5 Things to Know About the AfD, Elon Musk’s New Friends on the German Far Right
The Trump-advising billionaire has endorsed the AfD, an anti-Muslim, pro-Nazi party accused of extremism by German courts.
We are in a dangerous moment for democracy.
Again.
Over the past few days, Elon Musk – aka the richest man in the world, aka the owner of Twitter, aka the soon-to-be co-head of DOGE, aka the US shadow president in waiting – has repeatedly endorsed Germany’s far-right party, the AfD (in English: Alternative for Germany; in German: Alternative für Deutschland).
“Only the AfD can save Germany,” Musk tweeted on Friday to his 208 million followers. “AfD is the only hope for Germany,” he added on Saturday. “Only AfD can save Germany,” he repeated on Sunday. In between, he also tweeted: “The AfD policies are identical to those of the US Democratic Party when Obama took office!”
When I pointed out on Twitter that this was a “demonstrable lie,” an army of Musk fanboys arrived in my feed to insist that I, in fact, demonstrate the lie.
So here we go. To pretend the AfD is a mainstream political party, similar to the US Democrats, is absurd. The AfD may have begun in 2013, barely a decade ago, as an anti-euro party focused on the European Union and economic and monetary issues, but it quickly morphed into an anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim party filled with cranks, extremists, and Nazi sympathizers.
Don’t take my word for it. Jörg Meuthen, who was the leader of the AfD from 2015 to 2022, quit the party after he was unable to expel a senior AfD member who described himself as the “friendly face” of Nazism. “I could tell you a large number of stories about these people,” Meuthen told the Financial Times over the summer. “I would never elect one of these guys. Never!”
Bernd Lucke, a co-founder and former chair of the AfD who quit the party in 2015, believes the AfD contains officials “whose loyalty to the [German] constitution can be doubted.”
But you don’t just have to take their word for it, either.
Consider the shocking events of just 2024 alone – which Elon Musk, of course, would like you to ignore.
1. Secret Far-Right Meeting
In January, it emerged that AfD officials had attended a secret meeting with far-right and neo-Nazi influencers, at which they discussed the forced deportation of millions of people – including German citizens! Thousands of Germans took to the streets in protest, some carrying banners which included: “Nazis, no thank you.”
“The meeting took place in a hotel outside the east German city of Potsdam on 25 Nov, but did not come to light until 10 Jan…A central focus was a presentation by Martin Sellner, the Austrian leader of the ethno-nationalist Identitarian movement, about… carrying out mass deportation.” – The Guardian