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Elon Musk hailed a “very reasonable” co-leader for Germany as she joined the tech billionaire for a discussion about Adolf Hitler, Donald Trump and alien existence.
In the latest attempt by the world’s richest man to influence European politics, Musk hosted Alice Weidel on social media platform X and “strongly urged” Germans to support AfD in the February 23 federal elections.
He said: “I think Alice Weidel is a very reasonable person and hopefully people can understand from this discussion. . . Nothing offensive offered – just common sense.“
At its peak, nearly 200,000 people watched Musk’s 75-minute long live stream on X with Weidel, which was falsely billed as “a conversation with the frontrunner to lead Germany.”
The AfD, classified as far-right by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, is polling around 19 percent and is poised to finish second in Europe’s largest country — its best performance in a national election.
However, respected pollsters put Friedrich Merz and the centre-right Christian Democrats in the lead with 31 percent.
Weidel, the AfD chancellor candidate, repeatedly thanked Musk for giving her the opportunity to speak without being “interrupted or negatively interrupted” – a situation she said was “absolutely new”.
She has sought to paint her party as a “conservative libertarian” that calls for the mass deportation of people of immigrant background.
Musk, who has criticized European leaders for meddling in German and British politics, invited Weidel to reject comparisons between his party and the Nazis.
This provoked a discussion in which both the host and the guests argued that Hitler was not right but a socialist.
This claim, popular among far-right groups who say that the German fascist movement that oversaw the murder of 6 million Jews – as well as large numbers of Roma, disabled people, homosexuals and communists – had nothing to do with socialism, has been rejected by historians. Describing itself as the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.
One of AfD’s most prominent politicians was the firebrand Björn Hocke. He was convicted and punished. For using banned Nazi slogans.
Musk’s far-right endorsement represents an unusual intervention by a key loyalist of President Trump in Germany’s election campaign.
It has sparked a renewed debate in Brussels over whether Germany’s most volatile major parties, as well as X and his wife, are breaking EU digital rules by meddling in politics and highlighting accounts that spread misinformation and extremist views.
The platform had nearly 4 million monthly active users in Germany in December. Same webDigital Market Information Company.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz – whom Muck described as an “incompetent idiot” – responded to the Tesla CEO’s intervention and emphasized that he should not “stay” and “feed the trolls”.
But Merz called Musk’s recent op-ed outlining his support for the far-right an “unprecedented case of meddling in a friendly country’s election campaign.”
The conversation between Musk and Weidel gradually turned from a discussion of mainstream AfD themes, including immigration, taxes and the virtues of nuclear power, to a plea from the politician to a serial entrepreneur to express his views on the Middle East conflict, Mars, the existence of aliens and whether or not he believes in God.
Weidel said she felt “physically sick” at how German media and politicians treated Trump during the US presidential campaign and expressed hope that he would end the conflict in Ukraine.
She praised Musk for his “beautiful words” and “vision.”
Additional reporting by Clara Murray and Javier Espinoza
