German Chancellor Olav Scholz has urged voters not to let “the masters of the social media channels” decide next year’s election, after Elon Musk repeatedly confirmed the far-alternative party für Deutschland (AfD).
On New Year’s Eve he made a televised address available and before it was made available on Tuesday, Scholz said that only German citizens have the power to decide “where Germany he leaves here” after the general election on 23 February.
“It will not be defined by the owners of the social media channels,” said Scholz about the future of the country.
“It may be forgiven in our debates, because sometimes the more extreme an opinion is, the more attention will be paid to it.” Indeed, Scholz said, the fate of German society is “up to as many reasonable and honest people as possible.”
Without naming Musk or his platform, X, explicitly, Scholz urged Germans to resist manipulation and resist their democracy.
“Only, it is customary to make wishes on New Year’s Eve. What I hope is that we don’t let each other go,” he said.
Scholz noted that there has been an onslaught of disinformation on social media after ” Class fit attack market at Magdeburg on the 20th of December in which five men were killed and more than 200 wounded. The car ramming was allegedly committed by a Saudi-born attacker with far-right sympathies.
Not a small number of these opinions and conjectures, though in the meantime, have been abandoned. These things, he says, divide us and undermine us. “This is not good for the country.”
On Monday, Scholz spokeswoman, Christiane Hoffmann; Mousk of the accused tries to enter in the country’s election campaign with a series of statements by supporters of the anti-Muslim, anti-immigration AfD party.
“There is indeed a reason for that Elon Musk trying to sway the federal election,” Hoffmann said in a media briefing. Musk had the right to free speech, he said, adding: “For even the biggest nonsense covers freedom of opinion.”
Musk is often considered in German politics, even Scholz a . he calls “stupid” on the 10th of the last month However, his recent open calls for German voters to support the AfD, which federal authorities say is a suspected extremist party, have sparked outrage and accusations of interference in Europe’s top economy.
A South African-born businessman, a close adviser to Donald Trump, who was initially named by the president to co-lead a commission to reduce the size of the US federal government; wrote in X * Earlier this month: “The AfD can only save Germany.”
In the post, Musk shared a video from a German influencer, Noomi Seibt, who criticized him Frederick MerzHe praised the conservative leader in the German elections and Javier Milei, who called himself Argentina. “Anarcho-capitalist” president.
He continued the weekend with an editorial guest discussion on the street Welt am Sonntag Germany was covered in economic and cultural collapseDefending the AfD against accusations of radicalism, praising the party’s approach to the economy, including regulation and tax policy.
Editor of the center-right journalism opinion section, Eva Marie Kogel; sent in X, that he had brought his resignation in protest against the decision of the article run.
Politicians from across the political spectrum have criticized Musk’s efforts to put a finger on the balance of German democracy, with health minister Karl Lauterbach, of Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), calling his intervention “unworthy and highly inappropriate” and Merz calling it that. was “intrusive and presumptuous”.
Merz told the Funke media group: “In the history of Western democracies, I cannot remember a similar case of interference in the election campaign of a friendly country.”
Scholz’s The center-left-led coalition collapsed last monthurging him to raise voter confidence for the general election in February to go seven months ahead of schedule. His SPD is widely expected to lose to Merz’s CDU/CSU largely amid old anger over the high cost of living and poverty.
AfD members have been working for months to make raids with the Trump camp, seeking to join the attack of their voters to the German campaign. Alice Weidel, a co-operator of the party, was one of the first foreign politicians let them receive the trumpet in victory.
A small group of AfD activists took pictures with Trump at the private Mar-a-Lago club in the US elections last month, chanting “Pugle! Fight! Fight!” in English and German.
Musk’s signatures, quoted in Die Welt as Weidel’s “same-sex partner from Sri Lanka,” testify to the image of the AfD “as a right-wing extremist that is patently false.” “Doesn’t that sound like Hitler to you? Please!” Theophrastus
It is the AfD second vote about 19%, behind the CDU/CSU at 31%. A strong showing for the party could complicate coalition building, requiring the election winner to seek to build a governing majority with two partners. All parties involved in cooperation with AFD are dominated at the state or federal level.