Because Elon Musk apparently did not create enough controversy for his liking this week, the tech billionaire also made a virtual appearance on Saturday at a rally for the extremist, right-wing, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party ahead of the country’s snap elections next month.
Musk told the crowd that he considers the party to be the “best hope” for Germany. The rally reportedly consisted of about 4,500 people, including the party leader, Alice Weidel, in the city of Halle.
“It’s okay to be proud to be German,” Musk said. “This is a very important principle. It’s okay, it’s good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything.”
He also said that the country needed to “move on” from “past guilt,” interpreted by many as referring to the Holocaust. “Children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their great-grandparents,” Musk said. Confusingly, Musk—a South African tech billionaire—also lamented “too much control from, sort of, global elite” in German affairs, adding, “There should be more determination by individual countries.”
In addition to those hypocrisies, Musk also peddled at least one straight-up falsehood: He claimed Germany is “an ancient nation, [that] goes back thousands of years”—but the German Empire was founded in 1871.
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