Tesla CEO Elon Musk jumped into foreign policy by endorsing the right-wing Alternative für Deutschland 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.
On the eve of Germany’s early February election, sparked by the collapse of the ruling Social Democratic Party, Musk offered his aid to 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 to the AfD?They keep talking about ‘far right’, but the AfD policies I’ve heard about don’t seem extremist,” he said. “Maybe I’m missing something. “
AfD spokeswoman Alice Weidel thanked Musk for his support and referred him to an interview she gave to Bloomberg. In it he accused “socialist Merkel” of ruining Germany and the European Union, a “Soviet European Union”.
He followed up with a video message expressing his thanks to Musk and President-elect Donald Trump.
“Dear @elonmusk, Thank you so much for your note,” she said. “The Alternative for Germany is indeed the one and only alternative for our country; our very last option. I wish you and President Donald #Trump all the best for the upcoming tenure! And also, I wish you and all the American people Merry #Christmas and a Happy New Year.”
Although welcomed by the AfD and other right-wing parties, Germany’s status quo parties have expressed discontent with Musk’s support.
“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 figures were more outspoken.
“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,” told 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 change in February, when the party came second in the polls, ahead of the ruling SPD. Another developing party, the eclectic left-wing populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), has indicated it might be willing to work with the AfD in a coalition.
Even if the other parties managed to form a governing coalition with the AfD, it would still be disrupting 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 precise labeling 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 leader of the AfD, 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, painting the party as a coalition of different broadly right-wing ideological factions.