Musk defends support for Germany’s far-right AfD, sparking row

BERLIN: Elon Musk defended his support for Germany’s far-right AfD party in an opinion piece in the Welt am Sonntag newspaper yesterday, prompting a senior editor to resign.

The world’s richest man doubled down on his comments from Dec 20 that “only the AfD can save Germany”, writing that the anti-immigration AfD was the “last ray of hope for the country” at the “brink of cultural and economic collapse”.

Despite various branches of the AfD being labelled “extremist” by Germany’s domestic security agency, Musk said the AfD’s classification as far-right was “clearly false” as party leader Alice Weidel “has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka”.

With Musk set to play a key role in US president-elect Donald Trump’s administration, the billionaire’s interventions have triggered accusations of meddling in Germany’s democracy.

The country is set to head to the polls on Feb 23, with the AfD polling at around 19% of the vote.

Musk’s guest opinion piece in the Welt am Sonntag provoked outraged reactions and the resignation of the conservative title’s opinion editor.

“Today a piece by Elon Musk appeared in the Welt am Sonntag. Yesterday I handed in my resignation after it went to print,” Eva Marie Kogel wrote on the X social media platform Musk owns.

Meanwhile the Greens’s campaign director Andreas Audretsch wrote: “We must not allow the Elon Musks of this world, the Chinese state or Russian troll factories to undermine our democracies in Europe.”

The Association of German Journalists (DJV) protested against the “election advertising” allowed by the newspaper’s editorial staff.

“The German media must not allow itself to be manipulated into acting as a mouthpiece for autocrats and their friends,” said DJV leader Mika Beuster.

Even the Welt’s new editor-in-chief Jan Philipp Burgard was compelled to disagree with Musk in the opinion piece, writing: “Even a genius can be wrong”.

Arguing that the AfD “is a danger to our values and our economy”, Burgard pointed out that Bjoern Hoecke, the AfD’s leader in Thuringia state, “has been convicted several times for using a banned Nazi slogan”.

Die Welt belongs to Axel Springer, Germany’s most influential press group.

Its line-up includes the Bild tabloid, the country’s most-read newspaper.