Elon Musk’s praise for the far right infuriates most of Germany

Alice Weidel could hardly have hoped for better publicity. With federal elections due on February 23rd, Ms Weidel is running for chancellor as co-head of the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. In an op-ed on December 29th in the Sunday edition of Welt, a conservative paper, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a confidant of Donald Trump, called the AfD “the last spark of hope” for Germany. The country, he claimed, is “teetering on the brink of economic and cultural collapse”. He had a right to speak out about German politics, he said, because he has invested heaps of money in the country. (A multibillion-dollar plant in Brandenburg producing cars and batteries for Tesla, his electric carmaker, opened in 2022.)