Musk and AfD leader discuss ‘communist’ Hitler ahead of German election
The far-right party, polling in second-place, is enjoying Musk’s full-throated endorsement
Elon Musk has enthusiastically endorsed Germany’s main far-right party after a meandering interview with its leader led to the two discussing a “woke mind virus” and Adolf Hitler’s “communist-socialist” stance.
The tech billionaire and Donald Trump advisor used the uncritical exchange with Alice Weidel, the co-leader of the extreme Alternative for Germany party (AfD), to offer his whole-hearted backing to the anti-immigration party ahead of national elections.
In the interview, live-streamed on his social media platform X, Weidel claimed the AfD was the opposite of what Hitler stood for, saying: “The biggest success after that terrible era in our history was to label Adolf Hitler as right and conservative, he was exactly the opposite.
“He was a communist socialist guy, full stop. We are exactly the opposite, the libertarian-conservative party.”
Historians globally have almost unanimously concluded Hitler, an eliminationist nationalist, was of the far-right.
The two agreed that immigration was too high, that German bureaucracy was stifling business, Germans were taxed too much and that Berlin had blundered in shutting its nuclear power plants.
Musk repeated his full-throated endorsement of AfD and said he was “strongly recommending people support” the party, adding: “Nothing outrageous is being proposed – only sensible policies. Only AfD can save Germany, end of story.”
The AfD’s extreme stance on migration has led to it being monitored by Germany’s domestic intelligence services. Party leaders have been penalised by German courts for repeating banned Nazi slogans, and it has expelled members for using racist and antisemitic language.
When Weidel said that record levels of German money, “was thrown out the window” to help foreigners and that “almost 60 per cent of people coming through our open borders throw away their passports,” the world’s richest man accepted her unsubstantiated claims without question.
He also agreed with Weidel’s claims about how an “insane wokeish leftist socialist agenda in our educational system” means children are not learning “anything”, other than about gender studies.
Musk himself said the establishment suffered from “a woke mind virus”.
He said, without evidence, that “all the world’s criminals come to America” because “it is so easy to steal things in target-rich neighbours” and that laws in California meant “the de facto situation is that theft is never prosecuted”.
The online discussion came amid widespread concerns Musk is interfering in European politics, with social media posts from the Tesla CEO prompting attempts in the UK to amend the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill on Wednesday and reports in the Financial Times Musk is privately discussing how Sir Keir Starmer can be removed as prime minister.
During Thursday night’s talk, Musk threw in some slurs about Hungarian-born George Soros, suggesting the Jewish financier was the one meddling in politics.
The online event was seemingly aimed at providing a similar boost to the AfD as his backing for Trump’s re-election as US president last year.
The AfD is currently polling at 20 per cent ahead of the February 23 elections, in second place behind the conservative CDU-CSU at 31 per cent.
Critics have warned that the discussion could enhance Weidel’s party. However, while Musk boasts 212 million followers on X, only 190,000 X accounts tuned into the conversation.
