Days after stoking controversy by delivering what some believed to be a Nazi salute and making Holocaust jokes, Elon Musk appeared at a campaign rally for a far-right German political party to tell supporters to be proud of their heritage.
Musk’s appearance Saturday at the rally for Alternative for Germany, known as AfD, was unadvertised and came by video. It was the second time in as many weeks that the world’s richest man and close ally of new U.S. President Donald Trump has appeared alongside Alice Weidel, the party’s candidate for chancellor in Germany’s Feb. 23 election.
During his speech, Musk told a cheering crowd of 4,500 that he believed the AfD was “the best hope for Germany.” He also alluded to Germany’s history.
“There is too much focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that. Children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their great-grandparents,” Musk said.
He added that he believed the party could “preserve” and “protect” German culture, which he implied was facing a threat.
“It’s good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything,” Musk said.
The rally is set to be AfD’s largest before next month’s elections, in which the party is polling in second place. The rally took place in Halle, the eastern Germany city where a far-right extremist attacked a synagogue on Yom Kippur in 2019.
Musk’s appearance at the rally comes days after he twice made a straight-armed gesture at a Trump inauguration event that ignited comparisons to the Nazi “Sieg Heil” salute. After some arbiters of antisemitism said they would give him the benefit of the doubt, Musk posted a series of Holocaust jokes on X, the social network that he owns.
The entire saga followed Musk’s recent endorsement of AfD, which has found increasing traction in Germany with its anti-immigrant, pro-Russia and anti-European Union platform. Some of its politicians have also downplayed the Holocaust, and German courts have fined one of its regional leaders, Björn Höcke, multiple times for using the Nazi-era phrase “Alles für Deutschland,” or Everything for Germany.
Musk hosted Weidel for a livestream on X earlier this month. During the call, Weidel falsely claimed that Adolf Hitler was a communist in a bid to distance AfD’s politics from the Nazis’.
Musk’s appearance at the AfD rally caused at least some Jews who said they had previously given Musk the benefit of the doubt to condemn him.
“There I was. Joining the chorus calling the left ridiculous because of a poorly orchestrated arm gesture. And then this happens, coupled with a few Holocaust zingers on Twitter in terrible taste, and now, I’m not so sure who is ridiculous, or if in fact we are all being played,” Blake Flayton, a pro-Israel influencer, posted on Instagram.
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