In an apparent allusion to billionaire Elon Musk’s influence over the US government and his connections with Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he is “concerned” that some business elites are “rewriting the rules of democracy.”
During his opening remarks at the Munich Security Conference on Friday, Steinmeier went as far as criticizing some unspecified business elites for being contemptuous of democratic institutions.
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“I am concerned about how a small group of elite businesspeople are rewriting the rules of democracy and how some of them express contempt for democratic institutions,” Steinmeier said.
On Dec. 31, 2024, Musk called Steinmeier an “anti-democratic tyrant” on X in response to an update by German far-right activist Naomi Seibt, which cited Steinmeier’s earlier comments on preventing election interference from X, similar to what happened in Romania with the use of TikTok that facilitated the victory of far-right candidate Călin Georgescu.
In January, Musk appeared in an AfD campaign when he asked the German participants to move “past guilt,” a reference to Germany’s self-recrimination for Nazi period.
“Children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their parents, their great-grandparents,” Musk said at the time, according to NPR.
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In the US, Musk is also heading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an external advisory body that has been granted widespread access to government systems.
DOGE’s activities have led to a series of project and institution shutdowns and raised security concerns, with experts questioning the legitimacy of DOGE and its overarching powers.
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