Elon Musk praises Germany’s right-wing extremist co-boss

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Elon Musk praised the “very sensible” co-chair of the far-right Alternative for Germany as she joined the tech billionaire in a discussion about Adolf Hitler, Donald Trump and the existence of aliens.

In the world’s richest man’s latest attempt to influence European politics, Musk invited Alice Weidel to a conversation on his social media platform X and “strongly recommended that Germans vote for the AfD in the February 23 federal election.” to support.

He said: “I think that Alice Weidel is a very sensible person, and I hope that people can see that just from this conversation.” . Nothing outrageous was suggested – just common sense.”

At peak times, about 200,000 people tuned in to Musk’s 75-minute livestream on X with Weidel, which was falsely advertised as a “conversation with the top candidate for Germany.”

The AfD, which is largely classified as right-wing extremist by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, is polling at around 19 percent and is on track to finish second in elections in Europe’s largest country – a result that would put it at its best performance in a national vote.

However, respected pollsters see Friedrich Merz and his center-right Christian Democrats at the top with around 31 percent.

Weidel, the AfD’s candidate for chancellor, repeatedly thanked Musk for the opportunity to speak out without being “interrupted or portrayed negatively” – a situation she described as “completely new.”

She tried to portray her party, which calls for the mass deportation of people with a migration background, as “conservative-libertarian.”

Musk, who has been criticized by European leaders for her interference in German and British politics, called on Weidel to refute comparisons between her party and the Nazis.

This sparked a discussion in which both host and guest argued that Hitler was not a right-wing extremist but a socialist.

This claim, popular among far-right groups, is rejected by historians who say that the German fascist movement, which oversaw the murder of six million Jews – as well as large numbers of Roma, disabled people, gays and communists – nevertheless had little to do with socialism had described itself as the “National Socialist German Workers’ Party”.

One of the AfD’s most prominent politicians, the hothead Björn Höcke convicted and fined because of the use of banned Nazi slogans.

Musk’s support of the right-wing extremist party represents an extraordinary intervention in the German election campaign by an important confidant of US President-elect Trump.

It has deeply unsettled mainstream parties in Germany and sparked renewed debate in Brussels over whether X and its owner are violating EU digital rules by meddling in politics and spreading accounts that spread disinformation and extremist views.

According to information from, the platform had around 4 million monthly active users in Germany in December Similar weba digital market information company.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz – whom Musk has described as an “incompetent fool” – has responded to the Tesla boss’s interventions by emphasizing the need to “stay cool” and not “feed the troll”.

But Merz described a recent article by Musk outlining his support for the far-right as an unprecedented “case of interference in a friendly country’s election campaign.”

The conversation between Musk and Weidel gradually turned from a discussion of key AfD issues, including migration, taxation and the benefits of nuclear power, to an appeal from the politician to the serial entrepreneur to explain his views on the Middle East conflict, Mars, the existence of aliens and whether he believes in God believed or not.

Weidel also said she felt “physical pain” over how the German media and politicians treated Trump in the US presidential campaign and expressed hope that he would end the conflict in Ukraine.

She also praised Musk for his “beautiful words” and “vision.”

Additional reporting by Clara Murray and Javier Espinoza