BERLIN:
Elon Musk defended his help for Germany’s far-right AfD social gathering in an opinion piece within the Welt am Sonntag newspaper on Saturday, prompting a senior editor to resign.
The world’s richest man doubled down on his feedback from December 20 that “solely the AfD can save Germany”, writing that the anti-immigration AfD was the “final ray of hope for the nation” on the “brink of cultural and financial collapse”.
Regardless of varied branches of the AfD being labelled “extremist” by Germany’s home safety company, Musk stated the AfD’s classification as far-right was “clearly false” as social gathering chief Alice Weidel “has a same-sex associate from Sri Lanka”.
With Musk set to play a key function in US President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, the billionaire’s interventions have triggered accusations of meddling in Germany’s democracy.
The nation is ready to move to the polls on February 23, with the AfD polling at round 19 % of the vote.
Musk’s visitor opinion piece within the Welt am Sonntag provoked outraged reactions and the resignation of the conservative title’s opinion editor.
“Right this moment a bit by Elon Musk appeared within the Welt am Sonntag. Yesterday I handed in my resignation after it went to print,” Eva Marie Kogel wrote on the X social media platform Musk owns.
In the meantime the Greens’ marketing campaign director Andreas Audretsch wrote: “We should not enable the Elon Musks of this world, the Chinese language state or Russian troll factories to undermine our democracies in Europe.”
The Affiliation of German Journalists (DJV) protested towards the “election promoting” allowed by the newspaper’s editorial employees.
“The German media should not enable itself to be manipulated into performing as a mouthpiece for autocrats and their buddies,” stated DJV chief Mika Beuster.
Even the Welt’s new editor-in-chief Jan Philipp Burgard was compelled to disagree with Musk within the opinion piece, writing: “Even a genius may be improper”.