US tech billionaire Elon Musk gave a video address to a campaign rally of Germany\u2019s anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party on Saturday, his latest show of support ahead of the country\u2019s election next month.<\/p>\n
Musk told a gathering of thousands of AfD supporters in the eastern city of Halle that their party was \u201cthe best hope for the future of Germany\u201d.<\/p>\n
Musk has raised concern from some mainstream leaders who have accused him of interfering in European politics with comments on his social platform X about politicians in countries including Germany and Britain.<\/p>\n
He also drew criticism this week for making a public hand gesture that was seen by some as resembling a straight-armed Nazi salute.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe German people are really an ancient nation which goes back thousands of years,\u201d he said in Saturday\u2019s address. \u201cI even read Julius Caesar was very impressed (by) the German tribes,\u201d he said, urging the supporters to \u201cfight, fight, fight\u201d for their country\u2019s future.<\/p>\n
He said the AfD wanted \u201cmore self-determination for Germany and for the countries in Europe and less from Brussels\u201d, a reference to European Union authorities.<\/p>\n
Musk is a close associate of US President Donald Trump, who has appointed him to head a new department of \u201cgovernment efficiency\u201d in his administration.<\/p>\n
Like Trump, the AfD opposes immigration, denies climate change, rails against gender politics and has declared war on a political establishment and mainstream media it condemns as censorious.<\/p>\n
Ahead of Germany\u2019s February 23 elections, it is polling at around 20 per cent, a new record for a party that has already shattered a decades-old taboo against the far right in postwar Germany. The mainstream conservative grouping CDU\/CSU leads on about 30pc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US tech billionaire Elon Musk gave a video address to a campaign rally of Germany\u2019s anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party on Saturday, his latest show of support ahead of the country\u2019s election next month. Musk told a gathering of thousands of AfD supporters in the eastern city of Halle that their party was \u201cthe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5086,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5085"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5087,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5085\/revisions\/5087"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}