By Sarah Marsh, Thomas Escritt
BERLIN (Reuters) - Elon Musk urged Germans to vote for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in an upcoming national election during a broadcast he hosted with the party's leader on his social media platform on Thursday.
Musk last year used X and his vast wealth to help Republican candidate Donald Trump win the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election. Now he is becoming vocal in his support for far-right and anti-establishment parties in Europe ahead of Germany's Feb. 23 national election.
The world's richest man has shown particular interest in Germany, Europe's economic powerhouse, where he opened Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA)'s first European plant in 2022.
Musk introduced the AfD's chancellor candidate Alice Weidel, whose party is second in polls but has almost no chance of forming a government due to other parties' refusal to work with it, as "the leading candidate to run Germany."
In a conversation punctured by giggles from both parties, the two agreed that Germany was hamstrung by a "crazy" energy policy, excessive bureaucracy and uncontrolled immigration.
"People really need to get behind AfD, otherwise things are going to get very, very much worse in Germany," he said. "I think Alice Weidel is a very reasonable person. Nothing outrageous is being proposed."
Musk was doubling down on his endorsement last month of the AfD, an anti-immigration, anti-Islamic party labeled as right-wing-extremist by German security services, which has caused consternation in Berlin.
Speaking in fluent English, Weidel expressed gratitude for Musk's support, saying that the opportunity to speak with Musk was the first time in 10 years that she had been allowed a platform to say her piece without interruption from a media world that, she said, was biased against her.
"People love to censor things they don't agree with," Musk agreed after the two compared the media and German politicians' treatment of the AfD to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's treatment of pro-Jewish voices in the 1930s.
Leaders across Europe have expressed alarm over Musk's political activities. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez accused Musk of undermining democracy, without directly naming him, while France's foreign minister urged the EU to use its laws more robustly to guard against outside interference.
Musk, who describes himself as a libertarian, has called German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier a "tyrant" for criticising the AfD and called on Chancellor Olaf Scholz to resign after a deadly car attack on a German Christmas market. Both men belong to the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD).
Last August Musk held a similar talk with Trump, who has since tasked the entrepreneur with leading a drive to make U.S. government more efficient.
In his chat with Weidel, Musk recalled the bureaucratic hurdles he had to go through to open the German Tesla plant.
"I think it was 25,000 pages was our permit. And it had to be all printed on paper," Musk said. "And then there has to be many, many copies made. So it literally was a truck of paper."
On energy, Musk backed Germany's renewable ambitions but agreed with Weidel that turning off the nuclear power plants was a bad idea.
"When I saw that Germany was turning off the power plants after being cut off from gas supplies from Russia, I thought ... this is one of the craziest things I've ever seen," he said.