After years of politicians and media figures normalising far-right ideas, the billionaire’s meddling is falling on fertile ground

When Elon Musk endorsed the far-right Alternative für Deutschland on X as the only party that could “save Germany”, followed by an opinion article in Die Welt promoting the AfD in the forthcoming federal elections the backlash was swift. “Germany must not tolerate Musk’s transgressions,” declared the publisher of the liberal newspaper Tagesspiegel. “How did Elon Musk’s election propaganda for the AfD make it into Welt?” asked another commentator, accusing Welt’s publisher, Axel Springer, of betraying its own principles. The Spiegel columnist Marina Kormbaki labelled Musk’s intervention the “breaking of a taboo”.

The outrage was justified. Musk’s apocalyptic rhetoric and alignment with forces often labelled extremist are deeply unsettling in a country still grappling with the weight of its 20th-century atrocities. His political meddling – from the US to the UK and now Germany – follows a disturbing pattern of self-aggrandisement cloaked in dangerous ideology.

Hanno Hauenstein is a Berlin-based journalist and author