Written by Thomas Escritt
BERLIN (Reuters) – In his public outing to embrace the far-right Alternative for Germany party, Elon Musk has often amplified the online content of one of the party's young supporters – Naomi Seibt, a skeptic of climate change and coronavirus lockdowns.
Shortly after polls closed in June for the European Parliament elections, in which the AfD performed strongly, Seibt announced that she had voted for the party in a post to her tens of thousands of followers on X, Musk's social media platform. An hour later, Musk responded with a question.
He asked, “Why is there a negative reaction from some regarding the AfD?” the Tesla (NASDAQ:) CEO asked in a public response. Seibt told Reuters in an interview that he followed up with a private message asking for more details. Reuters did not review the private message.
The 24-year-old said, “I explained to him that the AfD does not resemble the Nazi ideology or Hitler, but rather resembles the liberal nationalist movement in the nineteenth century… because they want freedom from tyrants in their lands.” , published in English, describing their private exchange.
The billionaire businessman responded with a humorous Roman Empire-themed meme, said Seibt, who has about 368,000 followers on X.
Since asking about the AfD in June, Musk has publicly addressed the self-proclaimed liberal more than 40 times, following two previous engagements with her on the platform earlier that year, which placed her among a small group of European influencers. Who shared their content. She has interacted with him extensively in recent months, according to a Reuters review of his posts on X.
Musk, who has more than 211 million followers on the platform, did not respond to requests for comment on this story. Reuters was unable to determine the extent to which Sebet's content influenced his thinking.
Seibt, who rose to prominence several years ago by publishing content confronting climate activist Greta Thunberg, said that Musk sent her a number of direct messages asking her about German politics during the same period. Reuters did not review these posts.
By December, Musk's public support for the AfD was clear, with his public posts saying the party would “save” Germany. Later on Thursday, he plans to interview X Alice Weidel, party leader and candidate for German chancellor in the general election scheduled for February 23.
The AfD party contains a range of conservative ideologies. He is ranked second in opinion polls ahead of the elections, which were called after the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's tripartite coalition. The main parties said they would not work with the party, which was founded in 2013 and is classified by Germany's domestic security service as a “suspected extremist organisation.”
In recent years, the AfD has united around a populist, anti-Islam and anti-immigration worldview. It wants to dissolve the European Union, replace it with a more flexible trading bloc, and stop arming Ukraine.
It also focuses on ending the German policy of atonement for World War II crimes. Its main candidate for the European Parliament elections resigned from the party in May amid public protests, after declaring that members of the SS, the Nazis' main paramilitary force, were “not all criminals”.
Ned Richardson-Little, a historian at the Leibniz Center for Contemporary History in Potsdam, said that although they were historically different parties, the AfD shared the Nazis' “focus on restoring the legendary lost glory of the German nation” while taking on minorities and minorities. Scapegoat. Protest against elites.
Germany's weak economy, coupled with concerns about immigration and war in Europe, has distorted voters' perception of the main parties, helping the AfD's ranking in the polls.
The Alternative for Germany party did not respond to a request for comment.
Musk's public interest in German and British politics has increased since the US elections in November, in which he spent a quarter of a billion dollars to help Donald Trump return to the White House.
Musk has made no secret of his desire to see a similar change in the political system across Europe, angering some leaders across the continent, including in Germany where he has a car factory that employs thousands.
Reuters was unable to determine to what extent he was acting at the request of Trump, who appointed him co-head of the new Government Efficiency Administration. On Tuesday, the president-elect said “Elon is doing a good job” when asked for his reaction to Musk's comments about foreign affairs in Europe and elsewhere.
“Don't look like an extremist”
Musk's first post found by Reuters containing a reference to the AdD party came in September 2023, when he retweeted a post from a far-right Italian media outlet that spoke favorably of the party. Following online backlash, he posted two days later that he personally did not support any party and did not know the AfD “from a hole in the ground.”
According to a review of subsequent posts on the platform, Musk does not appear to have mentioned the AfD again until his June 9 response to Seibt's post announcing her vote for the party, in which he said he had been reading, and that the party's policies “don't seem extreme.”
Six months later, his views had crystallized.
Between June and December, Musk mentioned the AfD twice in tweets, in connection with an attempt in Germany to ban the party.
Then, on December 20, Musk again posted a response to Seibt, saying: “Only the AfD can save Germany.”
The post retweeted a video from Seibt, in which she mocked German election front-runner Friedrich Merz for criticizing Musk.
The post was on the same day as a car-ramming attack that killed six people at a Christmas market, carried out by a Saudi-born man with strong anti-Islamic views who expressed support for the AfD and Musk in online messages but whose motives remain. Not clear.
Since the December 20 post, Musk has mentioned the AfD by name at least six times in tweets, and has interacted with Seibt more than a dozen times on the platform, primarily about German politics.
Later in December, he doubled down on his support for the AfD in a German newspaper column, saying it was wrong to call him far-right or compare him to Hitler because Weidel, the party's Mandarin-speaking leader, was raising children with a partner from Same sex born in Sri Lanka.
Siebt told Reuters that based on their conversations, she believes that when Musk asked about the AfD in X, he had already researched the issue. “This is not something that comes out of nowhere,” she said.
His embrace of the AfD has coincided with a series of attacks on Britain's government and his support for increasingly fringe members of that country's right-wing.
Over the past weeks, he has reignited controversy over a child sex scandal in Britain, describing a British minister as an apologist for “genocide of rape” against white girls, and picking a fight with his latest ally Nigel Farage over Musk’s support for jailed far-right leader Tommy. Robinson.
“Eliminate German guilt”
Cebit's posts often match Musk's talking points, including support for Robinson in recent days. Her videos are filled with praise for X along with Musk's catchphrase – “the virus of the awakened mind.”
In two X posts this week about Britain's child sex scandal, which has resurfaced due to Musk's attacks on the Labor government and his support for Robinson, Sibbett said she was a victim of sexual abuse and grooming as a child. Reuters has not verified these comments.
Seibt says she is not far-right but votes for the AfD so it can address the immigration issue.
“I want to eliminate all this German guilt,” she added, referring to the German culture of atonement for Nazi crimes, including the Holocaust of European Jews. “I did not do anything that my ancestors are alleged to have done,” she said.
She added that Cebet is currently traveling the US in the lead-up to Trump's inauguration on January 20, and crashing at the homes of other influential political figures on X.
She said she hopes to attend the inauguration as an “extra person” to another influencer, Nick Surtor. There, she hopes to finally meet Musk in person. The Trump transition team and Surtor did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Seibt has been a prominent figure on right-wing social media since her student days in the German university city of Münster. She said that as a child she suffered from ill health and never knew her father.
Seibt said she has dedicated herself to online activism since leaving university after one semester in economics.
In 2019, she met British skeptic Christopher Monckton who connected her with the Heartland Institute, a US-based think tank that denies climate change and has cast doubt on the harm caused by secondhand smoke.
She said Heartland paid her $4,000 a month for three months, in what she called a scholarship. Heartland did not respond to a request for comment.
Musk's acquisition of X helped raise its profile.
“When I saw in 2022 that Elon was going to buy Twitter, I didn’t know what was going to happen,” she said. “But I knew one thing: I could trust this guy named Elon Musk.”
