A German newspaper’s opinion section editor has resigned in protest over an Elon Musk op-ed supporting the far-right AfD party, which has called for mass deportations of immigrants from Germany.
Musk’s piece claimed “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!”
Musk said his “significant investments” justified his piece delving into German politics, but he did not outline them. He is not German and does not vote in Germany.
Shortly after the piece was published online, the editor of the Welt am Sonntag opinion section, Eva Marie Kogel, used Musk’s own X platform to post that she had submitted her resignation to the newspaper, which is part of the Axel Springer media group, which also owns the U.S. politics website Politico.
“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,” Kogel posted.
She included a link to the Musk commentary article.
Senior Welt Group figures weighed in online over Musk’s article on Saturday, the day before it hit print.
“Democracy and journalism thrive on freedom of expression. This includes dealing with polarizing positions and classifying them journalistically,” the newspaper’s editor-in-chief designate, Jan Philipp Burgard, and Ulf Poschardt, who takes over as publisher on 1 January, told Reuters.
Underneath Musk’s commentary, the newspaper published a response by Burgard.
“Musk’s diagnosis is correct, but his therapeutic approach, that only the AfD can save Germany, is fatally false,” he wrote. Musk and Weidel both later posted a link to the article on X.
The AfD backing from Musk comes as Germans are set to vote on February 23. The AfD is running second in opinion polls.
