German Chancellor Olaf Scholz dismissed Elon Musk’s personal attacks as unimportant but expressed concern over Musk’s endorsement of Germany’s far-right AfD.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz says he’s staying “cool” about Elon Musk’s critical personal comments. Still, he worries that the US billionaire is trying to get involved in a general election by endorsing the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Scholz reacted after Musk, a close ally of US President-elect Donald Trump, called the chancellor a “fool” after his coalition government collapsed in November. He later backed the AfD in an opinion piece he wrote for a major German newspaper.
Scholz, head of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), said in comments published Saturday by the German magazine Stern that there is “nothing new” in criticism by “rich media entrepreneurs who do not appreciate social democratic politics and do not hold back with their opinions.”
“You have to stay cool,” Scholz told Stern.
“I find it much more worrying than such insults that Musk is supporting a party like the AfD, which is in parts right-wing extremist, which preaches rapprochement with Putin’s Russia and wants to weaken transatlantic relations,” Scholz said.
The AfD is monitored by Germany’s domestic intelligence service on suspicion of being a right-wing extremist and has already been recognised as such in some individual German states.
“Hands off German democracy!”
Germany will hold an early parliamentary election on February 23 after Scholz’s thee-party coalition collapsed in November in a dispute over how to revitalise the country’s stagnant economy.
The vice chancellor and economy minister, Robert Habeck, also warned Musk against interfering in German politics.
“Hands off our democracy, Mr. Musk!” Habeck said in an interview with Der Spiegel magazine.
“The combination of enormous wealth, control over information and networks, the use of artificial intelligence and the willingness to ignore rules is a frontal attack on our democracy,” said Habeck, the Green Party’s candidate for chancellor.
Musk believes he has the right to comment due to investments
Musk recently caused uproar by backing the AfD in an opinion piece for the Welt am Sonntag, which led to the resignation of the paper’s opinion editor, Eva Marie Kogel, in protest.
“AfD is the last spark of hope for this country,” Musk wrote in his translated commentary.
The Tesla Motors CEO also wrote that his investment in Germany gave him the right to comment on the country’s condition.
The AfD is polling strongly, but its candidate for the top job, Alice Weidel, has no realistic chance of becoming chancellor because other parties refuse to work with the far-right party.
