Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) co-leader Alice Weidel will be the guest of social media CEO Elon Musk in a discussion forum on his platform X, formerly Twitter. The informal interview not only undermines the efforts of other German political parties to establish a cordon sanitaire around the right-wing party but also provides the AfD chief with a worldwide audience.
Weidel is a strong candidate for the federal election, at the head of an organisation which built up a significant electoral presence in 2024 and continues to perform strongly in regional and national opinion polls. Most other parties have ruled out any form of coalition or co-operation with the AfD, while the legacy media operates an informal ban.
Late last month, Musk for the first time indicated a possible online encounter between him and the AfD’s Weidel:
Also, in an opinion piece for Welt am Sonntag published on Sunday, December 30th, Musk wrote:
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!
German politicians responded with fury even at the suggestion, treating it as foreign interference in their national elections. Failed traffic-light coalition leaders vice-chancellor Robert Habeck and German chancellor Olaf Scholz, who Musk called an “incompetent fool” after the most recent attack on a German Christmas market, both spoke out against the South African-born billionaire ahead of the February 23rd national elections.
Establishment hostility to foreign intervention has yet to extend into criticism of the European Union for its rule-of-law ‘lawfare’ against such member states as Hungary, Slovakia, or Poland under its previous Law and Justice (PiS) government.
The announcement follows a growing number of political commitments from the Tesla CEO, from supporting Donald Trump in the US presidential election to a rumoured pending record-breaking donation to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
The live chat will be streamed on X on Thursday, January 9th, at 7 p.m. CET.
