A few days ago, Elon Musk spoke with Alice Weidel, the leader of the AfD (“Alternative fuer Deutschland”). The rise of the AfD has a lot to do with real unaddressed problems in Germany, some going back to mistakes made during reunification and some of them more recent, such as the poor handling of immigration under Merkel. Several of the measures the AfD is calling for make sense and have broad public support. Right after the collapse of the Scholz government, I told several of my German friends that a CDU-AfD coalition is a possible outcome of the upcoming elections. Everyone was dismissive which, much like in the run-up to Trump’s first victory in 2016, suggests to me that this a real possibility that people simply don’t want to see.
I am not a fan of the simplistic left right classification of parties and their positions. The AfD is often called a far-right party but I think this misses the key point which is that the AfD has a Nazi problem. What I mean by this is that the AfD has been drawing on supporters from groups such as the NPD (now called Homeland and definitely a Neo-Nazi group), instead of drawing a clear line and distancing itself explicitly both in terms of candidates and the language used to describe its positions. It got so bad last year that Marine Le Pen and her National Rally group sought to distance themselves from the AfD.
Elon in an Op Ed for die Welt apparently thought he would be doing Weidel and the AfD a favor by writing that
“The description of AfD as far-right is made obviously false simply by noting that Alice Weidel, the party leader has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka! Does that sound like Hitler to you? Please.” English original from X, German translation in die Welt
First, it’s never a good idea to bring up Hitler unprompted like this. Second, this supposedly logical proof only demonstrates one thing, which is Musk’s shallow knowledge of German history: Ernst Röhm, one of the early leaders of the Nazi movement and founder of the Sturmabteilung (SA), was gay. Hitler had Röhm murdered in the Night of the Long Knives. So yeah, Musk is definitely not helping here, all the more so because his own trolling occasionally veers into Neo-Nazi adjacent territory, such as his recent short-lived Kekius Maximus online persona.
Weidel could have used the conversation with Musk to distance herself and the party clearly from any Neo Nazi movements. Instead she attempted to rebrand Htiler as a communist. Musk went along, later approvingly reposting Weidel’s comments including the claim that the Nazis had nationalized industry. Here is an excerpt from the conversation:
[Alice Weidel] [...] First of all, I would like to, since I'm an economist, I would like to shed some light on the idea, when we talk about Hitler, on the idea of the National Socialists. Back then, during the Third Reich, the National Socialists, as the word says, they were socialists.
[Elon Musk] They nationalized industries like crazy.
[Alice Weidel] Yes, absolutely. He was a communist and he considered himself as a socialist. So what they did, they state-funded the private companies and then they asked for huge taxes. And then also, wait a second, I need to ask the word now, nationalized the entire industry. Yes, you said that before. And the biggest success, the biggest success after that terrible era in our history was to label Adolf Hitler as right and conservative.
This is wrong on several levels. First, the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) chose the name intentionally to appeal to both nationalists and workers. The predecessor party was called just Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP). Hitler initially was supposed to infiltrate this group but instead wound up taking it over. The political landscape in the Weimar Republic included many several actually socialist and communist parties. And guess who the NSDAP used to disrupt the meetings of these parties? Ah yes, the Sturmabteilung founded by Röhm.
Second, the claim that the Nazis nationalized industries requires scrutiny. Again, Musk seems to see this as an easy proof for Weidel’s recharacterization of Hitler. Weidel, who is a trained economist, starts by giving a more differentiated answer with “they state-funded private companies” but then also uses the “nationalization” term. With the first statement she was much closer to what happened. During the Great Depression and Weimar Hyperinflation, the government had taken over failing businesses in key industries. When Hitler came to power in 1933 he started a privatization wave that lasted until 1937. During this time the Nazis rewarded the few industrialists which had supported their rise to power, such as Thyssen. They also gave some of these enterprises to party members and party organizations. What defined the Nazi economy was massive government intervention in each sector to support the rapid rearmament of Germany. Essentially the German economy was already operating in war mode for years before the start of World War II. It is worth remembering that in the US too during war production, the government directed industrial output at scale. Applying the term “nationalization” to that approach as a proof of socialism is utterly misleading.
It is sad and dangerous that in order to promote their ideas, some of which I agree with, both Musk and Weidel resort to rewriting history in order to maintain their support from far-right quarters. While this may be politically expedient, it taints the entire effort. There are some forces that simply should not be summoned.
Now in the end concerns like mine may not matter because a lot of Germans are fed up and feel ignored by the major parties. Polling may turn out to be widely off because people are less likely to admit to planning to vote AfD because they don’t want to be seen supporting a party that is flirting with Neo Nazis. I hope I am wrong about that. We will see in February.
