Have Elon Musk and Die Welt made Germany’s AfD salonfähig?
In a guest column for the German newspaper Die Welt, Elon Musk has called on Germany to vote for the anti-immigration party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), calling it “the last flicker of hope for the country”.
Die Welt is a right-leaning outlet but an AfD endorsement by the wealthiest person on earth went too far for some of its editorial staff. A heated argument broke out internally and its comment editor Eva Marie Kogel resigned.
As ever, the dark shadows of Germany’s past loom large. However fed up German conservatives may be with the political status quo, many haven’t forgotten that elements of the conservative elite and press enabled the rise of the Nazis in the 1920s and 1930s.
Figures like the press magnate Alfred Hugenberg will be on their minds. Hugenberg controlled half the German press after the First World War. As leader of the German National People’s Party, he was a conservative monarchist, but he saw the Nazis as the best leaver to derail post-war democracy. His support helped Adolf Hitler to become chancellor of Germany.
Musk dismissed such historical apprehensions in a less-than-subtle nod to Germany’s past. “Depicting the AfD as far-Right is obviously wrong,” he wrote, pointing out that “Alice Weidel, the party leader, has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka! Does that sound like Hitler to you?”
Die Welt’s editorial committee wasn’t convinced, arguing that Musk’s column amounted to “electioneering for the AfD, parts of which are classified as Right-wing extremist” by the domestic intelligence agency.
Despite deciding to go ahead and print against the objections of its own staff, the editorial board clearly also felt uneasy. They juxtaposed Musk’s piece with one by Jan Philipp Burgard, who will become the paper’s editor-in-chief from January 1. He calls Musk’s depiction of the AfD as Germany’s saviour “fatally wrong” and the party “a danger to our values”.
Nonetheless, a taboo was broken. In giving room to a pro-AfD piece by one of the world’s most influential people, Die Welt has shattered a tacit consensus among German media outlets not to give the AfD a sympathetic platform.
The AfD has been polling as the second most popular party in Germany with nearly a fifth of the projected vote share. Yet in the build up to the upcoming elections, Germany’s public broadcasters will host a a debate between the opposition leader Friedrich Merz, whose conservative CDU/CSU is currently leading in the polls, and chancellor Olaf Scholz whose Social Democrats are trailing behind in third place with just 16 percent. AfD leader Alice Weidel wasn’t invited to this format of ‘top politicians.’
Privately owned mainstream outlets have also treated the AfD as though it wasn’t an option on the ballot paper. Until now. According to reports in the German media, Mathias Döpfner, CEO of the mighty Axel Springer media company, had approached Musk on the back of a post on X in which the multi-billionaire had said that “only the AfD can save Germany”.
Alongside Die Welt, Axel Springer owns Europe’s best-selling newspaper Bild and the news outlet Politico. For them to decide that pro-AfD content is acceptable is significant.
The AfD may not be the Nazi party, but like the Nazi party in its early phase, it’s currently unpalatable to many German conservatives. Seeing the party promoted by the most successful businessman on earth in a mainstream newspaper might well lend them respectability of the kind Alfred Hugenberg once afforded the Nazi Party.
The relationship between the German media and the AfD certainly shifted today. One of the largest news publishers in the world shattered the taboo on AfD endorsements. No amount of resignations and protestations will be able to restore it.
Katja Hoyer is the author of Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990
