Germany election frontrunner blasts Elon Musk’s ‘interference’

The leader of the Christian Democratic Union denounced Musk’s endorsement of the AfD as the worst case of interference by a ‘friendly’ country in the history of democracy.

Friedrich Merz, leader of the German Christian Democratic Union. Picture; Getty Images.

The frontrunner in the German election campaign has denounced Elon Musk’s endorsement of the main hard-right party as the worst case of interference by a “friendly” country in the history of democracy.

Over the weekend Musk, the owner of X and a close ally of Donald Trump, had an article published in a German conservative newspaper that championed the anti-establishment Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as the country’s “last spark of hope”.

The Welt am Sonntag op-ed has been enormously controversial and prompted the resignation of the comment editor, as well as drawing condemnation from most of the country’s mainstream parties.

Without exception, the centrist parties in Germany cast the AfD as a threat to the country’s post-war liberal democratic system and regard it as too extreme to be a coalition partner.

Friedrich Merz, the leader of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union and strongest candidate to become the next chancellor, dismissed Musk’s intervention as “intrusive and arrogant”. He said he could not think of a case where a leading figure from a country had meddled so disruptively in the affairs of an allied democratic state.

“Let’s just imagine for a brief moment what the Americans’ justified response would be to a similarly one-sided article from a prominent German businessman in The New York Times that favoured an outsider in the American presidential election,” he told the Funke Media group.

The AfD has assiduously curried favour with the Trump camp in recent months, seeking to portray itself as the German counterpart to the president-elect’s populist insurgency against the political establishment.

The Times