The Guardian reports: Outrage as Elon Musk claims ‘only AfD can save Germany’.
Elon Musk has caused outrage in Berlin after appearing to endorse the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland.
Musk, who has been named by Donald Trump to co-lead a commission aimed at reducing the size of the US federal government, wrote on his social media platform X: “Only the AfD can save Germany.”
[…]
In May, the AfD was expelled from a pan-European parliamentary group of populist far-right parties after a string of controversies, including a comment by the senior AfD figure that the Nazi SS were “not all criminals”.
The ID group, which includes France’s far-right National Rally, Italy’s Lega, Austria’s Freedom party, Geert Wilders’ Dutch Freedom party and Vlaams Belang in Belgium, said it “no longer want[ed] to be associated” with such incidents.
So, the AfD is too far-right for many in the European far-right. But not for Musk, it would seem.
This particular boosting of the AfD is part of a broader pattern (as noted by USAT):
Musk had already voiced support for the AfD last year, when he attacked the German government’s handling of illegal migration.
Last month, Musk called for the sacking of Italian judges who had questioned the legality of government measures to prevent irregular immigration.
And this week Nigel Farage, leader of Britain’s right-wing Reform UK party and friend of Trump, posted a photo of himself and Reform’s treasurer meeting Musk at Trump’s Florida residence, and said he was in talks with Musk about financial support.
There is, of course, the profound irony that Musk is not from the US, Germany, Italy, or the UK and yet seems more than willing to opine on their internal politics. Granted he does have US citizenship even if he was once but a humble immigrant to the United States who almost certainly over-stayed his student visa to work illegally in the US for a time.*
But, you know, if you are rich and white, it’s all cool.
*I say “almost certainy” beacuse Musk disputes this account, but I also know enough about the way student visas work to state that based on what was reported he entered legally, but if he did not enroll in classes like he was supposed to, but instead started working, his status would have changed. Whatever nether space between his J-1 and HB-1 was a time that he was surely over-staying a visa, which would have made him an “illegal immigrant.” But, rules for thee and not for me, and all that.
