Elon Musk Is Trying to Break Germany’s Quarantine on the Far-Right AfD
Europe|Elon Musk Is Trying to Break Germany’s Quarantine on the Far-Right AfD
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/09/world/europe/germany-elon-musk-afd.html
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Political leaders have shunned the Alternative for Germany. But on his social media platform X, Mr. Musk is pitching the party as mainstream.
Elon Musk is not just dabbling in German politics. He is attempting to break a political blockade that has kept the nation’s most prominent far-right party out of government even as it has gained strength with voters.
Mr. Musk will be the host of a live interview on Thursday with Alice Weidel, who is the chancellor candidate for that party, the Alternative for Germany, known as the AfD, in the country’s snap election scheduled for Feb. 23. The event, on X, the social media platform that Mr. Musk owns, has raised alarms and threats of legal consequences among Germany’s political class.
That is, in large part, because Mr. Musk is offering the AfD a level of publicity and legitimacy that it has long been denied in German public life.
The AfD has risen to the second position in German national polls, backed by about a fifth of the electorate. It has gained support with an unwavering anti-establishment campaign, which rails against the millions of migrants and refugees who have entered the country over the last decade from the Middle East and Ukraine.
Parties with similar immigration messages elsewhere in Europe, like the Brothers of Italy and Austria’s Freedom Party, have risen to federal power. But in Germany, still haunted by its Nazi past, no other party will work with the AfD. Its candidates complain they receive far less airtime than other candidates on the nation’s political talk shows.
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