By Tyler Rosen.
While the Jewish people were preparing for the sacred holiday of Hanukkah, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and owner of one of the biggest social media platforms, X, used his platform to throw his support behind a neo-Nazi party in Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD). On Monday, December 20th, Musk tweeted, “Only the AfD can save Germany.”
Alternative for Germany (AfD) was founded in 2013 by former ultra-nationalist elements of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU). The AfD’s platform is littered with polices of corporate deregulation, extreme anti-immigration, German rearmament, hyper-nationalism, and other reactionary policies. The party particularly targets Muslims and African immigrants: singling them out as the biggest threat to German civilization, the German economy, and to German women. The rhetoric is horrifyingly similar to the anti-Semitic rhetoric used by Nazi Germany before it began its Final Solution, the Holocaust.
It needs to be understood that fascists, and especially Nazis, use hyper-nationalism and scapegoats such as national and racial minorities as a means to divide up the working people that would oppose a takeover removing the monopolies and their corporate bosses from power. Therefore, it is clear why Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, would support such groups.
Musk was appointed by President-elect Donald Trump to lead the assault on public and social welfare programs under the guise of “government efficiency” while doing nothing to cut the bloated military budget. Trump’s cabinet is packed with the most reactionary billionaires who have set their sights on crushing labor, civil rights, and democracy, while also pushing for the annexation of Canada – eerily reminiscent of the Nazi principle of “Lebensraum.”
Elon Musk, being so close to the President-elect, is one of the most powerful men in the United States, and he controls one of the world’s biggest social media platforms. For him to support a neo-Nazi party, which is under legal scrutiny for being anti-democratic, is a very dangerous precedent.
The progressive forces of America, and especially the Jewish community who suffered the wrath of Nazism, bear the historic responsibility of uniting with the American working class and all pro-democratic forces in order to resist a second fascist onslaught. With parties like AfD scapegoating Muslim and African immigrants, we must remember and understand the famous poem by Pastor Martin Neimoller:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
We must also remember that fascism is not inevitable. In the 1930s, fascism presented a very real threat to America with groups like the KKK and the German-American Bund, as well as people like Fritz Julius Kuhn, Prescott Bush, Father Coughlin, and even corporations like IBM, Ford, DuPont, and more. These reactionary and fascist forces did not succeed in America because the progressive forces united to repel them. Now the progressive forces of the world must unite into a broad anti-monopoly coalition to fight the rising forces of fascism and safeguard democracy once again.
