Billionaire Elon Musk has been accused by officials in Berlin of trying to exert influence over the German election that is set to take place in February.
A government spokesperson shared with NBC News “that Elon Musk is trying to influence the federal election” through his social media posts and an opinion piece he wrote where he backed the right-wing Alternative for Germany over the weekend.
The spokesperson did share that Musk was free to share his opinions, noting that “After all, freedom of opinion also covers the greatest nonsense.”
Germans are set to vote on Feb. 23 following the collapse of a coalition government led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Musk had posted an opinion piece in German in the Welt am Sonntag newspaper, in which he expanded on a post he shared to X last week that said, “Only the AfD can save Germany.”
He has said that he agrees with the party’s stance on taxes, regulation, and market deregulation.
After the piece was published, the editor of the newspaper’s opinion section wrote on X that she would resign from her position.
Musk’s actions have also drawn a response from Friedrich Merz, the leader of the opposition Christian Democrats and the current favorite to be the next chancellor.
“I cannot recall a comparable case of interference, in the history of Western democracies, in the election campaign of a friendly country,” Merz shared with the Funke Media Group, adding that Musk’s commentary was “intrusive and pretentious.”
Saskia Esken, a co-leader for Scholz’s Social Democrats, said that they would work to resist attempts by state actors and the rich and influential to influence Germany’s elections.
“In Elon Musk’s world, democracy and workers’ rights are obstacles to more profit,” Esken told Reuters. “We say quite clearly: Our democracy is defensible and it cannot be bought.”
Musk’s comments about the AfD are not new, as he shared in a series of posts from June that he thought the party was being misclassified as “far right.”
“They keep saying “far right”, but the policies of AfD that I’ve read about don’t sound extremist. Maybe I’m missing something,” Musk wrote at the time.