On Thursday, the global public got to know the Alternative for Germany – AfD party and its leader, Alice Weidel. In an interview with mogul and future Trump administration member Elon Musk, she spoke about illegal migration, Germany’s absurd economic policy, freedom of speech and a host of other topics. “Only the AfD can save Germany,” Elon said during the conversation.
The interview started with a brief assessment of the state that Germany is currently in. “Our country is a great country with highly motivated people. But our country has not been properly governed within the last 20 to 25 years. We had the Angela Merkel administration for 16 years, then the so-called traffic light coalition that imploded last year, and now we are heading towards elections. In my point of view, Angela Merkel, the first Green Chancellor, basically ruined our country. In 2015, she enforced, without consulting the people, the opening of our borders for illegal migration. She wrecked and destroyed our backbone in terms of her obnoxious energy policy,” Alice Weidel said.
She then reminded the audience that Germany is the only industrialised country that has completely abandoned nuclear power and tried to replace it with solar panels and wind farms. “You don’t need to be very smart to understand that you cannot run an industrial country with just wind and solar because you won’t have enough energy”, she made it clear. Elon Musk, who is otherwise a supporter of electricity generation through solar panels, echoed her sentiments. He believes that Germany’s decision to give up nuclear power was tragic, especially in a context where the country’s greenhouse gas emissions have remained at quite high levels, in spite of all their interventions. Germany should have done the opposite – it should have increased the share of nuclear energy, and as Weidel explained, the AfD party is in favour of diversifying energy sources.
The realisation that the AfD is not a fascist party
The President of the party then went on to say that the war in Ukraine had revealed how much Germany had relied on cheap Russian gas. “And do you know what the government then decided to do in this crisis, when the energy crisis skyrocketed? It decided to switch off the last nuclear power plant, creating an even bigger energy shortage. I think you have to either be very stupid or hate your own country to do something like that,” she said.
“We are a conservative-libertarian party. We believe we need to reduce bureaucracy, we need to free our corporations, our companies and individuals from the obnoxious bureaucratic conditions here,” said Alice Weidel.
Musk echoed her assessment, as his own business ventures have caused him problems with German bureaucracy. Despite all the support he felt from the local authorities, he had to deal with an extremely large number of “rules” that needed to be followed.
“There is a need to rethink and reexamine the existing rules and regulations and make sure that they are clearly a net good. If there is any doubt about them being a net good, we should eliminate them, because otherwise, we get to this point where everything is illegal,” Musk added.
Weidel also raised the issue of excessive tax burdens. “The normal German employee works more than half a year for the state. For more than half a year, you work for this dysfunctional state that does not provide the vital provisions for the people,” she pointed out, adding the staggeringly high crime rate and the decaying left-wing-wokeish education system.
A “ridiculous” migration policy
The AfD party president also touched on Germany’s migration policy, which both allows migration for social transfers and prevents deportation, as these same social transfer recipients (illegal migrants) had destroyed their personal identification documents upon arrival in the country. “This is crazy, but this is exactly what has happened in the United States. The far-left agenda is being pushed throughout Western civilisation,” Musk pointed out. As an example of such policies, he pointed out how the left in the US has renamed illegal migrants as undocumented. As he explained, this kind of policy has opened the doors of the US to all kinds of criminals who cannot be identified, simply because they have discarded their documents before they crossed the border.
In the US, far-left politics has even led to the absurdity that theft has been (de facto) allowed. However, as Musk noted, there is an awakening happening in the US, too. “In the US elections this year, President Trump won the Electoral College, but he also won the popular vote – the majority of the people, and the House is Republican and the Senate is Republican. What this says is the American people are demanding change, they are being very clear about that,” he said.
Musk: I recommend Germans vote for AfD
“My recommendation for the people in Germany is to do the same. If you are unhappy with the situation, you have to vote for change, and that is why I strongly recommend that the people vote for AfD […] I think only the AfD can save Germany, I just want to be very clear about that,” Musk was clear.
The AfD leader then explained to the world audience the political situation in Germany, which is characterised by polarisation between the party she leads and the opposing bloc of parties that refuse to cooperate. “They stick together, and no matter what they say, they are not able to implement, to enforce the promises they make before every election,” she said, adding that this was particularly true of Angela Merkel’s party (Christian Democratic Union – CDU), which, in her view, is wrongly being labelled as a centre-right party. The party’s politicians, in her view, place it in the left-green camp.
Censorship of conservative voices
Weidel believes that the Digital Services Act is a form of censorship. “Freedom of speech is a precondition of democracy. If you are not able to form a proper opinion and exchange opinions, ideas… democracy should be a competition of the best ideas,” she said. Musk added: “Without freedom of speech, people are not able to say what they want to say and then they can’t make an informed vote. If people are simply fed propaganda and have no access to what is really going on, then they can’t make an informed vote, and then they don’t have a real democracy.”
Weidel: Hitler was a communist!
Musk and Weidel then touched on the frequent accusation that the AfD is a far-right party. “During the Third Reich, the National Socialists (Nazis), as the word says, they were – socialists. Hitler was a communist, he considered himself a socialist,” she pointed out. She went on to say that after the war, Hitler was labelled a conservative and a right-winger, but according to Weidel, Hitler was neither – in fact, it was exactly the opposite. “He was not a conservative, he was not a libertarian, he was a communist, socialist man […] And we are exactly the opposite, we are a libertarian, conservative party,” she said, adding that anti-Semitism in Germany still exists in left-wing political movements.
“We would like to free the people of the state. I want to have independent, thinking people, self-confident people. I would like to have a state that is minimised, as well as freedom of speech, freedom of wealth and wealth creation,” said the AfD leader.
Dangerous war in Ukraine, the situation in the Middle East
Weidel was also critical of Germany’s security policy, which relies entirely on the US. Her hope is that Trump will succeed in stopping the war. “I think President Trump is going to solve this conflict very quickly,” Musk assessed. Weidel added that the conflict in Ukraine has a high escalation potential, while the countries of the European Union do not have an adequate strategy to end the conflict. She also pointed out that Germany has neglected security spending in the past.
Weidel did not give explicit answers to the questions on the unstable geopolitical situation in the Middle East and the role of Israel. She said that the situation was highly complex and that, in her view, the solution could lie in Israel entering into alliances with Sunni countries. When asked whether she unconditionally supported Israel’s right to exist, she shot back: “Absolutely! We need to protect the existence of Israel.” She believes that the Israeli Prime Minister has made many mistakes in the past, but that Germany, because of its historical responsibility towards the Jews, must ensure their security, and that security has been under threat in Germany in recent times. “The Alternative for Germany can be the only protector of the Jewish people in Germany,” she believes.
Ž. K.
