Musk urges Germans to ‘stop focusing on past guilt’ as tens of thousands take to streets to protest far-right AfD
Elon Musk made a surprise appearance at a rally for the German far-right party, urging Germans to ‘stop focusing on past guilt’ as tens of thousands took to the streets to protest against the party.
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Musk addressed 4,500 people at Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) election campaign event in Halle in eastern Germany on Saturday, endorsing the party for the second time in two weeks.
Speaking via video link, he told the crowd to ‘be proud of German culture’ and ‘stop focusing on past guilt’, in an apparent reference to the Holocaust and WWII.
“It’s good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything,” Musk said.
The world’s richest man came under scrutiny on Monday, when he made a gesture that many compared to a Nazi salute at a Trump inauguration event.
At the rally on Saturday, he said “children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their great grandparents”, apparently referencing Germany’s Nazi past right before International Holocaust Memorial Day on Monday, January 27.
“There is too much focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that,” he said.
The AfD is an anti-immigration and anti-Islamic party that has been designated right-wing-extremist by German security services.
Meanwhile, thousands of Germans took to the streets in protest in Berlin and other cities against the rise of the far-right and anti-immigrant party ahead of a February 23 general election.
At Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, participants lit up their phones, blew whistles and sang anti-fascist songs, while in Cologne, protesters carried banners denouncing AfD.
An opposition bloc of Germany's centre-right parties, the Union, led by Friedrich Merz, is leading pre-election polls with AfD in second place.
Merz said on Friday that his party will bring motions to toughen migration policy - one of the main election issues - to parliament next week, a move seen risky in case the motions go to a vote and pass with the help of AfD.
He had earlier vowed to bar people from entering the country without proper papers and to step up deportations if he is elected chancellor.
Those comments came after a knife attack in Aschaffenburg by a rejected asylum-seeker left a man and a two-year-old boy dead, with the reaction to the tragedy spilling over into the election campaign.
Activists including the group calling itself Fridays for Future dubbed the Berlin rally the "sea of light against the right turn".
They hope it will draw attention to the actions by the new administration of US President Donald Trump and to the political line-up ahead of Germany's election.
A protester in Cologne, Thomas Schneemann, said it was most important for him to "stay united against the far-right".
"Especially after yesterday and what we heard from Friedrich Merz we have to stand together to fight the far right," he added.
The protests took place while AfD was opening its election campaign in the central city of Halle on Saturday.
Party leaders Alice Weidel, AfD's candidate for chancellor, and Tino Chrupalla were expected to speak to an audience of some 4,500 people.
Ms Weidel again received the backing of Elon Musk, who addressed the rally remotely, but she has no realistic chance of becoming Germany's leader as other parties refuse to work with AfD.