that cause harm, financial losses or emotional distress.
All of which would play perfectly into the hands of Musk and his self-proclaimed battle for “free speech”. In any case, any fine would make an infinitesimally small dent in his pocketbook.
What is far more dangerous is Musk’s open support for the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD). With the party running second in the opinion polls ahead of the 23 February general election, his endorsement in the pages of the usually respectable conservative newspaper Welt am Sonntag of the AfD and all it stands for – remigration, ethno-based nationalism and Europhobia – matters. Not because of Musk’s political perspicacity but because of his hold on social media.
The richest guy in the world has a political and economic program in Gerguyy. In his remark in the newspaper a few days ago, he congratulated AFD on its plans to “decrease government over-regulation, lower taxes and get the market out of control. “A Tesla factory in the Brandenburg region, east of Berlin, is its first electric car factory in Europe and would gain advantages from any deregulation.
“The alternative for Germany is the spark of hope for this country,” Musk wrote in his translated comment.
He went on to say that the far-right party “can lead the country into a long race where economic prosperity, cultural integrity, and technological innovation are just wishes, but reality. “
Musk’s comment temporarily led to the resignation of the paper’s opinion editor, Eva Marie Kogel, while Lars Klingbeil, president of Scholz’s Social Democrats, a distant third, accused Musk of “plunging him into “Germany in chaos,” comparing him to Vladimir Putin.
The least positive situation is that Musk is exploiting latent frustration with liberal democracy in Germany, as he and Trump are doing in the United Kingdom.
Both Scholz and Friedrich Merz, the leader of the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the man most likely to succeed him at the chancellery, have criticised Musk. But they have chosen their words carefully. “You, the citizens, decide what happens in Germany,” Scholz said in his new year’s address. “It’s not up to the owners of social media.”
His measured tones mask a growing sense of worry. The terrorist attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg demonstrated the vulnerability of procedures to this type of incident: no one is safe, as demonstrated by the latest attack in New Orleans. This also opened the door to new complaints from immigrants, from the “other. ”
And Germany, of all places, knows where such hostility can lead.
The AfD would have probably gained about a percentage point, but it remains at 20%, a remarkable achievement anyway. The CDU remains above 30%, while the SPD, Greens and others languish.
A “firewall” agreed upon by the main parties remains in place, ensuring no cooperation or coalition discussions with the AfD or other extremist groupings at national level, though locally that has started to fray.
The positive situation is that the German electorate is no more receptive to American marketers telling them what to do than it was a decade ago, and whether Musk delivers at the AFD will make little difference. The final maximum maximum results probably electoral remain a MERZ/CDU coalition with the SPD or the Greens or both.
The least optimistic is that Musk is taking advantage of a latent frustration with liberal democracy in Germany, as he and Trump are doing in the United Kingdom, with his for Nigel Farage and in France, with Marine Le Pen.
Germans are already petrified at the prospect of Trump’s inauguration in a fortnight’s time. The question then is how far the 47th President of the United States, a title that used to carry the tag of “leader of the free world”, will be prepared to go to undermine democracy in the country that knows better than any what far-right dictatorship can bring?
As election campaigns in Germany tend to spring the odd surprise, there is ample time for Musk and his ilk to damage a liberal democracy that over the last eight decades has been so painstakingly built.
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