Weidel thanked Musk for his support after his remarks and said “Make Germany great again!”, echoing President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
The same day, protesters took to the streets in Berlin and Cologne, singing anti-fascist songs and denouncing the AfD.
“Those who fuel racism and attack climate protection are not just campaigning, they are endangering lives,” Luisa Neubauer, a climate activist, told the crowd, according to the Associated Press. Police say about 35,000 protesters showed up in Berlin, while the Cologne rally had about 40,000 attendees.
The AfD is considered by Germany’s domestic intelligence service to be a suspected extremist organisation. The party’s youth arm and its regional AfD branches in three of Germany’s 16 states are classified as “confirmed right-wing extremist”.
Musk backed the AfD in late December, which drew a harsh rebuke from the German Government accusing the tech mogul of “trying to influence the federal election”. The election is set for February 23, seven months earlier than originally scheduled after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a vote of confidence in mid-December.
On January 9, Musk interviewed Weidel on X, the social platform he owns. The two agreed that German’s education sponsored a “wokeish, leftist” agenda and said that speech regulations were comparable to Adolf Hitler’s media censorship.
The interview had about 200,000 listeners.
– Agence France-Presse
