US billionaire Elon Musk backed Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) in a guest opinion piece for Germany’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper published online on Saturday that prompted the commentary editor to resign in protest.
In the commentary, published in German by the flagship paper of the Axel Springer media group, Musk expanded on his post on social media platform X last week claiming that “only the AfD can save Germany.”
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“The portrayal of the AfD as right-wing extremist is clearly false, considering that Alice Weidel, the party’s leader, has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka! Does that sound like Hitler to you? Please!” Musk said in the piece.
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has classified the AfD at the national level as a suspected extremism case since 2021.
The publication of the piece prompted the head editor of the opinion section, Eva Marie Kogel, to tender her resignation.
“I always enjoyed heading the opinion section of WELT and [Welt am Sonntag],” Kogel wrote on X.
“Today an article by Elon Musk appeared in Welt am Sonntag. I handed in my resignation yesterday after it went to print,” she wrote, sharing a link to Musk’s opinion piece.
Ulf Poschardt will take over from Kogel as head of opinions on January 1.
“Democracy and journalism thrive on freedom of expression,” the newspaper’s editor-in-chief designate Jan Philipp Burgard and Poschardt told Reuters.
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“This includes dealing with polarising positions and classifying them journalistically.”
They said the discussion about Musk’s piece, which had around 340 comments several hours after it was published, was “very revealing.”
Underneath Musk’s commentary, the newspaper published a response by Burgard.
“Musk’s diagnosis is correct, but his therapeutic approach, that only the AfD can save Germany, is fatally false,” he wrote, referencing the AfD’s desire to leave the European Union and seek rapprochement with Russia as well as appease China.
The AfD backing from Musk, who also defended his right to weigh in on German politics due to his “significant investments,” comes as Germans are set to vote on February 23 after a coalition government led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz collapsed.
The AfD is running second in opinion polls and might be able to thwart either a center-right or center-left majority, but Germany’s mainstream, more centrist parties have pledged to shun any support from the AfD at a national level.
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