LONDON (Reuters) - For the past two months, tech billionaire Elon Musk has promoted Germany’s far-right party in at least two dozen posts on his X platform, interviewed its leader, and told his 219 million followers it was the country’s “only hope.”
Yet Musk’s support for Alternative fur Deutschland played little part in the party’s stunning second-place result in the February 23 election, according to a Reuters review of his posts and polling data as well as interviews with political analysts.
The Tesla CEO appears undaunted, continuing to promote right-wing causes across Europe. While the most noticeable impact, so far, seems to be damage to Tesla’s brand, analysts say he may have a longer-term goal for his business empire: backing political parties that might cut back regulations he thinks impede tech innovations.
Musk and Tesla did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
In January, Musk bemoaned what he called Europe’s “layer cake of regulations and bureaucracy.” After a European Union official threatened to sanction him last year, Musk responded on X with a meme that quoted from the action-comedy movie “Tropic Thunder”: “Take a big step back and literally, fuck your own face!”
The AfD — classified by Germany's domestic intelligence service as a suspected extremist group — is now Germany’s largest opposition party after last month’s election, despite the stigma the far right traditionally carries due to the country’s Nazi past. One of the party’s senior politicians had to step aside last year after declaring that the SS, the Nazis' main paramilitary force, were "not all criminals." Musk broadcast his interview with AfD leader Alice Weidel on X on January 9.
The AfD’s growing popularity illustrates a phenomenon spreading across Europe as populist far-right parties make their biggest gains in decades.
Once on the political fringes, they now hold or share office in Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, Slovakia, Finland and Croatia. They are either the largest or second-largest parties in the parliaments of Sweden, Austria and now Germany, and have surged in polls in France. Support for the far right has also grown in Romania, Belgium, Spain and Portugal.
They have been buoyed by high immigration, economic stagnation and perceived restrictions on free speech – all issues Musk has amplified in his X posts. These have increasingly focused on European politics since Musk helped President Donald Trump win back the White House in November, according to a Reuters review of more than 20,000 of Musk’s posts and reposts.
Musk has used X to promote right-wing figures in Britain, Italy and Romania, while pouring scorn on political leaders and senior EU officials.
When Musk first explicitly promoted the AfD in Germany on December 20, the party was polling at 19.3%, according to a Reuters polling aggregate. It eventually won 20.8% of the vote. The numbers suggest he had little impact on the election, said three political analysts interviewed by Reuters. Three violent attacks in Germany by people suspected to be from the Middle East and Afghanistan during that period might also have boosted the AfD, which has called for the mass deportation of immigrants.
But two of the analysts said Musk had raised the party’s appeal among some voters, particularly younger ones, which could improve its performance in the next election.
“He has helped the AfD look a bit more cool and innovative,” said Martin Fassnacht, chair of strategy and marketing at the WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management in Germany.
Musk’s far-right cheerleading appears to be coming at a price for Tesla, whose sales in Europe tumbled 45% in January from a year earlier, while its rivals’ rose by over 37%, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, which represents major car makers.
Early European sales figures for February show that decline continuing. Four corporate-car fleet managers told Reuters that Tesla’s share of their fleets was either flat or down, suggesting tough times ahead.
“FLIP A COUNTRY POLITICALLY”
The Reuters review of Musk’s posts and reposts on X since the start of 2024 reveals his shift of focus to Europe after helping Trump win back the White House in November with over a quarter of a billion dollars in campaign donations.
In Britain, he has attacked Prime Minister Keir Starmer, called for a jailed far-right activist to be freed, and backed Reform, a right-wing populist party whose pledges to reduce immigration and abandon climate-change targets closely mirror Trump’s.
In Italy, Musk has developed close relations with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Both have expressed concerns about immigration and declining birth rates in Western countries. Meloni recently called Musk a “precious genius.”
In Romania, he has promoted posts about far-right politician Calin Georgescu and excoriated one of the judges who annulled Georgescu’s presidential bid last year due to suspected Russian interference.
U.S. tech platforms such as X have “immense power” to shape public opinion in Europe, said Damian Tambini, a specialist in media and communications regulation and policy at the London School of Economics.
“It’s not so beyond the realm of possibility that (Musk) could flip a country politically,” said Tambini. “That in turn would create a completely different balance of power” inside the EU, as far-right governments gain further influence in the already fractious 27-nation bloc. Those governments could potentially help Musk undo or water down regulations he didn’t like, said Tambini.
Musk, who leads Trump’s efforts to slash the size of the U.S. federal workforce, has publicly criticized European business regulations, calling them bad for growth and a form of censorship. He has been under investigation by the EU for more than a year for potential breaches of a recent European law intended to ensure social platforms such as X police illegal content. The decision is still pending.
Under the EU’s Digital Services Act, X could face a fine of 6% of its annual global revenue for failing to tackle illegal content and disinformation or follow transparency rules. The case is a major test of the EU’s ability to enforce rules on American social media companies as it seeks to tackle illegal content and disinformation.
There have been other signs of regulatory concern over Musk’s platform in Europe.
On February 7, a German court ruled that X must release information enabling researchers to track the spread of election-swaying information on the platform under EU laws. On the same day, French prosecutors said they were investigating claims that X distorted its algorithms to manipulate discourse.
On a Tesla earnings call in January, Musk complained of Europe’s regulations while discussing seeking approval for the company’s “Full Self Driving” technology. “There’s this joke: America innovates; Europe regulates,” he said on the call. “It’s like, ‘Guys, there’s too many refs on the field.’”
European governments are wary of Musk’s growing status as “a far-right rock star,” said Asma Mhalla, a French political scientist specializing in the politics of big tech. She suspects his ultimate aim is to weaken European regulations and expand U.S. power, especially given his role as a senior Trump advisor.
“The real agenda is making the U.S. the biggest power in the coming century,” she said.
The White House declined to comment on Musk’s role in America’s Europe policy.
Greg Swenson, chairman of Republicans Overseas UK, a support network for Republican expats, said fighting to dismantle burdensome European regulations would help all businesses, not just Musk’s. “He's doing it for the greater good.”
WAR ON ‘WOKE’
In his criticisms of Europe, Musk often shares unverified information on X, including anonymous accounts that tag him, while amplifying known spreaders of misinformation, the Reuters review of his posts found.
Most of his posts concern mass immigration and what he portrays as free-speech restrictions, Reuters found. He also criticized Europe’s declining birth rates and transgender rights. He often bypasses the traditional media, politicians and academics, preferring to amplify a small ecosystem of hard-right accounts.
One such account is PeterSweden7, run by journalist and political commentator Peter Imanuelsen, who has described the September 2001 attacks on America by al Qaeda as an inside job and the moon landings as fake.
Musk has promoted at least half a dozen of Imanuelsen’s misleading posts. In January, he reposted Imanuelsen’s claim that a man was sentenced to 20 months in prison for a Facebook post without explaining that the man’s post had urged people to attack a hotel housing refugees.
Imanuelsen told Reuters it is not possible to include all detailed information in a single post and he no longer believes in conspiracy theories.
Another account Musk regularly interacts with on European issues belongs to Tommy Robinson, a right-wing agitator with fraud and assault convictions whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. He is currently in prison for defying a London court order.
Musk has called for Robinson’s release, reposting a false claim that he is a “political prisoner,” while Robinson’s account said in a January 20 post that the billionaire was paying some of his legal fees.
Robinson’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.
For Musk, the owners of such accounts are potential foot soldiers in what the right frames as a battle between restrictive left-wing politicians and right-wing free speech advocates, said Mert Can Bayar, a researcher at the University of Washington, who has studied Musk’s social media networks.
Influencers, he added, “are good conduits to project his worldview.”
IMPACT ON CAR SALES
While Musk’s influence on European politics is unclear, his activism appears to be hurting Tesla, whose sales are struggling in Europe after a 10.8% drop in 2024, a period when the market was down only 1.3%.
A late January survey conducted by an electric vehicle review website, Electrifying.com, found that 59% of Britons who either own EVs or intend to purchase one wouldn’t buy a Tesla because of Musk. An anti-Tesla campaign is underway on X under the hashtags #teslatakedown and #swasticars.
Musk’s opinions add to Tesla’s headaches. When Tesla launched its Model Y in 2020, there were only 25 mainstream EV models in Britain. Today there are 133 as Chinese brands flood the market with new, more affordable electric cars.
“I wouldn't write them off yet, but they do need something fresher,” said Tim Albertson, CEO of Ayvens, one of Europe’s largest car-leasing firms. He declined to discuss the impact of Musk’s views on sales, but said Tesla’s model “lineup is quite weak.”
Ben Kilbey, who runs a communications and market intelligence firm in Britain, has owned a Model Y for three years but is getting rid of it because of Musk.
“I love my Tesla, I love the technology,” said Kilbey. “But I don’t want to be associated with Musk’s politics or public statements.”
(Note language in paragraph five that readers may find offensive)
(Additional reporting by Thomas Escritt in Berlin and Chris Kirkham in Los Angeles. Editing by Brian Thevenot and Jason Szep)
