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BERLIN (Reuters) – U.S. billionaire Elon Musk backed the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in a guest opinion for German newspaper Welt am Sonntag published online on Saturday, prompting the columnist to resign in protest.
In his commentary, published in German by the flagship paper of the Axel Springer Media Group, Musk expanded on a post he wrote on social media X last week, saying “only the AfD can save Germany.”
“Claims that the AfD is a right-wing extremist is patently false, considering its leader Alice Weidel has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka! Does that sound like Hitler to you? Please!” Musk said in part.
From 2021, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has classified the national AfD as a suspect in the crime of extremism.
Shortly after the article was published online, comment section editor Eva Marie Kogel wrote on X that she had tendered her resignation, with a link to the comment.
“Democracy and journalism thrive on freedom of expression,” said the paper’s editors-in-chief Jan-Philipp Burghardt and Ulf Poschardt, who took over as publishers on January 1.
“It’s very revealing,” he said of the discussion on Musk’s piece, which generated nearly 340 comments a few hours after it was published.
Under Musk’s comment, the newspaper published Burghardt’s response.
“Musk’s diagnosis is correct, but only the AfD can save Germany. The treatment is a fatal lie,” they wrote, referring to the AfD’s desire to leave the EU and get closer to Russia and appease China.
The coalition government led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz collapsed.
The AfD is in second place in opinion polls and could scuttle a centre-right or far-left majority, but Germany’s main, more centrist parties have vowed to drop any support from the AfD at the national level.
