X owner Elon Musk hosted a livestreamed talk with the co-leader and chancellor candidate of the Alternative for Germany party (AfD), Alice Weidel, on his social media platform on January 9. Although Musk billed Weidel as the ‘leading candidate to run Germany’, the AfD is polling second place ahead of early elections set for February 23, somewhere in the region of 20%, and is unlikely to get into government as all other parties have ruled out cooperating with a party that’s being investigated as far-right extremist.
In this episode of Berlin Briefing, DW’s Nina Haase and Michaela Küfner break down the content of the chat together with American journalist Kate Conger, co-author of “Character Limit – How Elon Musk destroyed Twitter”. From energy, immigration, and Israel, Ukraine and Nazi Germany, to free speech and Musk’s stated desire to colonize Mars – the conversation was peppered with misinformation and highly controversial statements (“Hitler was a communist”), and its many topics are analyzed by the team to build a picture of what was in it for the tech billionaire and for the co-leader of Germany’s far-right party.
Further information:
DW live blog on Musk + Weidel chat: https://www.dw.com/en/elon-musk-hosts-x-talk-with-german-far-right-afds-weidel/live-71245966
Kate Conger tour dates and more: https://linktr.ee/kateconger
More on the AfD’s foreign policy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFmpxuNxycM
DW Berlin Briefing episode on the AfD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Evh-fCA8Tv4&list=PLT6yxVwBEbi22JF0-FgtDAMYcfTqL4V98&index=2
CHAPTERS
00:00 Intro
05:47 Energy and bureaucracy
08:25 Migration, theft in California
10:33 Free speech – European rules
16:23 How much free speech is there on X?
18:08 Why Musk chose the AfD
21:02: Weidel: “Hitler was a communist”
28:09 Far-left/far-right: Shifting the rules around speech
29:40 Ukraine and Russia
35:00 The “Musk boost” for Weidel in figures
38:06 the future of factchecking
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