Germany puzzles at Elon Musk’s embrace of its AfD populists
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. BERLIN—During Elon Musk’s freewheeling conversation with the leader of a far-right German party last week, spanning Hitler, multiplanetary civilizations and the existence of god, the billionaire tech entrepreneur insisted that the Alternative for Germany was moderate. “Hopefully, people can tell just from this conversation, like nothing outrageous is being proposed, just common sense," he said, during their live discussion on his X social-media platform.
That has been hard for many in Germany’s mainstream political parties to understand—much less accept. After all, the party, also known by its German acronym AfD, is critical of Germany’s culture of Holocaust remembrance and several of its regional chapters are classified as right-wing extremist organizations by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency. An AfD leader in Thuringia was fined for repeatedly using a banned Nazi slogan—something he denied doing knowingly.
Even more perplexing for many in Berlin, some of the AfD’s goals clash with Musk’s own positions and with core U.S. interests. The AfD is closer to Russia than some of its European peers.
It has called for lifting sanctions on Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine and wants to resume Russian natural-gas deliveries via the closed Nord Stream 2 pipeline. It opposes the stationing of U.S. long-range conventional missiles on German soil, as recently agreed between Berlin and Washington.
The party has also criticized electric-car subsidies that have benefited Musk’s Tesla in the past. And it has called for Germany to leave the European Union—a decision that would make it harder for Tesla to export the cars it makes in its plant near Berlin. “If Musk’s rocket science and knowledge of
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