Musk Slammed for Spreading Disinformation as He Seeks to Boost Far Right in Europe

French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday was the latest European leader to lambast Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO and top adviser to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, for his meddling in political battles in Europe after he exerted enormous influence over the U.S. elections.

In a foreign policy speech in Paris, Macron expressed disbelief that Musk, who owns the social media platform X and has used it to boost far-right ideologies in the U.S., would now "support a new international reactionary movement and intervene directly in elections, including in Germany."

Displaying an apparent "sense of having the world as his stage," as Jackson James of the German Marshall Fund toldThe Hill, Musk wrote in an op-ed at the German magazine Welt am Sonntag last week that "as someone who has invested significantly in Germany's industrial and technological landscape, I believe I have earned the right to speak candidly about its political direction."

According to Musk, that direction should move toward Alternative for Germany (AfD), the far-right party that last year included a candidate who asserted the Nazi paramilitaries were "not all criminals."

The party is virulently ant-immigration and has been designated by the German domestic intelligence service as a "suspected extremist" organization. Authorities also warned last month that other states could attempt to influence the country's snap elections in February through disinformation, cyberattacks, and other means.

As German voters prepare to go to the polls, AfD has about 20% support in recent opinion polls, compared to an alliance between the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU), whose support stands at 31%. All the country's political parties have said they would not form a coalition with AfD.

In his op-ed Musk invoked the sexual orientation of AfD co-chair Alice Weidel, suggesting the party isn't on the far right.

"The description of AfD as far-right is made obviously false simply by noting that Alice Weidel, the party leader has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka!" wrote Musk. "Does that sound like Hitler to you? Please."

Lars Klingbeil, leader of German Chancellor Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democratic Party, compared Musk to Russian President Vladimir Putin, tellingFunke media group that "both want to influence our elections and are deliberately supporting the AfD, the enemies of democracy."

"They want Germany to be weakened and plunge into chaos," Klingbeil said.

Musk's commentary on Germany's upcoming elections has tended toward vulgar, with the SpaceX CEO responding to accusations of meddling by calling Scholz "Chancellor Oaf Schitz or whatever his name is."

When a researcher in Finland said on Sunday that Musk is "rapidly becoming the largest spreader of disinformation in human history," the top adviser to the incoming president of the United States replied: "F U retard."

In the United Kingdom—where Musk has significant business interests, as he does in Germany—the entrepreneur last week boosted the far-right Reform Party, adding days later that the organization's leader, Member of Parliament Nigel Farage, "doesn't have what it takes."

Musk met with Farage and Reform treasurer Nick Candy last month at Trump's Florida estate, and Candy told The Financial Times recently that Musk could be a billionaire donor to the party through his electric vehicle company, Tesla, which provides grid batteries in the U.K.

As he's promoted Reform—which opposes "uncontrolled immigration" and would impose drastic cuts to "wasteful government spending"—Musk has taken aim at the center-left Labour Party.

On Sunday Musk took to his social media platform, formerly known as Twitter, to ask whether the U.S. should "liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government."

Musk attacked Jess Phillips, parliamentary undersecretary of state for safeguarding, as a "rape genocide apologist" for denying requests for the Home Office to open an inquiry into child sexual exploitation in the town of Oldham.

Phillips should "be in prison," Musk said—a comment that Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the Labour Party said amounted to the "poison of the far right" and led to serious threats against Phillips.

Musk accused Starmer of being "complicit in the rape of Britain" by allegedly failing to confront a child sexual abuse scandal more than a decade ago in northern England. Starmer defended his record as the former head of the Crown Prosecution Service, as well as Phillips'.

“And those attacking Jess Phillips, whom I'm proud to call a colleague and a friend, on protecting victims—Jess Phillips has done 1,000 times more than they've even dreamt about when it comes to protecting victims of sexual abuse throughout her entire career," said Starmer on Monday. "And when I was chief prosecutor for five years, I tackled that head-on, because I could see what was happening, and that's why I reopened cases that have been closed and supposedly finished."

The prime minister added that "those that are spreading lies and misinformation as far and as wide as possible, they're not interested in victims. They're interested in themselves."

Ed Davey, leader of the centrist Liberal Democrats Party, said Monday that "people have had enough of Elon Musk interfering with our country's democracy when he clearly knows nothing about Britain."

"It's time to summon the U.S. ambassador to ask why an incoming U.S. official is suggesting the U.K. government should be overthrown," said Davey. "This dangerous and irresponsible rhetoric is further proof that the U.K. can't rely on the Trump administration."