Trump-backing tech billionaire Elon Musk has thrown his weight behind the AfD, recently interviewing Weidel on his X social media platform. He has sparked outrage for saying Germany should move on from its guilt over its Nazi past. This week, he celebrated the parliamentary moves to tighten the country’s borders and Merz’s decision to use AfD support.
What is at stake?
Merz’s campaign for the chancellorship, for one thing. Until now, his CDU has had a solid lead, albeit one that is narrowing, over the AfD. The events of the last few days could change everything.
Will the CDU’s decision to work with the AfD make it easier for more voters to contemplate doing the same? Could Merz’s decision to champion an anti-migrant agenda backfire, merely legitimizing the AfD’s driving mission in the eyes of the electorate? Will voters choose to back the AfD on the basis that they would rather have the original than a paler imitation?
And then there’s Merkel’s intervention. She has been at odds with Merz since at least 2002, when she effectively shut him out of the CDU leadership. Since he returned in 2022, he has moved the party further to the right, undoing large parts of her legacy, especially on migration.
Will her reappearance — and the obvious disunity in the CDU — drive more voters into the arms of the AfD and its chancellor candidate, Alice Weidel? Or will more centrist voters ditch the CDU and back Scholz’s SPD or the Greens, who remain resolutely opposed to working with the AfD?
Will the AfD take power?
For now, it seems unlikely that the AfD will form part of any ruling coalition government, even if it surges further in voting on Feb. 23. There remains a clear majority of pro-EU and anti-far right parties in Germany that would not want to work with the AfD and it would take a monumental shift to change that.
