It's all kicking off in Germany

With or without Mr Musk's helpful intervention, this will be an election like never before

Olaf and Elon in happier times, c/o Deutsche Welle

Apologies for the Substack silence over the past few weeks. I was in Japan, the ninth destination in my book on global best practice, looking at the way they’re dealing with an ageing population. Plus, it’s an amazing place to spend Christmas.

For the next two months, most of that’s on hold as everyone in Berlin (and beyond) is gripped by election fever. I’ll be doing regular contributions here, plus my regular columns for Foreign Policy, politico and elsewhere.

I’ll start with a piece I penned for the Independent over the weekend on that lovely Mr Musk and his attempts to meddle in Germany’s already-fraught political scene.

I wrote this before Austria’s attempts at staving off the far-right collapsed. The question on everyone’s lips is - if the mainstream parties in Germany follow Austria’s lead and allow egos and differences to get in the way of a post-election coalition deal, then might the worst happen?

That would be Musk’s dream. Hold onto your hats. He’ll be hosting an interview (or rather unctuous conversation) with the leader of the AfD, Alice Weidel, on Thursday night. I’ll write about that too, alongside doing a profile of Weidel - she of the incongruous personal life - for the New European.

If there’s any consolation to this mess, it’s that Musk seems to be doing even more damage in the UK. But that would be to indulge in Schadenfreude, something I don’t like doing…but Brits seem to love doing when it comes to Germany’s difficulties.

Here goes, c/o the Independent. As ever, get in touch with any comments.

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As Germans headed into a year gripped by foreboding, I was reminded of an episode a decade ago which struck me then as absurd, and which now makes me marvel at its prescience.

I was chairing a conference about the internet in Berlin, sponsored by Google, when one of the participants suggested that the German government should establish a public internet company. Silicon Valley, she proffered earnestly, was the preserve of the American super-rich and could not be trusted to tell the truth or preserve democracy.

I scoffed at the idea, though I was too polite to say so. Half of her analysis was, and still is, impossibly quaint and ridiculous. The notion of the state being relied upon to provide an online platform for comment and information – in the very country of Goebbels and the Stasi – stretches credulity. But I must admit that the speaker foresaw the malignancy of the likes of Elon Musk far earlier than I, or anyone I know, ever did.

Musk is driving a sledgehammer through politics in Germany, at its most sensitive moment, and he is basking in the fear he is stoking. The more colourful his insults become (delivered via X, his personal fiefdom), the more outraged the political class becomes. Which is his objective and that of his boss, Donald Trump.

Where better to undermine democracy than in the country that obsesses about constitutional propriety?

Musk labelled Olaf Scholz, the Chancellor, ‘an incompetent fool’. In another post, he labelled him ‘Olaf Schitz’. He has sprayed denunciations of all the other mainstream parties. But it was his most recent attack on the head of state, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, that has caused most offence, calling the supposed custodian of democracy ‘an anti-democratic tyrant’.

In theory, they all have the right to sue him. German law weighs freedom of expression against the right not to be insulted in public. The criminal code contains an entire category of ‘crimes of honour’, incorporating insults, slander, defamation and the propagation of false statements that cause harm, financial losses or emotional distress.

All of which would play perfectly into the hands of Musk and his self-proclaimed battle for ‘free speech’. In any case, any fine would make an infinitesimally small dent in his pocketbook.

What is far more dangerous is Musk’s open support for the far-right Alternative for Germany. With the party running second in the opinion polls ahead of the February 23 general election, his endorsement in the pages of the usually-respectable conservative newspaper Welt am Sonntag of the AfD and all it stands for – remigration, ethno-based nationalism and Europhobia – matters. Not because of Musk’s political perspicacity but because of his hold on social media.

The richest man in the world has a political and economic agenda in Germany. In his newspaper commentary a few days ago, he praised the AfD for its plans to ‘reduce government overregulation, lower taxes and deregulate the market’. A Tesla plant in the region of Brandenburg, east of Berlin, is his first electric car factory in Europe and would benefit from any deregulation.

"The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is the last spark of hope for this country," Musk wrote in his translated commentary.

He went on to say the far-right party "can lead the country into a future where economic prosperity, cultural integrity and technological innovation are not just wishes, but reality."

Musk's commentary quickly led to the resignation of the newspaper’s opinion editor, Eva Mari Kogel, while Lars Klingbeil, the chairman of Scholz’s Social Democrats, who are trailing far behind in third, accused Musk of wanting to ‘plunge Germany into chaos’, comparing him to Vladimir Putin. ‘Both want to influence our elections and specifically support the AfD's enemies of democracy,’ Klingbeil said.

Both Scholz, and the man most likely to succeed him at the Chancellery, the leader of the Christian Democrats (CDU), Friedrich Merz, have criticised Musk. But they have chosen their words carefully. ‘You, the citizens, decide what happens in Germany,’ Scholz said in his New Year’s address. ‘It’s not up to the owners of social media.’

Their measured tones mask a growing sense of alarm. The terrorist attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg demonstrated continued vulnerability to such incidents – although nobody is immune, as the latest attack in New Orleans attests. It also opened the door to yet more denunciations of immigrants, of ‘the other’.

And Germany, of all places, knows where such hostility can lead.

The AfD may have edged up a percentage point or so, but it remains at 20% - a still-remarkable achievement. The CDU remains above 30%, while the SPD, Greens and others languish.

A ‘firewall’ agreed by the main parties remains in place, ensuring no cooperation or coalition discussions with the AfD or other extremist groupings at national level, though locally that has started to fray.

The optimistic scenario is that German voters are no more disposed to American entrepreneurs telling them what to do than they were a decade ago and that Musk’s cosying up to the AfD will make little difference. The most likely election outcome remains a Merz/CDU coalition together with either the SPD or Greens or both.

The less sanguine one is that Musk is tapping into a latent frustration with liberal democracy in Germany, just as he and Trump are doing in the UK, with their support for Nigel Farage, and in France, with Marine Le Pen.

Germans are already petrified at the prospect of Trump’s inauguration in a fortnight’s time. The question then is how far will the 47^th President of the United States, a title that used to carry the tag of ‘leader of the free world’, be prepared to go to undermine democracy in the country that knows better than any what far-right dictatorship can bring? As election campaigns in Germany tend to spring the odd surprise only time will tell what they decide for their own country.