“Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk caused uproar after backing Germany’s far-right party in a major newspaper ahead of key parliamentary elections in the Western European country,” ABC News tells us, “leading to the resignation of the paper’s opinion editor in protest.”
Germany’s three-party coalition government, led by “center-left” Chancellor Olof Scholz, fell apart when he fired the “pro-business” party’s biggest name in the government, Finance Minister Christian Lindner.
Musk wrote a piece for Welt am Sonntag in which he expressed his support for Alternative für Deutschland, which is considered “far-right” for opposing Die Grünen, the (“pro-business”) Freie Demokratische Partei, and Scholz’s own Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands. “The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is the last spark of hope for this country,” asserted Musk*.
“The Tesla Motors CEO also wrote,” explains ABC, “that his investment in Germany gave him the right to comment on the country’s condition.”
Musk must mean “a right” as in manners, not in law. In a free country, anyone has a legal right to speak up and comment on government.
But what is the significance of the editor who quit? She has every right to work only with news outfits that marginalize the AfD as promoters of “anti-democratic” ideas. Hers is a matter of strategy: shunning, marginalization — no-debate/no-cooperate — are what she thinks journalists must marshal against the “far right.”
This journalist’s political tactic mirrors Germany’s practiced politics. ABC News explains that the AfD’s polling strength doesn’t much help its candidate, Alice Weidel, to “becom[e] chancellor because other parties refuse to work with the far-right party.”
The non-cooperation strategy goes full anti-democratic when election results are suppressed. In Romania, for example, elections have basically been overturned because of how “far-right” they are.
All very anti-democratic, these “democrats.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* To be clear, his piece was published in German, of course, and above I’m quoting the English translation.
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1 reply on “Musk’s Alternative for Germany”
Die Freie Demokratische Partei seems to wander significantly on the political continuum, sometimes seeming nicely liberal, sometimes being markèdly conservative. What are they in these days?
All that I know of die AfD comes from sources that I would not trust any farther than I could throw a Cybertruck. Still, I find Musk’s endorsement disturbing.
But German pundits, politicians, and officials have for decades been making a habit of telling Americans to vote for this-or-that extremist politician. Yowls from Germany about an American expressing an opinion about German politics are absurd.