Musk Expresses Support for Far-Right Party in Germany’s Election

It was not the first online intervention by Elon Musk, the entrepreneur and adviser to Donald Trump, on behalf of once-fringe anti-immigrant parties in Europe.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a close adviser to President-elect Donald J. Trump, on Friday endorsed Germany’s far-right party, a group with ties to neo-Nazis whose youth wing has been classified as “confirmed extremist” by German domestic intelligence.

“Only the AfD can save Germany,” Mr. Musk posted to X, referring to the anti-immigrant party, the Alternative for Germany, by its German initials.

In doing so, he is wading into German politics at a moment of acute turmoil, and at the very same time that he has wielded his influence in Washington to help blow up a bipartisan spending deal that was meant to avoid a government shutdown over Christmas. The German government recently collapsed, resulting in early elections, which are planned for next year.

Mr. Musk’s post was in response to an English-language video by a 24-year-old German far-right influencer, Naomi Seibt. She harshly criticized Friedrich Merz, whom polls show leading the race, for dismissing a rival’s suggestion that Germany look to Mr. Musk and another firebrand, President Javier Milei of Argentina, for ideas about reforming the country.

Ms. Seibt also criticized Mr. Merz for ruling out joining any coalition with the AfD. The ethnonationalist and Islamophobic message of the once-fringe party has proved to be a strong vote-getter at the local level, especially in the more economically disadvantaged former East Germany.

Mr. Musk’s post, which had more than 25 million views in roughly 10 hours, comes as Germany begins what promises to be an aggressive election campaign. The country will have an early election on Feb. 23 after Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition collapsed in November.

Like all the mainstream German parties, Mr. Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union has ruled out working with the AfD, which Mr. Scholz and others have called a threat to German democracy.

News that members of the AfD attended a secret meeting with the Austrian extreme-right provocateur Martin Sellner, who has admitted to once being a member of a neo-Nazi group and has called for deporting migrants en masse, led to large protests early this year. Then, starting in May, a leading light of the party was twice given a hefty fine for using Nazi-era slogans during campaign stops.

Last month in the eastern state of Saxony, police arrested eight people suspected of being members of what they called a right-wing extremist terrorist organization, which they said had been plotting to overthrow the government. Three of the eight were AfD members; one was an elected local official.

The online endorsement from Mr. Musk garnered a quick response from Alice Weidel, the AfD’s top candidate. “Yes! You are perfectly right,” she posted just an hour after Mr. Musk’s post went up.

It also echoed in Washington, where Democrats and even a few Republicans raised alarms, pointing out Mr. Musk’s heavy influence on Mr. Trump.

“Literally is a neo-Nazi party. Not even joking,” Adam Kinzinger, a Republican former congressman from Illinois and longtime critic of Mr. Trump, posted on X.

Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, said in an interview with CNN, ”This is not normal.” He added, “What Elon Musk thinks tends to eventually be what the president of the United States thinks. And if the United States takes an official position in favor of neo-Nazis in Germany, I mean, it is absolutely catastrophic.”

Mr. Musk has long made heavy use of X, which he bought in 2022, to express his views on politics in the United States and abroad. He offered support on the platform for Italy’s deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, the leader of the anti-immigrant League party, after he was accused of illegally refusing to allow a migrant boat to dock five years ago. (A court in Palermo acquitted Mr. Salvini on Friday.)

In Britain, he has thrown his weight behind another insurgent, anti-immigrant party, Reform U.K., which is led by the longtime political disrupter Nigel Farage. He met on Monday with Mr. Farage and the party’s new treasurer, Nick Candy, at Mr. Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, to discuss the possibility of a donation by Mr. Musk to Reform U.K.

Mr. Musk has yet to write Mr. Farage a check, and lawmakers in Britain are calling on the government to tighten campaign-finance laws to restrict foreign donations. But he has left little doubt of his endorsement.

When Mr. Farage posted a photo of himself with Mr. Candy and Mr. Musk posing in front of a portrait of a younger Mr. Trump, along with the line “Britain needs Reform,” Mr. Musk replied, “Absolutely.”

He also has picked repeated fights online with Britain’s Labour government, accusing it of using police-state tactics in going after people who used his X platform to spread misinformation after anti-immigrant riots broke out across Britain last summer, following a mass stabbing at a dance studio.

Mr. Musk claimed that “civil war” was inevitable in Britain. After Prime Minister Keir Starmer activated an emergency plan to relieve pressure on overcrowded jails, under which defendants can be held longer in cells until space opens in prisons, Mr. Musk posted, “The U.K. is turning into a police state.”

In Germany, Christian Lindner, the leader of the small, pro-business Free Democratic Party, suggested this month that the country should look toward Mr. Musk and Mr. Milei when thinking about disruption and reform.

In her crudely edited video message on X, Ms. Seibt criticized Mr. Merz’s opposition to that idea as well as his repeated vow not to work with the AfD.

The AfD is polling at 19 percent, and its leaders appeared ready to make the most of the post, apparently hoping that it could help attract more voters and serve as a jumping-off point for communications with the Trump White House.

Some hours after her initial post, Ms. Weidel recorded a video addressing Mr. Musk’s post. “The Alternative for Germany is indeed the only alternative for our country; our very last option,” she said.

On Friday, Mr. Lindner also addressed Mr. Musk over X: “Elon, I’ve initiated a policy debate inspired by ideas from you and Milei,” he said, explaining why Mr. Musk should not endorse the AfD. “Don’t rush to conclusions from afar.”

Mr. Musk announced in late 2019 that he planned to open a Tesla factory outside Berlin and stunned Germans when he began construction before receiving all of the necessary approvals, at the risk of having to clear the site if they were not granted. They eventually were, and production began in less than three years, a small fraction of the time that it takes German companies to complete similar projects.

But Mr. Musk angered Germans by resisting attempts to unionize the plant. He also has hit out at leading German newsmagazines over critical reports about him, criticized the German judiciary this year for a ruling against a conservative politician and called Mr. Scholz a “Narr,” which is German for a clown or a fool, in response to a posting on X about the collapse of the government.

Even before this week’s post, he expressed anti-immigrant views that dovetailed with AfD’s message.

In 2023, Mr. Musk posted, “Is the German public aware of this?” with a post that criticized German ships for rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean Sea. The German foreign ministry issued a tart reply: “Yes. And it’s called saving lives.”

Such remarks have turned many Germans against Mr. Musk, as they are seen as trying to undermine the country’s democracy. Recently, several of Germany’s Holocaust-memorial institutions have quit X in protest of Mr. Musk’s political positions.

Sales of Tesla, of which he is the chief executive, dropped 55 percent in Germany in November and are down by more than 43 percent for the year. Tesla is still the largest maker of electric vehicles in Europe, but it has experienced a double-digit decrease in registrations in the first 11 months of the year continentwide, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, the ACEA.

Melissa Eddy and Ryan Mac contributed reporting.