Germany’s Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck today denounced the country’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, two months before parliamentary elections.
“You, the citizens, decide (the outcome of the vote). It’s not for social media owners to decide,” the chancellor stresses in his New Year’s speech to be broadcast tonight.
“What will happen next in Germany will not be determined by the one who shouts the loudest, but rather by the great majority of decent and reasonable people,” the Social Democrat head of government added.
His vice-chancellor, Economy and Climate Protection Minister Robert Habeck of the Alliance ’90/Greens party, also criticized Elon Musk’s “logic” and “system” in his own New Year’s message.
“Musk strengthens those who weaken Europe. A weak Europe is in the interests of those for whom regulation is an inappropriate limit on their power,” says the Greens chancellor candidate.
On Saturday, the Welt newspaper published an article in which the multi-billionaire head of X, SpaceX and Tesla, who is set to head a “ministry of government efficiency” in Donald Trump’s administration, asserts that the AfD is “the last glimmer of hope’ for Germany.
Yesterday, Monday, the world’s richest man again expressed his support for the AfD, telling X, under the pseudonym Kekius Maximus, that the AfD will “deliver an epic victory” in the election.
The AfD is credited with 20.5% of the vote intention and is on the rise, according to an Insa poll published today by Bild – it is in second place behind the conservative opposition, which leads with 31%.
Elon Musk also called the German president an “anti-democratic tyrant” on X on Monday night, commenting on a false claim by an AfD supporter influencer that Franz-Walter Steimier would annul the election results .
On Friday, the head of state had warned against “influence from outside”, which is, according to him, “a danger to democracy”, especially when it is expressed “overtly and not covertly, as is the case now, in a particularly intensive way, on platform X”.
