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Musk had previously endorsed the AfD in a post on X, the social media platform he owns, and in an opinion column in Germany’s Welt newspaper.
Musk’s comments have drawn outrage from many other German politicians, who consider the AfD beyond the political mainstream.
The billionaire’s campaigning on behalf of the AfD, along with insults he has lobbed at other German politicians, has led critics to accuse him of trying to use his influence to interfere in German politics ahead of the upcoming February 23 nationwide election.
During the wide-ranging conversation, which lasted more than an hour, Weidel denounced former German chancellor Angela Merkel, attacked Germany’s migration policy, claimed that Germany’s once-lauded education system has been reduced to only teaching left-wing propaganda about gender and blamed Muslim immigrants for what she said was a major increase in crime.
Weidel said that Merkel had “ruined, basically, our country” and said that the the former chancellor, a member of the centre-right Christian Democrats, had actually been a Green politician.
In particular, Weidel and Musk both criticized Merkel for her decisions on migration policy in 2015 amid a major influx of migrants from Syria and elsewhere.
Weidel accused Merkel of having opened Germany’s borders against popular will. She also sharply criticized Merkel for what she termed an “obnoxious energy policy,” including Merkel’s decision to phase out nuclear power in Germany.
Musk said he is a major proponent of renewable energy, but called the German decision to shut down nuclear power plants “tragic” and said that Germany should instead reverse course and increase production of atomic energy.
Musk, whose electric carmaker Tesla has a major plant in Germany located just outside of Berlin, joined Weidel in railing against what he described as Germany’s bloated government bureaucracy and high taxes.
Musk said that Tesla’s applications for permits to build the factory were more than 25,000 pages long and had to be submitted in paper form, with multiple copies. He also said that an official had to stamp every page of the voluminous documents by hand.
Weidel also responded to anti-AfD activists who label party members as “Nazis” by claiming that Germany’s former Nazi dictator, Adolf Hitler, “was a communist socialist guy” and that the AfD, as a “conservative-libertarian party,” is “exactly the opposite.”
In fact the Nazis persecuted communists and socialists.
Musk, likewise, described Hitler as a “socialist,” saying that the dictator “nationalized industries like crazy.” The Nazi party’s title was officially the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.
The sometimes rambling conversation in English also included lengthy comments from Musk about the possibility of humans colonizing Mars and distant solar systems, and about Musk’s and Weidel’s shared uncertainty about the existence of a god.
Musk spent hundreds of millions of dollars to support Trump’s election campaign, and Trump has pledged to appoint Musk as co-leader of a newly created agency aimed at cutting the size of US government.
By Bryn Stole
