With only a few weeks until Germany’s election, Elon Musk has unambiguously thrown his support behind the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. In a video address to a party rally last week, he appeared to urge Germans to “move on” from any “past guilt” related to the Holocaust. Troublingly, the AfD is now firmly entrenched as Germany’s second-most popular political party, behind the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Like all parties in German elections, however, it cannot win an outright majority. It is also unlikely to be invited to join any ruling coalition that emerges from the February 23 election. But the AfD’s anti-migrant, anti-government sloganeering has already seriously distorted Germany’s public debate and democratic culture, leaving many to ask whether it even needs to win elections to see its policies implemented. This was evident following a dramatic week in Germany’s Bundestag. First, in a radical break with Germany’s political norms, opposition leader Friedrich Merz deliberately drew on the votes of the AfD on Wednesday to ram a radical anti-asylum seeker motion through the parliament.

It was the first time in the history of the Bundestag that a parliamentary majority was reached with the help of the far right. Merz’s action was widely condemned as a “taboo-breaking” step towards legitimising the AfD. Merz tried to take this a step further with a far-reaching bill to tighten immigration controls on Friday. Although the bill narrowly failed, all of the AfD voted with Merz. Twelve members of his own CDU party refused to back him. Merz’s courting of the far right is widely seen as politically unnecessary, given his conservative CDU is already leading the national polls, making him the favourite to succeed the Social Democratic Party (SDP)‘s Olaf Scholz as chancellor. This raises a couple crucial questions heading into the election. Is it insiders or outsiders that are playing the biggest role in bringing the far right into the mainstream? And just how big a role will the AfD play after the election?

The Musk effect

Musk’s embrace of the AfD should come as no surprise, given the integral part he played in Donald Trump’s election victory in the United States. In the German context, however, his behaviour and statements have taken on darker hues. Germans know only too well what is at stake when democracy is eroded by those who abuse its freedoms to attack it. Had Musk’s now notorious Nazi salutes following Trump’s inauguration been performed in Berlin, for example, he might have faced up to three years in prison. The catchphrase “never again” has underpinned German politics since the second world war. Yet, the response to Musk’s recent provocations was oddly muted in some sections of the German media. The German tabloid Bild made embarrassing excuses for his Hitlerian salute, while others spoke vaguely of a “questionable gesture”.

With a few notable exceptions, it was left to activists to remind Germans of the severity of this gesture—projecting an image of Musk’s salute on a German Tesla plant, alongside the word “heil”. Given the seriousness with which Germany patrols representations of its Nazi past, it was surprising just how few journalists were prepared to state without equivocation that “a Hitler salute is a Hitler salute is a Hitler salute”.

Merz’s embrace of the far right

Initially, there were some signs Germany’s main political leaders would decry Musk’s attempts to normalise far-right politics in the country. When Musk called the AfD the “last spark of hope” in December, both Scholz and Merz quickly condemned his meddling. Scholz has continued to label Musk’s blatant attempts to influence German politics as “unacceptable” and “disgusting”. Merz claims to be keeping his distance from Musk. But it appears his strategy for winning the election is not far from what Musk is suggesting—mimicking AfD policies and collaborating with the party on anti-immigration votes.

In his most radical break with the centrism that characterised the CDU under former Chancellor Angela Merkel, Merz cracked the “firewall” against working with the far-right this week. Knowing just what it meant, he used the AfD’s support to pass the starkly worded nationalist border protection motion in the Bundestag. The AfD publicly celebrated their good fortune, calling it a “historic day for Germany”. Democratic party leaders, meanwhile, registered their shock and dismay. Merkel herself spoke out against Merz, saying it was “wrong” to “knowingly” work with the AfD. Her intervention appears to have been critical to the immigration bill failing on Friday, with many of her former supporters in the CDU withholding their votes.

What AfD’s rise could mean

Given the two votes in the past week and Musk’s high-profile intervention, many in Germany now fear a CDU victory in the election could signal more collaboration with the AfD. The Left Party has denounced Merz as an AfD puppet and demanded Musk be forbidden from entering Germany. The Greens’ Robert Habeck, Germany’s vice chancellor, has said Merz’s nationalist coalition would “destroy Europe”. He has also warned Musk to keep his “hands off our democracy”, prompting Musk to label Habeck “a traitor to the German people”. Musk is by no means the cause of the AfD’s popularity, but his embrace of the extremist party has given it a global profile and credibility in circles that might not have otherwise considered supporting it. Musk has been a controversial figure in Germany ever since his Tesla “gigafactory” arrived in Brandenburg and was promptly accused of felling 500,000 trees and irreparably damaging precious groundwater reserves. Accusations of Tesla breaching German labour laws and even conducting surprise checks on sick workers have also not endeared him to progressive Germans.

As some commentators have suggested, it is probably not coincidental the AfD’s plans for the German economy would benefit Musk’s business interests. Economic self-interest alone seems insufficient, however, to explain why Musk has gravitated to the extreme right. The same might be said of Merz. Electoral calculations alone cannot explain his risky courting of the far right. He has long been the frontrunner to win the next election. Cosying up to the AfD will only make it harder to form a coalition with either Scholz’s Social Democratic Party or the Greens. If these two parties refuse to deal with Merz, the only other bloc large enough to deliver his party control of the government would be the AfD. Would he go so far? Whether it is formally part of the next government or not, the AfD and its camp followers (such as Musk) could be set to have a much bigger influence on German politics. How this will change Germany in the long term remains to be seen.

- The Conversation

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