After helping Trump win, Elon Musk is becoming a political force in Europe
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and a close advisor to President-elect Donald Trump.
Having tapped his vast personal wealth and marshaled his 210 million followers on X to help propel Donald Trump to election victory in November, Elon Musk has turned his gaze to European politics.
In a post on X late Wednesday, Musk called for the release of Tommy Robinson, a British far-right agitator, saying he was in jail for “telling the truth.” Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was jailed last year for breaching a court order not to repeat false claims about a refugee from Syria. Robinson had been successfully sued for defamation over the claims.
Musk then posted that Britain should have an election — the most recent one took place in July — and claimed its government was reluctant to hold an inquiry into child sexual exploitation to protect the prime minister, Keir Starmer. He was the country’s chief prosecutor when a series of high-profile court cases about gangs targeting children shook the nation.
The posts are Musk’s most aggressive intervention in European politics and follow months of commentary, particularly on events in the UK and Germany.
On Tuesday, Musk urged British voters to back Reform UK, a populist party led by Nigel Farage, a key figure in the UK’s 2016 referendum to leave the EU.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO — who has embraced conservative stances on issues such as immigration, diversity, and transgender rights in recent years — met with the conservative firebrand Farage in mid-December at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
Farage later told the BBC that Musk was “fully, fully behind us” and open to donating to Reform UK if he could do so legally. The party has made no secret of its excitement about Musk and his potential financial support, with Farage describing him as a “bloody hero” in a recent interview with the UK’s Daily Telegraph.
Musk has been a vocal critic of Starmer. In numerous X posts, he’s called the country a “tyrannical police state” and suggested the nation was on the brink of civil war.
The people of Britain have had enough of a tyrannical police state https://t.co/0PtR5qQOKw
— Kekius Maximus (@elonmusk) November 24, 2024
The tech billionaire has also thrown his weight behind the German far-right party the AfD, which has come out strongly against immigration and echoed Trump in calling for mass deportations.
The AfD holds about 10% of the seats in Germany’s legislative body, the Bundestag, but it has made significant gains in recent years, including coming second in this year’s European Parliament elections.
It is widely expected to win the second-highest share of votes in the Bundestag election in February and, like Reform UK, has welcomed Musk’s support. Its candidate to become Germany’s chancellor, Alice Weidel, said Musk was “perfectly right” when he said in an X post on December 20 that the party was the only one that could “save Germany.”
Musk then championed the AfD in an op-ed published in the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag on Sunday. The paper and B-17 are both owned by Axel Springer.
Musk wrote that years of misguided policies by the main political parties had led to “economic stagnation, social unrest, and the erosion of national identity,” and the AfD represented the “last spark of hope” for the country. He justified his German political commentary by pointing to his “significant investments” in the country.
Musk’s Tesla Gigafactory just outside Berlin is the company’s main European facility and employs close to 12,000 people. It produces components such as batteries, and the final assembly of the Tesla Model Y is completed at the factory.
The paper printed a response by its editor-in-chief-designate, Jan Philipp Burgard, on the same page as Musk’s controversial column. Burgard wrote that “Musk’s diagnosis is correct,” but his claim that only the AfD can save Germany is “fatally flawed.”
