Tech billionaire Elon Musk held a live interview with the leader of Germany’s Alternative for Germany party on Thursday.
Alice Weidel, the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, co-chairwoman, joined the mogul in a livestreamed X space to pitch her party as an alternative to the European power’s entrenched policy agenda, which she sees as an existential threat to the nation.
“We are a Libertarian conservative party. We would like to free the people from the state,” Weidel said. “I would like to have a state that is minimized in its functions.”
She continued, “I would like to have independently thinking, well-educated people with the freedom to form their own opinion.”
Musk gave a full-throated endorsement of Weidel and her party, claiming they are the only hope for preserving Germany’s way of life.
“My recommendation to the people in Germany is … if you are unhappy with the situation, you must vote for change,” Musk said.
He added, “I think only AfD can save Germany. End of story.”
AfD was founded approximately 11 years ago as a populist, right-wing opposition party. The group started small but over the last few years began gaining ground in the electorate due to its uniquely nationalist and anti-immigration stances. Its rise is part of a much broader rightward shift in a nation defined for decades by its left-leaning, progressive politics.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was forced to dissolve parliament late last year after the ruling “traffic light coalition” — consisting of the Social Democratic Party, Free Democratic Party, and Green Party — imploded due to infighting.
In a vote of confidence, 394 members of Parliament voted “no” and 207 voted “yes,” with 116 members abstaining. Parliamentary elections are slated for next month.
Recent polls have shown AfD is currently ranked third among political parties in Germany, sitting behind the center-right Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian counterpart, the Christian Social Union.
During the interview, Weidel dismissed the center-right parties of Germany as functionally leftist.
Musk and Weidel bonded during the interview over their mutual distaste for the general sociopolitical philosophy they perceive in Western government bureaucracies and school systems — which the German politician called at various points “woke,” “leftist,” “socialist,” and “nonsensical.”
“Our country has been governed not in a proper way for the last 20-25 years,” Weidel said.
The AfD co-chairwoman pointed to a series of policy changes that took place in the 2010’s as the beginning of Germany’s wane in prosperity, drawing specific attention to immigration and energy legislation.
“In my point of view, [Angela Merkel], the first Green chancellor, she basically ruined our country,” Weidel said, rebuking the former leader for opening Germany to mass migration “without asking the people.”
At the same time, Weidel argued, the German government began crippling the national power supply by pursuing ill-fated green energy initiatives that ultimately closed their nuclear power plants.
“You cannot run an industrial country with just wind and solar,” she said. “We stand for an energy supply diversification. We cannot run an industrial country like Germany, with a still strong manufacturing base … like that.”
Musk asked Weidel to respond to critics of her party who associate right-wing politics in Germany with the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler.
Weidel rejected the comparison, saying, “[Hitler] was a communist and he considered himself as a socialist.”
She continued, “[Their] biggest success after that terrible era in our history was to label Hitler as right-wing and conservative. He wasn’t conservative, he wasn’t libertarian. He was a communist, socialist guy.”
The chairwoman expressed concern for German Jews, who she claimed are “exposed to Muslim crime” amid widespread demonstrations against Israel and “not safe” anymore. She attributed this climate to “deeply rooted antisemitism” in the “leftist movement.”
“With all these demonstrations of the Palestinians here, a Jew could not walk through the street anymore and we have a huge potential of antisemitic crime against the Jewish people,” Weidel told Musk.
“The AfD is the only protector … of the Jewish people here in Germany because … all other parties did the exact opposite,” she continued. “They let millions of people in, let them do crimes on our streets.”
Musk and Weidel broke briefly from discussing politics to talk religion, with Weidel asking Musk if he believed in a god.
Musk responded that he is “open to the idea of God” or “some entity that you could call God” who is responsible for the creation of the universe but clarified, “That’s a separate question from whether there is some entity observing our daily actions.”
“I try to form my opinions based on what I learn,” he added.
Weidel in turn told Musk that she is “still on a search.”
“I don’t know what to believe,” she said, calling herself “maybe agnostic.”
Other topics touched upon in the interview included colonization of Mars, Israeli security, crime in the United States, and freedom of speech.
Musk’s public support of the AfD is part of his wider, international campaign to elevate right-wing, conservative political actors in Western nations.
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Aside from his prominent affiliation with President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration, he has also weighed in on the failure of the British government to address a decades-old scandal involving “grooming gangs”, mostly made up of men of Pakistani Muslim origin.
“U.K. politicians are selling your daughters for votes,” Musk wrote Wednesday on social media.
