Pressmediaofindia
Related Articles
09-01-2025
LONDON: Few European leaders have felt the lash of Elon Musk’s social media outbursts more than Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
The tech-billionaire owner of X has called him an “incompetent fool” and urged him to resign. On Thursday Musk will use his platform to host Alice Weidel, the head of Germany’s far-right, anti-immigrant AfD for a lengthy chat.
For many German politicians it smacks of political interference, with the AfD running second in the polls ahead of federal elections on 23 February.
“You have to stay cool,” says Scholz. “Don’t feed the troll.”
Although some of Europe’s leaders, notably Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, have found favor with Musk, others are finding it hard to ignore him, as he ventures into their domestic politics ahead of a new role of adviser to the incoming US President Donald Trump.
In the space of 24 hours, four European governments have objected to Musk’s posts.
France’s Emmanuel Macron was among the first to expressed incredulity on Monday.
“Ten years ago, who would have believed it, if we had been told that the owner of one of the biggest social networks in the world would support a new, international reactionary movement and intervene directly in elections, including in Germany?” he said.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store weighed in, too, saying he found it “worrying that a man with considerable access to social networks and significant economic resources is so directly involved in the internal affairs of other countries”.
Spain’s government spokeswoman, Pilar Alegria, said digital platforms such as X should act with “absolute neutrality and above all without any kind of interference”.
Musk has highlighted crime statistics in Norway and Spain, and blamed a deadly Christmas market attack in Germany on “mass unchecked immigration”.
In the past few days, Musk has written numerous posts attacking the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his administration over grooming gangs and child sexual exploitation.
“Those who are spreading lies and misinformation as far and as wide as possible are not interested in victims, they’re interested in themselves,” said the UK prime minister, without mentioning Musk personally.
Two notable exceptions in Europe are Italy and Hungary.
Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has cultivated close ties with Elon Musk and calls him a “genius” and an “extraordinary innovator”.
And Hungary’s Viktor Orban, who met Musk while visiting Trump at Mar-a-Lago last month, shares Musk’s dislike of Hungarian-born liberal philanthropist George Soros but it is the tech-billionaire’s intervention in German politics that is most contentious, because of imminent elections.
He has spoken out several times in favor of the AfD in recent weeks, and wrote a highly controversial article for Welt am Sonntag in which he called the AfD the “last spark of hope” for Germany.
Musk justified his intervention at the time because of his company Tesla’s financial investment in Germany. He said portraying the AfD as right-wing, extremist was “clearly false”, because Alice Weidel had a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka.
German security services have labelled the AfD either as right-wing extremist or suspected extremist and the courts have ruled it pursues goals against democracy.
While Olaf Scholz has sought to stay calm, the Greens’ candidate for chancellor, Robert Habeck, was blunter; “Hands off our democracy, Musk.”
Liberal FDP leader Christian Lindner has suggested that Musk’s aim might perhaps be to weaken Germany in the US interest, “by recommending voting for a party that would harm us economically and isolate us politically”. (Int’l News Desk)
