The disruptor: why Musk is a risk to German democracy

The tech billionaire's move to support the AfD is proof he is determined to unsettle a nation that knows all too well what far-right dictatorship can bring, writes John Kampfner

-  John Kampfner

As Germans headed into a year gripped by foreboding, I was reminded of an episode a decade ago that struck me then as absurd, and that now makes me marvel at its prescience.

I was chairing a conference about the internet in Berlin, sponsored by Google, when one of the participants suggested that the German government should establish a public internet company. Silicon Valley, she proffered earnestly, was the preserve of the American super-rich and could not be trusted to tell the truth or preserve democracy.

I scoffed at the idea, though I was too polite to say so. Half of her analysis was, and still is, impossibly quaint and ridiculous. The notion of the state being relied upon to provide an online platform for comment and information – in the very country of Goebbels and the Stasi – stretches credulity. But I must admit that the speaker foresaw the malignancy of the likes of Elon Musk far earlier than I, or anyone I know, ever did.

Musk is driving a sledgehammer through politics in Germany, at its most sensitive moment, and he is basking in the fear he is stoking. The more colourful his insults become (delivered via X, his personal fiefdom), the more outraged the political class becomes. Which is his objective, and that of his boss, Donald Trump. Where better to undermine democracy than in a country that obsesses about constitutional propriety?

Musk labelled Olaf Scholz, the chancellor, “an incompetent fool”. In another post, he labelled him “Olaf Schitz”. He has sprayed denunciations of all the other mainstream parties. But it was his most recent attack on the head of state, president FrankWalter Steinmeier, that has caused the most offence, calling the supposed custodian of democracy “an anti-democratic tyrant”.