CULTURE|POLITICS

My Old Golden Boy, Musk, Now Supports Far Right AfD Who Smell Like Nazi Germany

Their numbers are growing quickly. I’m starting to feel afraid and wonder if any place is truly safe.

Images and questions of war have had my heart rate on a roller coaster ride all day. I can no longer ignore this once marginal group of people who used to be considered a fringe political party in Germany.

Last night I saw a post by one of my co-workers on social media that featured a headline about Elon Musk. Because it’s social media and I wanted to get the facts before reacting further, I did some digging.

It turns out that Musk is on an anti-immigration kick that falls right in line with the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) political party’s views. They’re a far-right party whose current leader makes Donald Trump and his ridiculous ways look mild in comparison.

“We have become clearer in what we what we want and what we think,” the 46-year-old rising star of the far right said of his party, known by its German acronym AfD. “We have more of the Trumpian style of communication.”

I learned about them back in 2018 when I first considered moving to Germany in 2020. They had about ten percent of the vote during that time. However, they have since doubled their numbers, and are currently on the rise.

Every one out of five people in Germany now supports them.

Musk seems to be among them which makes me sick to my stomach for multiple reasons.

For one, Musk is an immigrant himself. He is South African and has lived in the United States for decades, yet he vehemently fights against helping immigrants, including refugees.

The video that was posted by an AfD member, and reposted from Musk’s account, showed a German humanitarian group rescuing immigrants they found in the Mediterranean Sea.

Musk felt this to be wrong and expressed his views about it openly on X. He asked the German people if they knew such things were going on. The German government responded via its official X account,

“It’s called saving lives.”

There was a time when I actually had a big crush on Elon Musk.

This was several years ago when he was still struggling with getting Space X off the ground and keeping it afloat.

I thought he was a romantic because he had married and divorced the same woman, his second wife, who also starred in the film Pride and Prejudice, twice.

Elon Musk was my Golden Boy.

He majored in physics. I had just fallen in love with physics, cosmology, and astronomy. I believed that Musk could, and possibly would, make our world a better place.

Man, was I wrong.

There are some key elections being held here in Germany this month and next year. Many people are struggling with the high costs of heat and electricity since the start of the Ukraine war.

Oh yeah, how about the even more recent remark by Musk where he made fun of the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Let me remind those who know, and inform those who do not know, that Elon Musk’s net worth is $250.3 BILLION.

Regardless of personal feelings regarding X (I started the process of deletion today), there are currently around 350 million users. That’s quite a large audience.

It has been two years, almost to the date, since I arrived in Germany and started the long, slow process towards becoming a German citizen which also will make me a citizen of the European Union.

There are many reasons I decided to do this, one of which was to escape Trumpian shenanigans that were growing out of control in America.

I didn’t feel safe.

Now, despite recent positive news about the immigration laws changing this year and next in my favor, I question my future here in Germany.

The AfD was just created in 2013.

Where will they be in 2033, especially with the support of someone like Elon Musk with money and social media reach to help back their violent beliefs?

I am a firm believer that the one constant in life is change. The good and the bad, whether we want or don’t want things to change, they will.

This season of marked transition, my favorite season, autumn, fills me with mixed emotions: gratitude, sadness, excitement, and solemnity.

Instead of allowing my mind to be crippled by fear and anxiety over what may come, I am nurturing hope and strength to meet each day, wherever it is.

I am doing my best to let the changes inspire me.

Thank you to all at Age of Empathy for your wonderful editing work, responses from writers and readers, and all of the shared stories.

It is very much appreciated.