Musk’s public support for the AfD, which began last month, represents his latest international political venture. After previously hosting a space with the AfD candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel, Musk took his support a step further by remotely speaking to a crowd of AfD supporters at their election campaign kick-off in Halle, Germany. In his speech, Musk said that the AfD was the “best hope for Germany,” and urged the crowd to be proud of their German identity.

“I think that is just very important … that people take pride in Germany and being German, this is very important,” Musk said. “It’s OK to be proud to be German. This is a very important principle … it’s good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything.”

“I think we want to have unique cultures in the world. We want to have people that … we don’t want everything to be the same everywhere, where it’s just one big sort of soup,” he added.

Musk then addressed the sense of historical guilt for the crimes of the Third Reich that have defined Germany since its defeat during World War II.

“I think there’s … frankly, too much of a focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that,” he said. “People, children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their grandparents, their great grandparents, even, and we should be optimistic and excited about a future for Germany.”

Weidel celebrated the speech on X, declaring, “Make America & Germany great again!”

Musk’s remarks were greeted by cheers from the crowd. They were less well-received by international critics.

“The words we heard from the main actors of the AfD rally about ‘Great Germany’ and ‘the need to forget German guilt for Nazi crimes’ sounded all too familiar and ominous. Especially only hours before the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said.

AfD is broadly considered a right-wing or fringe party. It is mainly characterized by its anti-immigration stance, which has won laudits among Germans disillusioned with the country’s immigration system. It has surged in the polls this year, winning its first election in September in the formerly communist state of Thuringia.

Ahead of Germany’s snap elections on Feb. 23, triggered by the collapse of the ruling Social Democratic Party-led coalition government, Musk threw his support behind the resurgent party.

The AfD has been growing in popularity since former Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to take in a large number of mostly Syrian refugees in 2015. Though the party has featured prominently in polls since 2015, it has always been locked out of the government due to a “Brandmauer,” or “firewall,” an agreement among all the major parties that they would not work with the AfD, viewing it as too extreme.

That could change in February, as the party has taken the second spot in polling with 20% — above the ruling SPD Party. Another surging party, the eclectic left-wing populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, or BSW, has signaled that it may be willing to work with the AfD in a coalition.

Even more promising for the AfD, Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union recently announced it would introduce tough migration laws if elected, even “if only the AfD supports our proposals.”

“We will introduce motions in the German Bundestag that are exclusively in line with our convictions,” Merz told the news agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur on Friday. “And we will introduce them regardless of who agrees with them.”

“The firewall has fallen!” Weidel triumphantly declared on X after the interview.

The exact label of the AfD Party is itself a source of controversy. Left-wing critics openly accuse it of being a neo-Nazi group. 

The party has consistently rejected the far-right label, with its leaders saying the party stands for “the liberal democratic order and has nothing to do with this suspected neo-Nazi grouping.”

Other analysts take a more nuanced view, painting the party as a coalition of different broadly right-wing ideological factions.