Elon Musk has entered the German election campaign for good. After saying at Christmas that “only the AfD can save Germany”, the billionaire even used Adolf Hitler to assert in a newspaper article that the far-right party is not far-right.
The text, published this weekend in the Sunday version of Die Welt, one of the country’s main newspapers, provoked intense internal discussion and at least one casualty. On X, Musk’s social network, Opinion editor Eva Marie Kogel wrote that she always liked his work until she had to publish a text from the billionaire. “I submitted my resignation after the newspaper was printed.”
The controversy quickly spilled over into other media outlets in Germany. Not only because of the internal dispute, but also because the article was perceived as electoral propaganda. The country will hold parliamentary elections on February 23, and Alternative for Germany is currently in second place in voting intention polls.
Welt’s own editorial board had alerted the editorial board about the problem in a meeting at the beginning of the week. In another meeting, on Friday (27), several editors also took a stance against the publication.
“Germany has become very comfortable in mediocrity. It’s time for bold change, and the AfD is the only party that opens this path”, says Musk, in the article, explaining that he felt comfortable talking about German politics because he had made “significant investments” in the country.
The largest of them is an electric car factory, the first in Europe, on the outskirts of Berlin. The Tesla unit, which consumed 5 billion euros (R$32 billion), faces protests from environmentalists for being in a forest area.
Donald Trump’s biggest campaigner in the US and protagonist of public arguments, such as the one he had with Alexandre de Moraes in Brazil, the businessman uses the typical far-right manual in his article, with a dark and apocalyptic tone, as described by Der Spiegel magazine. Germany would be “on the brink of economic and cultural collapse”, many degrees above the real crisis situation the country is facing.
Musk also protests against the extremist classification that the German Constitutional protection body gives to the Alternative for Germany. He recalls that the party leader and candidate for prime minister, Alice Weidel, is married “to a Sri Lankan woman”. “Does this sound like Hitler to you? Please”, writes the billionaire.
Weidel has lived with filmmaker Sarah Bossard, who lives in Switzerland, for 20 years. The parliamentarian, however, says she is not gay and takes a stand against homosexual marriage, one of the many conservative banners of her party. The contradiction is little explored in politics due to the fact that it refers to Weidel’s personal life, a care that Musk did without.
Anticipating the controversy, Welt’s new editor-in-chief, Jan-Philipp Burgard, who takes over the newspaper on January 1st, also published this Saturday (28th) an article critical of the billionaire. For Burgard, the assertion that only the AfD can save Germany is “fatally wrong”.
“Musk seems to ignore the geopolitical framework in which the AfD wants to position Germany”, writes the journalist, remembering that the acronym defends the country’s exit from the European Union. “That would be a catastrophe.”
Burgard also says that the “reimigration” and mass deportation plans advocated by the AfD are xenophobic and a “danger for Germany”.
Kogel, the editor who resigned, used the headline of the former future boss’s article to announce her decision.
Die Welt is the so-called quality newspaper from Axel Springer, one of the most important publishers in Europe, which also publishes the sensationalist Bild is the owner of the website Politico.
