On Thursday, Elon Musk took his support for Germany’s far-right party to a new level with a live chat with its leader, Alice Weidel.
The 74-minute conversation touched on energy policy, German bureaucracy, Adolf Hitler, Mars and the meaning of life.
The world’s richest man has unequivocally called on Germans to support Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in the upcoming elections.
It’s the tech billionaire’s latest controversial foray into European politics.
This discussion became much more intense when Elon Musk was accused of meddling in the early elections in Germany.
But the interview, conducted in English, was perhaps the AfD’s chance to reach an international audience through Musk’s X platform.
Knowing about his close relationship with Donald Trump, Alice Weidel definitely expressed her support for the US president-elect and his team.
She insisted her party was “conservative” and “libertarian” but had been “negatively framed” by the mainstream media as extremist.
The German authorities have officially recognized sections of the AfD as right-wing extremists.
A BBC News investigation last year revealed links between some party figures and far-right networks, while one of the party’s leaders, Björn Hoeke, was fined last year for using a banned Nazi phrase – although he denied doing so knowingly.
During the conversation, Weidel stated that Hitler was in fact a “communist”, despite the Nazi leader’s apparent anti-communism, which invaded the Soviet Union.
“He was not a conservative,” she said. “He was not a libertarian. He was a communist, a socialist.”
She also called Hitler an “anti-Semitic socialist.”
On other issues, he and Musk talked – and sometimes giggled – about Germany’s notorious bureaucracy, its “insane” rejection of nuclear power, the need for tax cuts, freedom of speech and “wakefulness.”
In the sometimes shaky and sometimes strange conversation, there was one surreal moment when Weidel asked Mr. Musk if he believed in God.
The answer – for those who want to know – was that he was open to the idea as he sought to “understand the universe as much as possible”.
Despite all the expectations, this exchange was definitely not on the cards for many people at Bingo.
