By Thomas Escritt
BERLIN (Reuters) – On his public journey to embracing Germany’s far-right Various for Germany (AfD), Elon Musk has regularly amplified the net content material of 1 younger supporter of the occasion – local weather change and COVID-19 lockdown sceptic Naomi Seibt.
Shortly after polls closed in June for the European Parliament elections, during which the AfD carried out strongly, Seibt introduced that she had voted for the occasion in a submit to her tens of 1000’s of followers on X, Musk’s social media platform. An hour later, Musk responded with a query.
“Why is there such a destructive response from some about AfD?” the Tesla (NASDAQ:) chief government requested in a public reply. He adopted up with a non-public message asking for extra particulars, Seibt instructed Reuters in an interview. Reuters has not seen the non-public message.
“I defined to him the AfD will not be just like the Nazi ideology or Hitler, however is just like the nineteenth century liberal nationalist motion … as a result of they needed to be free from authoritarians in their very own territory,” mentioned the 24-year-old, who posts in English, describing their non-public trade.
The billionaire entrepreneur responded with a humorous Roman Empire-themed meme, mentioned Seibt, who has round 368,000 followers on X.
Since asking Seibt in regards to the AfD in June, Musk has engaged publicly with the self-professed libertarian greater than 40 occasions, following two earlier engagements together with her on the platform earlier that yr, placing her amongst a small group of European influencers whose content material he has closely interacted with in latest months, based on a Reuters overview of his posts on X.
Musk, who has greater than 211 million followers on the platform, didn’t reply to requests for remark for this story. Reuters couldn’t set up how influential Seibt’s content material has been on his pondering.
Seibt, who rose to prominence a number of years in the past posting content material to counter local weather activist Greta Thunberg, mentioned Musk has despatched her a handful direct messages asking about German politics in the identical interval. Reuters has not seen these posts.
By December, Musk’s public help for the AfD was express, along with his public posts saying the occasion would “save” Germany. Afterward Thursday, he plans to interview on X Alice Weidel, the occasion’s chief and candidate to be Germany’s chancellor usually elections scheduled for Feb. 23.
The AfD accommodates a variety of conservative ideologies. It’s working second in polls forward of the elections, known as after the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-way coalition. Mainstream events have mentioned they won’t work with the occasion, based in 2013 and categorised by Germany’s home safety service as a “suspected extremist organisation.”
In recent times, the AfD consolidated round a populist anti-Islam worldview against immigration. It needs to dissolve the EU and exchange it with a looser commerce bloc, and to cease arming Ukraine.
Additionally it is centered on ending Germany’s coverage of atonement for World Battle Two crimes. Its main candidate for the European Parliament election resigned from the occasion in Might amid public outcry, after declaring that members of the SS, the Nazis’ essential paramilitary pressure, had been “not all criminals”.
Ned Richardson-Little, a historian on the Leibniz Centre for Modern Historical past Potsdam, mentioned that whereas they had been traditionally completely different events, the AfD did share with the Nazis “a deal with recapturing a legendary misplaced glory of the German nation” whereas scapegoating minorities and railing in opposition to elites.
Germany’s weak economic system along with anxiousness over immigration and struggle in Europe has tainted voters’ view of mainstream events, serving to the AfD’s standings within the polls.
The AfD didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Musk’s public curiosity in German and British politics has intensified because the November U.S. election, during which he spent quarter of a billion {dollars} to assist Donald Trump return to the White Home.
Musk has made no secret of his need to see an analogous shakeup of the political order throughout Europe, scary outrage from some leaders throughout the continent, together with in Germany the place he has a automobile manufacturing unit that employs 1000’s.
Reuters couldn’t set up to what extent he’s performing on the behest of Trump, who has appointed him the joint head of a brand new authorities effectivity division. On Tuesday, the president-elect mentioned “Elon’s doing a superb job” when requested for his response to Musk’s statements about overseas affairs in Europe and elsewhere.
“DON’T SOUND EXTREMIST”
The primary Musk submit that Reuters may discover containing a point out of the AdD got here in September 2023, when he retweeted a submit from an Italian far-right media outlet that talked favourably in regards to the occasion. After an internet backlash, two days after that he posted that he personally did not help any occasion and did not know the AfD “from a gap within the floor.”
In response to a overview of subsequent posts on the platform, Musk does not seem to have talked about the AfD once more till his June 9 reply to Seibt’s submit declaring her vote for the occasion, during which he mentioned he had been studying up, and that the occasion’s insurance policies “do not sound extremist.”
Six months later, his views had crystallized.
Between June and December, Musk talked about the AfD twice in tweets, regarding an try in Germany to ban the occasion.
Then, on Dec. 20, Musk posted once more, responding to Seibt, and mentioned: “Solely the AfD can save Germany.”
The submit retweeted a video by Seibt, during which she pilloried the German election frontrunner Friedrich Merz for criticising Musk.
The submit was on the identical day as a car-ramming assault that killed six at a Christmas market, carried out by a Saudi-born man with robust anti-Islam views who expressed help for the AfD and Musk in on-line messages however whose motives stay unclear.
For the reason that Dec. 20 submit, Musk has talked about the AfD by title at the least six occasions in tweets and has interacted with Seibt greater than a dozen occasions on the platform, primarily about German politics.
Later in December, he doubled down on help for the AfD in a column in a German newspaper, saying it was mistaken to name it far-right or evaluate it to Hitler, as a result of Weidel, the occasion’s Mandarin-speaking chief, is elevating kids with a identical intercourse associate born in Sri Lanka.
Seibt instructed Reuters that based mostly on their conversations, she believed that when Musk requested in regards to the AfD on X he had already researched the difficulty. “That is not one thing that is come from nowhere,” she mentioned.
His embrace of the AfD has coincided with a sequence of assaults on Brtain’s authorities and help for more and more fringe members of that nation’s right-wing.
Over the previous weeks, he has reignited debate round a British baby intercourse scandal, calling a feminine minister an apologist for “rape genocide” in opposition to white women and selecting a combat along with his latest ally Nigel Farage over Musk’s help for imprisoned hard-right chief Tommy Robinson.
“ERADICATE GERMAN GUILT”
Seibt’s posts typically match Musk’s speaking factors, together with in latest days the help for Robinson. Her movies are peppered with reward for X together with a catchphrase fashionable with Musk – “the woke thoughts virus.”
In two posts on X this week in regards to the British baby intercourse scandal, resurfaced by Musk’s assaults on the Labour authorities and his help for Robinson, Seibt mentioned she had been a sufferer of sexual abuse and grooming as a toddler. Reuters has not verified these feedback.
Seibt says she will not be far-right however votes for the AfD in order that it could actually sort out immigration.
“I wish to eradicate all this German guilt,” she added, referring to the German tradition of atonement for Nazi crimes, together with the Holocaust of Europe’s Jews. “I did not do something that allegedly my ancestors did,” she mentioned.
Seibt is presently travelling within the U.S. within the run-up to Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, crashing on the properties of different political influencers on X, she mentioned.
She hopes to attend inauguration because the “plus one” of one other influencer, Nick Sortor, she mentioned. There, she hopes to lastly meet Musk in particular person. Trump’s transition crew and Sortor didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
Seibt has been a outstanding determine in right-wing social media since her schooldays within the German college city of Muenster. As a toddler she was tormented by ill-health and by no means knew her father, she mentioned.
Seibt has devoted herself to on-line activism since dropping out of college after one semester of economics, she mentioned.
In 2019, she met British local weather sceptic Christopher Monckton who linked her with the Heartland Institute, a U.S.-based suppose tank that has labored on local weather change denial and forged doubt on the hurt attributable to passive smoking.
Heartland paid her $4,000 a month for 3 months, in what she described as a scholarship, she mentioned. Heartland didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Musk’s takeover of X has helped elevate her profile.
“After I noticed in 2022 that Twitter was being purchased by Elon, I did not know what was going to occur,” she mentioned. “However I knew one factor: I may belief this Elon Musk man.”
