On Thursday, Elon Musk agreed with the leader of a far-right German political party that Adolf Hitler was a communist and that left-wing groups who supported Palestinian causes have more in common with Nazis than with her own party.
The deeply weird and disinformation-filled conversation between Musk and Alice Weidel, the leader of Alternative for Germany (AfD), took place on X. It came after weeks of Musk’s efforts to boost the far-right party, which has deep links to neo-Nazism and has been surveilled for suspected extremism by Germany’s own intelligence services.
“[Hitler] was a communist, and he considered himself as a socialist,” Weidel said in response to Musk asking about media reports linking the AfD to Nazism.
“The biggest success after that terrible era in our history was to label Adolf Hitler as right[-wing] and conservative, he was exactly the opposite,” Weidel said. “He wasn’t a conservative, he wasn’t a libertarian, he was a communist, socialist guy, and we are the opposite.”
“Right,” Musk responded.
In his autobiography Mein Kampf, Hitler—who as leader of the German Reich was responsible for the invasion of the Soviet Union and the enslavement and death of millions of its citizens—repeatedly describes communism as an enemy of the German nation. He believed that Marxism was a Jewish conspiracy to control Germany and the world.
Weidel also compared the Nazi Party’s views to those of modern day left-wing political groups who support Palestine in the face of what a UN commission has called crimes against humanity conducted by Israel. While her AfD colleagues were last month seen attending a secretive meeting organized by former members of a militant neo-Nazi group known for burning the Israeli flag, she said, “The AfD is the only protector of the Jewish people here in Germany.”
Weidel is the AfD’s candidate for chancellor in Germany’s snap elections, which take place next month. As someone who previously worked in finance and lives in Switzerland with her wife, who is from Sri Lanka, and their children, she has been presented as a relatively moderate face for the party.
This is something Musk picked up on in an op-ed he penned last month for a German newspaper.
“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,” Musk wrote. “Does that sound like Hitler to you? Please!”
Ahead of the conversation on Thursday, the EU said that it would be monitoring the event to see if it was artificially promoted to voters in Germany, something which would be in violation of the region’s sweeping Digital Service Act rules. A Commission spokesperson told WIRED it would not be commenting on the contents of the livestream.
Weidel referenced the EU’s preoccupation with the conversation, claiming 150 officials at the EU commission were listening in, then claimed the DSA was a censorship tool, before adding: “You know what Adolf Hitler did? He switched off free speech. He controlled the media, and without that he would have never been successful.”
“Yes, exactly,” Musk responded.
The conversation, which was billed as an interview but was more of a love-in, hit virtually event major culture war topic, from the war in Ukraine, where Weidel suggested European government’s lack of strategy would push Russia towards nuclear war, to immigration, where Musk wildly claimed that “on the Mexican side of the border in the US is a giant pile of discarded passports and drivers’ licenses, like a huge pile.”
It was unclear what Musk was talking about and he did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk also claimed that “basically theft is legal in California” and said that the only thing that would slow down what “the influx of criminals” were stealing is “if your back hurts from carrying out all the goods.”
The centibillionaire’s interest in German politics, and the AfD in particular, appear to have been largely informed by a single X user, Naomi Seibt, a 24-year-old German influencer who rose to prominence by posting climate change and COVID-19 denial content.
After she posted an image of herself in June saying she had voted for the AfD in last year’s European elections, Musk shared her post, asking: “Why is there such a negative reaction from some about AfD?”
He then slid into her DMs, Seibt told Reuters. “I explained to him the AfD is not similar to the Nazi ideology or Hitler, but is like the 19th century liberal nationalist movement … because they wanted to be free from authoritarians in their own territory,” Seibt told the outlet.
Musk engaged with the 24-year-old 40 more times before sharing one of her posts on December 20th with the comment: “Only the AfD can save Germany.” A week later an op-ed with Musk’s byline appeared in the German Welt am Samstag newspaper, claiming the AfD was “last spark of hope” for Germany.
Musk repeated his endorsement during the livestream, saying, “I think Alice Weidel is a very reasonable person, and hopefully people can tell just from this conversation. Nothing outrageous is being proposed, just common sense.”
It’s unclear if Musk’s endorsement of Weidel and the AfD will have any material impact on the outcome of the election.
“In the first survey we conducted this year, we found that this has not yet benefited the AfD,” Manfred Güllner, the head of the Forsa Institute, told Politico. “I don’t see very much potential for future change because Musk has become a negative figure.”
