AP Photo/Evan Vucci
An editor at a German newspaper that published an op-ed from Elon Musk defending the country’s ascendant far-right party resigned in protest.
Musk, the billionaire owner of X, formerly Twitter, recently expressed his support for Alternative for Germany, an extremist party with an anti-immigrant platform that this year became the first far-right party to win a state election in Germany since 1945.
After his comments defending AfD drew intense backlash, Musk wrote in an op-ed published in the daily German paper Welt on Saturday, “The traditional parties have failed in Germany.”
He also dismissed concerns about the party’s extremism: “The portrayal of the AfD as rightwing extremist is clearly false, considering that Alice Weidel, the party’s leader, has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka! Does that sound like Hitler to you? Please!”
AfD is seen in Europe as so extreme that the French far-right party led by Marine Le Pen distanced itself after an AfD leader declared that not every Nazi SS member was a criminal. Earlier this year,
Eva Marie Kogel, the commentary editor at Welt, took to Musk’s platform X to announce her resignation from the paper in the wake of the op-ed’s publication.
“I always enjoyed heading the opinion department at Welt and Wams. Today a text by Elon Musk appeared in Welt am Sonntag. Yesterday I submitted my resignation after printing,” she posted.
Welt, a paper owned by Politico parent company Axel Springer, also published a response to Musk from its incoming editor in chief Jan Philipp Burgard.
“Musk’s diagnosis is correct, but his therapeutic approach, that only the AfD can save Germany, is fatally false,” Burgard wrote, calling the party anti-Semitic and xenophobic.