Elon Musk isn't a citizen of any European country, but he's still doubling down on his support for the far-right in Germany and the United Kingdom, provoking uproar among officials who accuse him of stoking danger and meddling in other countries' business so that he can enrich himself and his companies.
Having already endorsed Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in an X post late last year, Musk wrote a translated opinion piece for Welt am Sonntag ("Word on Sunday"), a sister publication of Politico owned by the conservative media company Axel Springer, that was published over the weekend, calling AfD "the last spark of hope for this country."
AfD “can lead the country into a future where economic prosperity, cultural integrity and technological innovation are not just wishes, but reality," Musk wrote in the op-ed, claiming that his investments in Germany gave him the right to comment on the country's politics. Musk's chosen party has been widely condemned for extremist and xenophobic rhetoric that occasionally bears Nazi echoes, and some branches have been censured by German courts.
The American billionaire argued that the characterization of AfD as "right-wing extremist" was "clearly false," because its leader Alice Weidel has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka. "Does that sound like Hitler to you?" he wrote. "Please!”
Musk's op-ed caused "intense discussion" in the editorial office, and "many colleagues argued against publication," according to Welt journalist Franziska Zimmerer. The German paper's decision to publish it angered its own opinion editor so much that she resigned. "I always enjoyed leading the opinion section of WELT and WAMS. Today an article by Elon Musk appeared in Welt am Sonntag. I handed in my resignation yesterday after it went to print,” Eva Marie Kogel wrote on X, the social media platform owned by Musk.
The incoming editor-in-chief also weighed in, writing that "Musk’s diagnosis" of Germany's economic woes "is correct, but his therapeutic approach, that only the AfD can save Germany, is fatally wrong."
Polls for the Feb. 23 election show the AfD surging into second place, but it appears to hold little chance of gaining power as part of a governing coalition as long as the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which is leading in the polls, refuses to work with them. If Musk had hoped to apply pressure on CDU chancellor hopeful Friedrich Merz, the op-ed seems only to have provoked him — on Sunday, he told reporters that Musk's comments were “intrusive and presumptuous."
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a member of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), declined to criticize Musk directly, instead affirming that "it’s not those who shout loudest who will decide Germany’s future but the broad majority of sensible and respectable people" in his New Year's address.
Other government figures were less circumspect. "Musk is strengthening those who are weakening Europe. A weak Europe is in the interest of those for whom regulation is an inappropriate limitation of their power," said Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck in his own New Year's address. Habeck is a member of the Greens, a center-left party that acted as a junior partner in Scholz's governing coalition before the alliance collapsed last month.
SPD co-leader Saskia Esken vowed to offer "tough resistance" against "anyone who tries to influence our election from outside," whether the influence is organized by Russia or "by the concentrated financial and media power of Elon Musk and his billionaire friends on the Springer board."
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While Musk is not a citizen of any European Union country, he can, through his companies' foreign subsidiaries, still contribute money to political parties and candidates in amounts far exceeding normal foreign entity limits. On Wednesday, hard-right UK lawmaker Nigel Farage told various news outlets that he met Musk during his visit to Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort and continues to negotiate "the issue of money" with the tech billionaire. According to Farage, their discussions have included figuring out how Musk can donate up to $100 million to his anti-immigrant Reform UK party “legally through UK companies.”
Musk “described the Labour and Conservative parties as the uniparty, and left us in no doubt that he is right behind us,” Farage added, referring to the UK's two major political parties.
The potential of such a large donation from a foreign national has amplified long-simering concerns among election integrity watchdogs and the Labour government's chief anti-corruption official. So far, government leaders have declined to answer calls for accelerated reform, fearing that speeding up the timetable would backfire and give Farage the chance to claim that they are rigging the election against him.
“We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk,” a government source told The Guardian. “You don’t successfully take on populists by changing the rules in a bid to thwart them.”
A poll by The Guardian showed that caps on political donations are a popular proposition: according to its findings, 56% of respondents believe there should be such a limit, while only 16% think there should be no cap. A third wrongly believed a cap was already in place.
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The next UK election will be held in 2029 at the latest, unless Prime Minister Keir Starmer decides to hold it sooner. Musk has already launched a broadside of attacks on Starmer's government on X, characterizing the arrests of anti-immigrant rioters last summer as a crackdown by a "tyrannical police state" and declaring that "civil war is inevitable." Later in 2024, Starmer declined to invite Musk to an investors' conference — something that Musk had taken as an insult, sources close to him said.
Some political observers believe that Musk is furious at the UK government for its plans to toughen regulations on social media networks, especially after the 2024 riots that online safety experts said were fueled in part by extremist and provocative rhetoric on the internet.
Musk appears to sympathize with those who used that rhetoric in the first place, tweeting Thursday that UK authorities should release far-right ringleader Tommy Robinson from prison. Robinson, whose anti-immigration rallies have attracted thousands of supporters, was jailed for 18 months last October for breaching a court order relating to false claims he made about a Syrian schoolboy in one of his documentaries.
One unnamed Labour MP told Politico that Musk's language was "dangerous," warning that "at a time when communities need to come and work together, we have someone with a lot of influence sowing divisions and spreading hate."
"I don’t think Tommy Robinson has anything to say about government efficiency, or anything that reckons with the condition of working people," said another.
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