US billionaire Elon Musk has come under fire by the German government for “interfering” in its upcoming election scheduled for February after Musk penned an opinion piece supporting the far-right Alternative for Germany party (the AfD) and tweeted it to his 200 million followers, Reuters reported.
In an opinion piece in the Welt am Sonntag newspaper on Saturday, Musk endorsed the AfD as “Germany’s last hope.” The newspaper’s commentary editor, Eva Marie Kogel, resigned in protest the next day.
A long-term employee of the German daily, Kogel announced her resignation on X (formerly Twitter). “I always enjoyed heading the opinion section of WELT and WAMS,” she tweeted. “Today an article by Elon Musk appeared in Welt am Sonntag. I handed in my resignation yesterday after it went to print.”
The party Musk defended in the article has been flagged by the German government for “extremism” at the national level since 2021.
Responding to the backlash Musk received regarding his article, he defended the Afd and its leadership, saying that “Alice Weider, the party’s leader, has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka.”
Musk also applauded the AfD’s approach to regulation, taxes, and market “deregulation” as Germans gear up to vote in their Feb 23 parliamentary election.
The AfD presently is polling second just behind the main opposition party, the conservatives, and therefore may be able to prevent a center-right or center-left majority in the election.
The major parties in Germany have vowed not to collaborate with the AfD on a national scale, likely due to the party’s controversial policies, including leaving the European Union, seeking rapprochement with Russia, and appeasing China, Reuters reported.