U.S. billionaire Elon Musk accused of trying to influence German election
BERLIN – U.S. billionaire Elon Musk is trying to exert influence over the German election taking place in February, a government spokesperson said on Monday.
“It is indeed the case that Elon Musk is trying to influence the federal election,” with X posts and an opinion piece he wrote backing the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) over the weekend, she said, adding that such an endorsement is “a recommendation to vote for a party that is being monitored (by domestic intelligence) on suspicion of being right-wing extremist and which has already been recognised as partly right-wing extremist.”
On Sunday, Friedrich Merz, the centre-right candidate for chancellor in Germany’s legislative election, and the head of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, dismissed Elon Musk’s public support for the far-right AfD as unprecedented interference, labelling it “intrusive and pretentious.”
“I cannot recall, in the history of Western democracies, that there has been a comparable case of interference in the electoral campaign of a friendly country,” Merz told the Funke media group.
“Imagine for a brief moment, the — justified — reaction of Americans to a comparable article by a prominent German businessman in the New York Times backing an outsider in the US presidential election campaign,” he added.
Saskia Esken, co-leader of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), also criticised Musk’s interference.
“In Elon Musk’s world, democracy and workers’ rights are obstacles to more profit,” Esken told Reuters, adding that German democracy “cannot be bought.”
The support of the AfD from Musk, who is set to serve U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s administration as an outside adviser, comes as Germans are set to vote on Feb. 23 after a coalition government led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz collapsed.
The commentary published in German in the Welt am Sonntag newspaper, flagship of the Axel Springer media group, expanded on a post by Musk on social media platform X last week in which he wrote, “Only the AfD can save Germany,” and praised the far-right party’s approach to regulation, taxes, and market deregulation.
The AfD is currently in second place in opinion polls behind the main opposition conservatives, and might be able to thwart a centre-right or centre-left majority in the election. Germany’s mainstream parties have pledged not to work with the AfD at the national level.
