Summary
Elon Musk sparked outrage in Germany by endorsing the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party on his platform, X, claiming “only the AfD can save Germany.”
The AfD, which polls second ahead of Germany’s February snap election, has been labeled extremist by German intelligence.
Political leaders accused Musk of election interference, while others criticized his remarks as harmful. Musk later doubled down, calling for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s resignation.
Musk’s comments align with his past support for far-right and anti-immigration figures across Europe and beyond.
He’s a modern day Nazi leader, what do you expect him to say?
Matches up with history. Hitler had a giant portrait of Henry Ford in his office. American racism, genocide, and capitalism was a major inspiration for the Nazis
Only Nazis can save Germany…isn’t there precedent for that not working?
Well Elon isn’t Jewish, gay, roma, disabled, Germsn, polish, French, Italian, Russian, British, …or a poor American so it isn’t his problem
Save Germany from what? Being a successful, modern country that takes care of its people?
Ugh, I must live in alternate-reality Germany. Not like AfD can improve things, but come on
I genuinely apologize for my ignorance. Germany looks like a damned paradise of free healthcare and other social welfare programs from the States. What issues are you facing over there?
Mainly missed opportunities due to inefficiencies and conflicts of interest in politics I’d say?
The biggest issue is a lack of investments due to us putting a block of taking on new government debt into our constitution so there never is enough money to invest in things like the infrastructure. That and too much bureaucracy in everything.
Just want to clarify that healthcare is not free; there are insurance companies and coverage is paid for.
The difference is they are more regulated and everyone must have insurance coverage
You should be more undersantding. Since Trump is now enraged because people call Musk the President, Musk needs to find a backup country where he’ll be called the leader before Trump kicks him out. That’s all just risk mitigation!
You know what bothers me? Musk knows hes bullshitting everyone and it seems like its fucking laugh to him. Remember when the hyper rich built libraries and funded colleges and, i dunno, just gave back? To think, just a few short years ago, he was presenting as some kind of visionary. Turns out, hes just a capitalist asshole.
Noblesse oblige still exists, but the loudest morons with wealth don’t do it. Classy people with wealth certainly still do
If luigi killed this guy I would not shed a single tear.
I would crack open an ice cold beer.
Musk reminds me of that Blofeld character that was in one of those lethal weapon flicks
Diplometic immunite
It’s important to note that right after saying this…
A German AFD supporter who retweets Musk drove into a Christmas market in a terrorist attack
Germany has stricter laws about inciting violence, it’s a long shot but maybe he’ll get charges
Elon Musk is, as far as I am concerned, directly responsible for (so far and let’s hope it stays that way) the murder of five people.
I’m all for bashing Elon Musk, but how is he actually directly responsible for that massacre?
Al-Abdulmohsen also posted a video where he used an AI avatar of Elon Musk to criticize the German government for what he said was its suppression of free speech and enabling the abuse of Saudi refugees.
He had previously reposted the tech billionaire, who expressed his support for AfD last week, writing on X: “Only the AfD can save Germany.”
Also:
Im not aware of these 5 people Can you share more?
I’m guessing you are aware, but I’ll play along.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/christmas-market-germany-car-dead-injured-magdeburg/
I fucking hate the guy. I just legit didn’t know.
Thanks for the link
Yeah it’s pretty new information that chronically online people might already know, but others may not.
I just heard about it like an hour ago via NPR.
chronically online people
(and everyone in Germany and nearby countries)
Obviously local news is going to be heard by local people before international people hear about it by international news. You didn’t need to say that.
And the AfD’s knee-jerk reaction was to assume he was a muslim jihadist, proving his point about German attitudes about Saudi refugees.
A German AFD supporter who retweets Musk drove into a Christmas market in a terrorist attack
Ohhhh, that’s why I haven’t seen the regular racist memes on conservative social media. Pretty on brand
Wasn’t the driver himself an immigrant?
Yes. An atheist 50 year old Saudi man.
Wasn’t trump voted by many Latinos?
Most Latinos still voted for Kamala, especially Latina women. There is a culture of machismo even worse than the US in some Latin American countries, so they see Trump as a strong man who does whatever he wants and gets away with it.
The worse part is that many Latinos who immigrated the official way, which is a huge pain in the ass, feel no solidarity with undocumented Latinos. I’ve heard worse anti immigrant shit on many occasions from Latinos than I’ve heard from black and white Americans.
Nazi supporting Nazi also supports other Nazis.
An apartheid-loving nazi calls for the nazi party to be the savior of Germany? Never would I have guessed.
The information, I as a not very politically interested German (understatement) have: We are holding re-elections on Feburary 23rd because the current government imploded. Basically, the rich guys’ party doesn’t want to make rich guys pay taxes and being children about it, most other parties seem desperate at this point, else they wouldn’t have challenged that much. They have never cared that much, so I have no idea what changed. The populist nazi party Musk cheers for has a lot traction because people are beyond stupid and self-centered and I fear that they will get a significant amount of votes. Maybe they don’t win outright, but they will realistically take second place. I regard everyone that considers to vote for AfD as a nazi.
I think the real problem is that most parties in Germany that held some power in the last decades did little to nothing to actually improve the economic situation of the “normal” people. For many it stayed the same, for many others it declined significantly starting with Corona and then with the energy crisis that contributed heavily to the inflation.
Paired with us being one of the few nations that raise no taxes at all on wealth but just on income the disparity between the rich and the poor is growing. So people have only the parties that haven’t held power yet to turn to.
I think it’s at least partially some weird form of misplaced hope that something will change for the better in the chaos that would be a AfD government.
But you are correct, supporting the AfD is directly benefiting Nazis. And while I don’t think that all AfD supporters will always be Nazis, they currently are.
For someone not very politically interested you seem to know a good bit. Please vote in February.
Elon Musk is a danger to democracy all over the world
What the fuck does he even know about germany?
He knows what benifits him. That’s the entirety of his motivations. Evil greedy assholes are quite dull, he just knows what makes him more money and more power.
What the fuck does he know about America?
He knows that Nazis are from there, and that’s pretty fckn rad baby
It doesn’t matter to him. All he knows that he’s a Dark Enlightenment fascist white supremacist. The poors and non-whites must die. Fascist governments must be in power everywhere so he can have his world where he is king, he has robots to do his bidding and can try to live forever.
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His knowledge is mostly restricted to the years 1933-1945.
He didn’t read the ending. No one tell him the spoiler.
To be honest the ending for rich capitalist(the same that helped Hitler in power) in west Germany was pretty good. They profit heavily during the war and afterwards the mostly just kept there companies continuing to profit.
That’s because the US rebuilt Germany, as a barrier to the USSR.
How about a Life reenactment?
I, as Citizen of Germany by birth and Law, invite Elon Musk to Nürnberg. We bring some Judges and a Rope.
It’s not an oligarchy yet.
Elon grew up and enjoyed the South African Apartheid regime and he is a neo-Nazi.
Stfu Musk you know shit about Germany
English teacher here. Often editing to use less words can make your statements more concise and accurate. For example, try “STFU Musk, you know shit”
I’m not a native English speaker, thank you!
Their advice is kind of bad… “you know shit” implies that he’s intelligent and knows things. Especially if just written down. If speaking, you may be able to convey what you want with tone and context, but even still…
Despite it being technically incorrect, grammatically, what you meant to say was, “you don’t know shit.” E.g., “You don’t know shit about Germany” = “You know nothing about Germany.”
English is fucking weird, and I can’t imagine learning all of these rules. Frankly, I couldn’t even explain to you how I know 3/4 of them, it’s just innate at this point.
Mm but we’re also very contextual- the ‘shut the fuck up’ implies the negative. So a native speaker automatically fills in the missing ‘all’ after shit or ‘don’t’ before know depending on regional preference
Yeah, I definitely read it the correct way, but I can see how someone who isn’t a native speaker could be confused by the wording. “You know shit” just sounds weird, especially after such a negative prior sentence.
Fun part is that only really applies in the written format - spoken it would have been incredibly clear!
(Enflish isn’t an inflection language my arse} )
English is fucking weird, and I can’t imagine learning all of these rules. Frankly, I couldn’t even explain to you how I know 3/4 of them, it’s just innate at this point.
Not even knowing shit = not even knowing the least (most worthless) amount possible = knowing nothing?
All languages are weird. English has very little in the way of inflection, which makes it fairly easy to pick up (in my opinion). For example, it only has one word each for “the” and “a(n)” whereas German has “der/die/das, des/der/des, dem/der/dem, den/die/das, die, der, den, die” and “ein/eine/ein, eines/einer/eines, einem/einer/einem, einen/eine/ein”. Yes, lots of duplicates, but each instance has its own distinct grammatical function, and its much the same with adjectives and nouns, and it all has to line up; “green” is different depending on the grammatical gender and number and noun case of whatever it is that is green… for example.
I think at some point you’re pretty much done actively learning rules unless you’re a proofreader, teacher, editor, translator, writer, philologist… you ’ll just have to move on to immersing yourself in English, whether it’s in person or via song lyrics, movies, books, forums, articles, documentation, video games. That way you’ll pick up idiomatic expressions like this one and ideally develop something like an informed sense for what sounds right (for example: “I could care less” doesn’t make much sense, and “irregardless” is a pointless double negative).
Don’t listen to them, your statement was fine, your English is good, and I think what you wrote is better than their edit.
I think they’re trying to be funny by implying that he doesn’t know shit about anything, rather than just Germany, but it’s not a well crafted joke if that was the intention.
Oh i knew that, my reply was purely ironically :)
Yeah this doesn’t feel like the place for that kind of joke plus “you know shit” reads as “you know a lot of things” to my native speaking brain as well as the other meanings and it’s very hard to tell intent from text.
Wooosh
But that sounds like the other usage of shit. It can mean nothing or it could man a lot. I mean with the shut the fuck up (which is more impactful than STFU) connotation the meaning isn’t lost but it’s a more confusing statement.
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Elon has a lot of money, therefore people listen to him, therefore he knows everything about anything he pleases.
We’re running into the paradox of tolerance real quick here folks. Democracies need to legislate limits to the political influence of rich idiots and soon, otherwise we’ll all end up like the US.
Well, funny thing is we do have rules about what you can and cannot say, in Europe. I’m looking forward to him discovering those little subtleties, since he clearly cannot shut his trap.
Rest of the world, please take us as a cautionary tale, not a model for emulation
These are rules that are supposed to already exist though. Foreign political influence is always considered a bad thing by the country receiving it. The UK and Germany should have strong protections against it but apparently they don’t.
lol as if they don’t like them. they themselves are rich idiots, the only difference is that ironically they don’t have as much political influence as unelected rich idiots.
