Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk has caused uproar after backing Germany’s far-right party in a major newspaper ahead of key parliamentary elections in the Western European country, leading to the resignation of the paper’s opinion editor in protest.
Germany is to vote in an early election on February 23 after Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party governing coalition collapsed last month in a dispute over how to revitalise the country’s stagnant economy.
Musk’s guest opinion piece for Welt am Sonntag —a sister publication of POLITICO owned by the Axel Springer Group — published in German over the weekend, was the second time this month he supported the Alternative for Germany, or AfD.
“The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is the last spark of hope for this country,” Musk wrote in his translated commentary.
He went on to say the far-right party “can lead the country into a future where economic prosperity, cultural integrity and technological innovation are not just wishes, but reality”.
The Tesla Motors CEO also wrote that his investment in Germany gave him the right to comment on the country’s condition.
The AfD is polling strongly, but its candidate for the top job, Alice Weidel, has no realistic chance of becoming chancellor because other parties refuse to work with the far-right party.
An ally of US President-elect Donald Trump, the technology billionaire challenged in his opinion piece the party’s public image.
“The portrayal of the AfD as right-wing extremist is clearly false, considering that Alice Weidel, the party’s leader, has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka! Does that sound like Hitler to you? Please!” he wrote.
Musk’s commentary has led to a debate in German media over the boundaries of free speech, with the paper’s own opinion editor announcing her resignation, pointedly on Musk’s social media platform, X.
“I always enjoyed leading the opinion section of WELT and WAMS. Today an article by Elon Musk appeared in Welt am Sonntag. I handed in my resignation yesterday after it went to print,” Eva Marie Kogel wrote.
A critical article by the future editor-in-chief of the Welt group, Jan Philipp Burgard, accompanied Musk’s opinion piece.
“Musk’s diagnosis is correct, but his therapeutic approach, that only the AfD can save Germany, is fatally wrong,” Burgard wrote.
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Responding to a request for comment from the German Press Agency, dpa, the current editor-in-chief of the Welt group, Ulf Poschardt, and Burgard — who is due to take over on January 1 — said in a joint statement that the discussion over Musk’s piece was “very insightful”.
“Democracy and journalism thrive on freedom of expression,” they wrote to the dpa.
“This will continue to determine the compass of the “world” in the future.
“We will develop Die Welt even more decisively as a forum for such debates.”
