On Thursday, Elon Musk agreed with the leader of a far-right German political party that Adolf Hitler was a communist and that left-wing groups who support Palestinian causes have more in common with Nazis than with her own party.
The deeply weird and disinformation-filled conversation between Musk and Alice Weidel, the leader of Alternative for Germany (AfD), took place on X. It came after weeks of Musk’s efforts to boost the far-right party, which has deep links to neo-Nazism and has been surveilled for suspected extremism by Germany’s own intelligence services.
“[Hitler] was a communist, and he considered himself as a socialist,” Weidel said in response to Musk asking about media reports linking the AfD to Nazism.
“The biggest success after that terrible era in our history was to label Adolf Hitler as right[-wing] and conservative, he was exactly the opposite,” Weidel said. “He wasn’t a conservative, he wasn’t a libertarian, he was a communist, socialist guy, and we are the opposite.”
“Right,” Musk responded.
In his autobiography Mein Kampf, Hitler—who as leader of the German Reich was responsible for the invasion of the Soviet Union and the enslavement and death of millions of its citizens—repeatedly describes communism as an enemy of the German nation. He believed that Marxism was a Jewish conspiracy to control Germany and the world.
Weidel also compared the Nazi Party’s views to those of modern-day left-wing political groups who support Palestine in the face of what a UN commission has called crimes against humanity conducted by Israel. While her AfD colleagues were last month seen attending a secretive meeting organized by former members of a militant neo-Nazi group known for burning the Israeli flag, she said, “The AfD is the only protector of the Jewish people here in Germany.”
Weidel is the AfD’s candidate for chancellor in Germany’s snap elections, which take place next month. As someone who previously worked in finance and lives in Switzerland with her wife, who is from Sri Lanka, and their children, she has been presented as a relatively moderate face for the party.
This is something Musk picked up on in an op-ed he penned last month for a German newspaper.
“The portrayal of the AfD as right-wing extremist is clearly false, considering that Alice Weidel, the party’s leader, has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka,” Musk wrote. “Does that sound like Hitler to you? Please!”
Ahead of the conversation on Thursday, the EU said that it would be monitoring the event to see if it was artificially promoted to voters in Germany, something which would be in violation of the region’s sweeping Digital Service Act rules. A European Commission spokesperson told WIRED it would not be commenting on the contents of the livestream.
Weidel referenced the EU’s preoccupation with the conversation, claiming 150 officials at the EU commission were listening in, then claimed the DSA was a censorship tool, before adding: “You know what Adolf Hitler did? He switched off free speech. He controlled the media, and without that he would have never been successful.”
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