The German government accused US billionaire Elon Musk on Monday of trying to influence its election due in February with articles supporting the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, even though it suggested they amounted to \u201cnonsense.\u201d <\/p>\n
Musk, who is set to serve Donald Trump\u2019s new administration as an outside adviser, endorsed the AfD as Germany\u2019s last hope in a guest opinion piece for the Welt am Sonntag newspaper that prompted the commentary editor to resign in protest. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is indeed the case that Elon Musk is trying to influence the federal election\u201d with X posts and the opinion piece, a German government spokesperson said. <\/p>\n
Musk is free to express his opinion, the spokesperson said, adding: \u201cAfter all, freedom of opinion also covers the greatest nonsense.\u201d <\/p>\n
Musk, the world\u2019s richest person, has defended his right to weigh in on German politics because of his \u201csignificant investments,\u201d and has praised the AfD\u2019s approach to regulation, taxes and market deregulation. <\/p>\n
His intervention has come as Germans prepare to vote in a parliamentary election on February 23 after the collapse of the coalition government led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Musk also called for Scholz\u2019s resignation after a car rammed into a crowd at a Christmas market on December 20, killing five people. <\/p>\n
The AfD is currently in second place in opinion polls behind the main opposition conservatives, and might be able to thwart a center-right or center-left majority in the election. Germany\u2019s mainstream parties have pledged not to work with the AfD at the national level. <\/p>\n
The government spokesperson said Musk\u2019s endorsement of the AfD was \u201ca recommendation to vote for a party that is being monitored (by domestic intelligence) on suspicion of being right-wing extremist and which has already been recognized as partly right-wing extremist.\u201d <\/p>\n
German politicians have excoriated Musk for his endorsement of the AfD, with the co-leader of Scholz\u2019s Social Democrats (SPD) comparing him to Russian President Vladimir Putin. <\/p>\n
\u201cBoth want to influence our elections and specifically support the AfD\u2019s enemies of democracy. They want Germany to be weakened and plunged into chaos,\u201d Lars Klingbeil told the Funke news group on Monday. <\/p>\n
Friedrich Merz, leader of the opposition Christian Democrats and current favorite to succeed Scholz as chancellor, told Funke that Musk\u2019s comments were \u201cintrusive and pretentious.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The German government accused US billionaire Elon Musk on Monday of trying to influence its election due in February with articles supporting the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, even though it suggested they amounted to \u201cnonsense.\u201d Musk, who is set to serve Donald Trump\u2019s new administration as an outside adviser, endorsed the AfD as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7029,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}