Elon Musk, in Nudging Germany To Vote for the Far Right, Could Actually Sway the Country Left

Maybe Elon Musk should have spent more time in Mykonos? The world’s wealthiest man might have learned something useful about European politics — inveigh against what you will in a bar or at a beach, but unless you are a European citizen, sometimes it is best to not wade in too deeply. Consider the commotion over Mr. Musk’s suggestion that Germany’s best hope is its rightist party, Alternative for Germany party, or AfD. Writing in Welt am Sonntag, the Sunday version of the Axel Springer’s national broadsheet, Die Welt, Mr. Musk stated that “Germany’s future is teetering on the brink of economic and cultural collapse” and because of that, in his estimation, “the Alternative for Germany is the last glimmer of hope for this country.”As if to head off the criticism Mr. Musk knew would be coming by inserting himself into German domestic politics, the high-tech tycoon and incoming Trump administration aide added that being “someone who has made significant investments in the German industrial and technological landscape” gives him the standing to speak his mind in a German newspaper. It is true that many Tesla cars are manufactured at a gigafactory at Grünheide in Brandenburg, in eastern Germany — where, incidentally, the AfD has been growing in popularity. After the December 20 car attack at the Magdeburg Christmas market, Mr. Musk took to X to call Chancellor Scholz an “incompetent fool” and also called on him to resign.When the Bundestag was dissolved Friday ahead of upcoming snap elections, the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, stated that “external influence is a threat to democracy,” adding that it was being “openly and blatantly” pursued on X, the platform that Mr. Musk owns.In Mr. Musk’s feisty column, he spelled out five points — the economy, immigration, energy, cultural identity, and innovation — to explain why he believes the AfD is the right party to “save Germany from becoming a shadow of its former self.”That political endorsement combined with its publication just weeks away from elections in a country facing major economic headwinds caused an uproar, drawing sharp rebukes from a wide range of German politicians. Die Welt’s commentary editor actually up and quit.Herr Scholz’s minister of justice, Marco Buschmann, told the Germany tabloid Bild that “anyone who flirts with a party that is partly nationalistic, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic is not a good political role model. This party wants to leave the EU, the Euro and NATO. That is economic and security suicide.” He added that “anyone who sympathizes with the election of the AfD must be aware of one fact: the stronger the AfD becomes, the more likely left-wing parties will end up in government.”That last nugget is something that may be lost on the world’s richest fellow, whose propensity for thinking big sometimes means insensitivity to nuance — whether the domain at hand is personal or in this case, political. Mr. Buschmann may be right about the left. After all, a rising tide of migrant crime has already pushed the German center more to the right. In September Berlin rolled out hard border checks at all its land crossings, a move that flew in the face of decades of EU convention on open borders in the Schengen Area. That happened on the watch of Herr Scholz, who is a Social Democrat. Fast forward to December and following the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, Germany froze Syrian asylum requests. A politician from the center-right Christian Democratic Union even went so far as to suggest chartering planes to send Syrian refugees currently in Germany back to Syria. The leader of the CDU party, Friedrich Merz, is widely tipped to become Germany’s next chancellor. He has been a vocal critic of Chancellor Scholz, but for the moment has turned his guns on Mr. Musk and the publisher of his controversial article, Axel Springer. “I don’t remember a similar case of intervention in the election campaign of a friendly country in the history of Western democracies,” Mr. Merz stated in Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung.Where all of this leads may be anybody’s guess, but clearly the one person unflustered by wading into the politics of another country that is not his own is Mr. Musk. A critical article by a prominent editor at the Welt newspaper group, Jan Philipp Burgard, accompanied Mr. Musk’s opinion piece. “Musk’s diagnosis is correct, but his therapeutic approach, that only the AfD can save Germany, is fatally wrong,” he wrote. “According to its election manifesto, the AfD considers Germany’s exit from the European Union ‘necessary.’ For Germany as an export nation, that would be a catastrophe.” Mr. Burgard added that “the AfD, with its Höcke wing, is pandering to Russia and China and its rejection of America and the EU is a danger to our values and our economy.”

Elon Musk, in Nudging Germany To Vote for the Far Right, Could Actually Sway the Country Left

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