Musk tells the truth, Left and Right have failed German nation

Over the last few weeks, the German intellectual class was in absolute outrage: Serial-Entrepreneur and enfant terrible for the status quo elite Elon Musk published an op-ed in the German newspaper Die Welt. The article was barely out before the wailing and gnashing of teeth of the political and media establishment began. What was the terrible thing Musk said, that earned him the wroth of German eggheads? Well, saying the plainly obvious: Germany has too much regulation, suicidal immigration, and idiotic energy policies. Therefore it needs an alternative, which luckily for the Germans exists and is conveniently called “Alternative für Deutschland” – Alternative for Germany or short AfD.

Having realized that the establishment parties Left and Right have failed the German nation and its people, Musk gets to the heart of the democratic system and recommends voting out the failures of the past and let someone new try to do things differently. I am hesitant to toot our own horn here at Brussels Signal too much, but we have been making this case since November of last year (which is why you should consider bookmarking our page at https://brusselssignal.eu/). 

To be quite honest, it was an enjoyable moment. Reporters resigned in protest, activists began calling for German intelligence services to investigate the Axel Springer Group (which published “Die Welt”), and the head of the “conservative” party Friedrich Merz came out with the dumbest comment of the day, claiming that Musk’s recommendation to vote for the AfD is an attack on German democracy: “Never in the history of Western democracies has he seen such a degree of interference in the election of a friendly nation.” Mr. Merz must have a serious case of selective amnesia, as he himself took to – note the irony – Twitter/X in order to tell the people of Romania whom to vote for on December 6th of this year.

Equally stupid was this tweet by Bernd Ziesemer a “journalist” and former editor at the newspaper Handelsblatt: “Election endorsements are not covered by Freedom of Speech.” Ah yes, forgotten are the days when members of the UK Labour party traveled to the US to knock on doors campaigning for Obama in 2008 and Harris in 2024, or when the German climate activist Luisa Neubauer was trying to bring out the Democrat vote in Pennsylvania just a few months ago.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining: I have a sense that the few undecided voters in Pennsylvania finally came over to Trump after German environmentalists and British Socialists showed up on their front door. 

The fear of the status quo establishment is palpable, especially since every time the alternatives they warned us against turned out to be better than expected: Meloni in Italy was called a fascist, Milei in Argentina was called a fascist, Wilders in the Netherlands was called a fascist, and so are Farage, Orbán, Kickl, Trump, and, of course, the AfD. As Musk pointed out in his op-ed: “The description of the AfD as far-right is clearly wrong when you consider that Alice Weidel, the leader of the party, has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka! Does that sound like Hitler to you? Please!”

The “far-right” slur is just a convenient way of denying one’s own failed policies and the refusal to do things differently. The same newspapers that publish headline after headline about the decline of Europe nonetheless tell us to continue voting for the very parties responsible for the decline. And anyone who dares to disagree is being targeted by ever-more brazen lawfare: Trying to prevent Le Pen from running for office or the attempts to outright ban the AfD are just the most obvious forms of intimidation.

In the background, governments are weaponizing the state to go after the potential voter base of alternative parties. Entirely new categories like “non-criminal hate incidents” are being created that serve only one purpose: To go after everyone who challenges the status quo. You think Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck is an incompetent clown? You find Hamas supporters marching through your streets unpleasant? Whoa, better keep that to yourself or you will get a visit from the police for a “non-criminal hate incident.”

I do not know if the Gestapo in Germany was using the same term, but once the government can investigate you simply because it feels like it – even though there is not even the suspicion of a crime – you are entering totalitarian territory. Everything we are being told that the far right would do once in power is happening right now in the name of “defending democracy.”

The same people who are up in arms because Elon Musk published 600 words in a German newspaper have no problem with money from George Soros, Bill Gates, or a gazillion Hollywood celebrities being pumped into media and politics in order to promote progressive causes. At this point basically every Disney or Netflix production is a political endorsement of left-of-centre to hard-left policies, and I am still waiting for a version of The West Wing where maybe, just once, a Republican is the good guy.

But none of this matters, because as long as the media and its financiers are backing the status quo it is ok. Alas, for more and more people the status quo is no longer working: More crime, fewer economic opportunities and a general sense of decline are draining the energy of millions of people in the West. The existing parties seem content with managing this decline, while the supposed “radicals” want to reverse it. Not all these parties are 100 per cent perfect, but even a glimpse at their party programmes shows that they got the general outline right: More free markets, more nuclear energy, less low-skilled and mostly male migration, and a backbone when it comes to defending one’s own country and culture. I understand that these few points already make you a far-right extremist in some circles, but so be it.

The Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter wrote that in order for an economy to improve, you need creative destruction, a process of clearing out failing approaches and replacing them with new and better ones. The same is true in politics, and we are lucky that Elon Musk appears to have taken on the mantle of creative destructor not just in the US, but now also in Europe. I wish him all the best, and hopefully we will get more of it!