Elon Musk praised the right-wing Alternative for Germany party and suggested there’s “too much focus on past guilt” of Germans, during an address he gave on Saturday using a remote video stream at an AfD gathering in Halle.
“I’m very excited about the AfD, I think it’s the best hope for Germany,” Musk said in his address. It’s OK to be proud to be German, it’s a very important principle, it’s good to be proud of German culture, not to lose that in multiculturalism that dilutes everything,” said Musk, who has endorsed AfD in the past.
“I think there’s maybe too much focus on past guilt. We need to move beyond that, children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their parents, their great-grandparents, maybe even,” added Musk, a billionaire, innovator and U.S. President Donald Trump’s pick to co-head the newly established Department of Government Efficiency.
Dani Dayan, the chairman of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, said he disagreed. “Contrary to Elon Musk’s advice, the remembrance and acknowledgment of the dark past of the country and its people should be central in shaping the German society. Failing to do so is an insult to the victims of Nazism and a clear danger to the democratic future of Germany,” Dayan tweeted.
The AfD is an anti-immigration movement that is frequently rocked by scandals connected to the country’s Nazi past. Last year it received 16% of the vote in the European Parliament elections in Germany, a five-point increase over the 2019 election.
AfD leader Alice Weidel in September boycotted an event commemorating the liberation from Nazism, explaining it was akin to celebrating “my own country’s defeat.” Party founder and honorary chairman Alexander Gauland in 2017 said Germans “should be proud” of soldiers who fought in both world wars.
AfD and many of its supporters say the party is not antisemitic and confronts expressions of such hatred in its ranks. It is being singled out and described as illegitimate because of Germany’s past, they say.
Musk’s remarks came after an earlier controversy involving a gesture he performed in a speech in Washington on the day of Trump’s inauguration. Some of his critics said it was a Hitler salute but others, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said he was “being falsely smeared,” as Netanyahu put it.
