1mo ago

Elon Musk pens German newspaper opinion piece supporting far-right AfD party

www.theguardian.com Elon Musk pens German newspaper opinion piece supporting far-right AfD party

Billionaire Trump adviser said his ‘significant investments’ in the country justify his wading into German politics

The tech entrepreneur and close adviser to Donald Trump Elon Musk has taken a stunning new public step in his support for the far-right German political party Alternative for Germany (AfD), publishing a supportive guest opinion piece for the country’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper that has prompted the commentary editor to resign in protest.

The commentary piece in German was launched online on Saturday ahead of being published on Sunday in the flagship paper of the Axel Springer media group, which also owns the US politics news site Politico.

Musk uses populist and personal language to try to deny AfD’s extremist bent and the piece expands on his post on the social media platform X that he owns, on which he last week claimed that “only the AfD can save Germany”.

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1mo ago

Elon Musk pens German newspaper opinion piece supporting far-right AfD party

www.theguardian.com /world/2024/dec/28/elon-musk-germany-afd-party

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1mo ago

Elon Musk pens German newspaper opinion piece supporting far-right AfD party. Billionaire Trump adviser said his ‘significant investments’ in the country justified his wading into German politics

www.theguardian.com /world/2024/dec/28/elon-musk-germany-afd-party

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86 comments

To anyone confused: Musk may live in the US, but like all the uber-wealthy, he doesn't consider himself a citizen of anywhere because he can jump in his private jet and fly anywhere on a whim without needing to have his passport checked by anyone.
These people do not live in the same world as us, and the fact that Musk is knee-deep in numerous countries politics is ample fucking evidence of such. He will support any group that benefits him in the short-term, that's all.
- He believes that, as one of the Owners, it’s his prerogative to appoint the viceroys who will rule on his behalf. And that he owns enough of Germany to veto any reluctance they might have of having another Nazi government.
  
  Good luck on him trying that. I still strongly believe that things are very different here...

No respectable newspaper would platform a foreign billionaire trying to meddle in an election. The fact that the owners pushed this through, overruling their own staff, should be a clear sign to everyone: billionaires buy up news organizations to influence the population and undermine democracy. Even if the individual journalists have the utmost integrity, they will just get strong armed by upper management. The same thing happened with Bezos and the Washington Post.
- Note that political meddling and unscrupelous behaviour has always been the hallmark of the Axel-Springer Media.
  They have successfully motivated the murder of the student activist Rudi Dutschke in the 60s by a Neonazi terrorist.
  In 2011 they have cheered themselves for having pushed the then president of Germany Christian Wulff (it is a ceremonial role, the head of the executive is the chancellor) with a smear campaign based on lies and fabrications.
  They hold the absolute majority of reprimands for violations of journalistic standards by the publishers organization ethics board Presserat.
  The former editor in chief of the Bild Zeitung Julian Reichelt had to be kicked out a few years back for sexual harassment and coercion of multiple women employees. But only after the Company tried to keep it under covers and pressured another publisher to not publish their investigative research in Germany, so US media had to publish it first.
  They were always like this and they will always be like this. Axel-Springer is also the main pro US and pro Israel voice in Germanys media landscape. It should be telling everyone where things are headed that they switched now from supporting the far right neoliberal FDP to the fascist AfD.
- Welt am Sonntag ist part of the Springer Media Group. They have a long history of pushing populist, conservative and right agendas and publishing Musk's opinion piece falls perfectly in line with the election meddling they are doing.
- It's already lost. Brace yourselves. Buy your fucking toilet paper now. This is hyper-fucked.
- allies should have bombed the island of Föhr back then.
  anyone remember how friede (head of the nazi news) transferred 1 billion € to one of her employees (döpfner) to start a TV station (BILD TV)? no taxes were paid because Friede is best friends with Angela Merkel. ofcourse BILD TV failed terribly but funds are used for propaganda.
  anyway, if you ask the people that saw Friede Springer on Föhr grow up after WW2 might be able to tell you a story about how they let the refugees starve in the 50s. but officially everyone is just so scared of Friede Springer you'll never read about their murders.
  
  After the war pretty much all refugees in Schleswig-Holstein were starving, ration cards were not sufficient for anyone and refugees were in a worse situation to self-supply, housing was more than scarce, the refugee to native ratio was 3:4, multiple families sharing apartments, a family to a room. To this day many smaller cities are dominated by our version of commie blocks built back then things would've gotten very ugly without those things.
  Dunno about the situation on Föhr in particular, and I don't doubt that Friede is an assclown, but you gotta be more specific. Did she, at the tender age of eight, e.g. prevent people from rummaging through already harvested fields to see what they can find? Demand payment for wool caught on fences?
  Did we even distribute refugees to the islands back then? Doesn't really sound sensible or practical, there wasn't really anything more than subsistence farming going on anywhere on the Frisian islands and, short of the addition of tourism, still isn't. Industry on Föhr is like yes they have an electrician, a car mechanic, and a carpenter.
- Yes, but imagine all the rage clicks!
  He's basically a professional media villain at this point. Not many people take him seriously, and I doubt the share among journalists is larger.
- Die Welt is not reapectable. Its Springer Verlag. Basically the Murdoch of Germany.

- “Jean-Baptiste… Emanuel… Zorg.”
  
  And his worst enemy - fruit.
  
  That's not who I was thinking of, but sure. Him too.
- No need to compare him to Hitler, he's evil enough on his own.
  
  I call it as I see it.
  
  Hitler did horrible things the old way, with killing and hotting. In many ways, these billionaires are worse. Not wanting to defend him, but Hitler didn't try to meddle with all governments around the world and enslave the whole working class. If people like Elmo get his way, slavery would be back on the menu.
- This is AI generated! No way he actually ever styles his hair like that!

Billionaire Trump adviser said his ‘significant investments’ in the country justified his wading into German politics
At least we agree: his wealth is everyone's problem. The difference is that I think it's time we do something about it.
- Love that logic--"i opened up shop in your country, therefore i have the right to meddle with your politics"

- Please tell me this is a joke. Are they really that blatant, and if so, why are they still not forbidden?
  
  They managed to get away with it because it says "we'll protect your children" - like a roof. Yes it is ridiculous, we're working on it.
  
  no joke
  
  Because the other parties are either eyeballing possible coalition options, are chickenshit or have adapted a lot of far right positions from the AfD and worry, that closer scrutiny would also bring them into question.
- It took me a while to notice.
  For those still unaware: there are barely hidden salutes.

pens German newspaper opinion piece supporting far-right

It seems bizarre to me that the prevailing assumption is that Musk's interests align with those of the working class.
As in, why TF would anyone who is not a billionaire want a billionaire to restructure government?
- His blunder in Sweden should tell everyone clearly where he stands on workers rights.
  
  I don’t think people care. I don’t get why people keep going against their own interests, and it’s the only thing I can think of, or they think the rich deserve their wealth.
- The AfD does not have interests in favour of the working class. They constantly vote against laws helping anyone but the rich. They are just a tool for the rich and russia to destabilize our democracy.

Isn't he angry that the gop is full of racists. And now he's supporting the racist AfD? Man if only he could have some form of consistency. I'm sick and tired of him.
- If he's angry that the GOP is full of racists then he's got a funny way of showing it.
- Musk has been a racist for a long time, sounds like he finally found his people.
  
  Oh, he is super racist
- Isn’t he angry that the gop is full of racists.
  Has he looked in the mirror lately?
- He's angry that the GOP might cut off his supply of cheap, vulnerable, exploitable H-1B workers. Otherwise, racism is still his thing.
  
  We are witnessing two competing forms of racism. Which one will prevail? Exclusionary or exploitative?
- Apparently he thinks the AfD and Obama era Democrats have the same political positions. So. Uh. I don't know, don't look at me like that. ¯⁠⁠(⁠°⁠_⁠o⁠)⁠/⁠¯
- He's accusing others of racism, but it's really about him wanting cheap H-1B workers from India.
- full of racists who say he can't be President and Emperor of the USA because he wasn't born there? I think that's what he means
- This article has been in the works for longer than the recent row about importing indentured servants.

Musk needs to fucking watch himself.
- It's like nobody is even TRYING to kill him.
  
  I'm pretty sure he's avoiding being seen in public at all except for certain controlled environments.

You know, if people like Musk hate immigration so much then they should encourage investment and peace in other countries so that people don’t want to leave their home countries.
No one really wants to go to Europe etc., they’re either literally dying in poverty or being killed in their own countries.
Let’s be honest, the poor state of countries where these immigrants are coming from is the fault of decades of neoconservative policies of regional destabilization. The West needs to answers for its short-sighted thinking now, and they’re having a hard time understanding how this is a self created problem.
- Indeed. Imagine if Mexico was governed like Canada. The Mexicans would be building a wall to prevent the Americans from swamping their country.

Damn, gotta wonder what Putin has on Elon.
- I think putin just showed him that he can do what happened in Russia in 1990 and 2000 and get richer from stealing from the country.

Why the Welt am Sonntag? Was the Bild overbooked? Because that's where this kind of trash belongs in.
- Welt is Bild in disguise. Same publisher.
- They both belong to the Axel Springer corpo. Same AS politico by the way.

Musk fails to understand the racist themselves are attracted to the people they want to kill. DNA samples were taken from Hitler's relatives and they found Haplogroup E1b1b1, which means the motherfucker was part African and Jewish. His excuse for supporting Weidel and the fucking AfD is pathetic.
- Man, I don't care how female, lesbian, or interracial anybody at the AfD is. They're a bunch of Putin dick riders. Their private lives don't enter into it.
  (Incidentally, people like Musk and Trump love to question the credentials of politicians sharing the exact same attributes that this time around Musk has decided to praise. So, Musk, are they incompetent diversity hires, or are they "proof" that the party isn't racist? They can't be both!)
  
  +1...Indeed.
- The most fun part is, that Alice Seidel is a lesbian, living in Switzerland that adppted a Child with -how do i put it- high melantonin
  
  Yep, +1. Like the Nazis, MAGAts, Communists and all the other extreme right and left nutters, a bunch of hypocrites.
- E1b1b1 is common in some Afroasiatic speakers. It probably traces back to the Neolithic Levantine farmers who spread around the Mediterranean but only a guess.

Come off it, that man hasn’t written anything.
- Much less in German
  (Unless he speaks German?? I've never heard him speak German)
  
  He only speaks it at the rallys

Meh. Musk isn't needed for people to vote for the fear mongers. (Also Hasselhoff had no hands in the fall of the berlin wall. Sorry :)
That's a self made social problem (i.e. falling trust in the often untrustworthy politicians - i'm looking at you cum-ex-olaf or at you sabotaging-every-effort-Lindner). And an educational problem (eh, a well funded education system in country without substantial natural resources, who needs that anyways? Political education? Pfff, who cares.)
People have fears, opportunists use fears to gain power. I think.
- (Also Hasselhoff had no hands in the fall of the berlin wall. Sorry :)
  You think you're sorry?
  
  Please don't. Alcoholism is a disease. That's different.
  Edit: wording

I'm having trouble finding the original op-ed. Could somebody provide a link?
- This is what they claim as the source https://www.welt.de/debatte/kommentare/plus254982012/Warum-Elon-Musk-auf-die-AfD-setzt-und-warum-er-dabei-irrt.html
  
  Well, thanks, fwiw. Now, the only way for me to check the quotations first hand is to give money to the idiots who printed it lol. Ausgezeichnet. I checked the Internet Archive. They just show the same opening paragraph.

So you want to tell me that a nazi supports nazis??

So you wanna tell me an american billionaire bribes a german billionaire to support a far-right party that's founded to help poor people? Really? REALLY?

He really wants to be Göring.

86 comments