What the German election tells us about Elon Musk’s influence

Summary

POLITICO Tech Podcast Summary
Episode: What the German Election Tells Us About Elon Musk’s Influence
Release Date: February 25, 2025
Host: Stephen Overlea
Guest: Emily Schulteis, POLITICO Berlin Correspondent

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1. Election Results: A Shift to the Right

Stephen Overlea opened the discussion by highlighting the significant outcome of Germany's recent election. While the center-left party was ousted in favor of the center-right, the most striking development was the surge of the far-right party, Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Overlea [00:31]: "One in five German voters backed the far right party known as Alternative for Germany, or AfD, effectively doubling its representation in the national government."

Emily Schulteis elaborated on this shift, emphasizing the magnitude of AfD's growth and its implications for Germany's political landscape.

Schulteis [02:12]: "The far right Alternative for Germany party doubled its result from four years ago... There is a huge surge in left-leaning versus right-leaning parties."

Despite this political shift, Schulteis noted that significant policy areas such as security, Ukraine, and relations with the U.S. are unlikely to see drastic changes.

Schulteis [02:12]: "In terms of the policy level... you will see less seismic change."

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2. AfD’s Rise and Its Political Legitimacy

The conversation drew parallels between the rise of AfD in Germany and the political shifts observed in the United States with figures like Donald Trump.

Overlea [03:26]: "It's fascinating... What a difference eight or nine years makes politically."

Schulteis pointed out that the international environment has become more conducive to far-right movements, using AfD's increased legitimacy as a case study.

Schulteis [04:03]: "There are many more allies for a party like that on the international stage... showing that they are an internationally legitimate political movement."

She also reflected on AfD leaders' long-term goals, indicating that the party aims to be part of the government by the next election in 2029.

Schulteis [06:02]: "AfD leaders... their goal was never to end up in government. This time around. We believe that by then we will be part of government."

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3. Elon Musk’s Influence on the AfD

A significant portion of the discussion centered on Elon Musk's role in supporting the AfD and the broader implications of such endorsements.

Overlea [04:24]: "Alternative for Germany, or AfD, is the party that he was very heavily endorsing in the run up to the election."

Schulteis assessed Musk's impact, suggesting that while his support may not have directly swayed many German voters, it enhanced AfD's international legitimacy and expanded their reach through social media.

Schulteis [04:37]: "While it is unlikely that having Musk's backing swayed a large number of votes within Germany, it was useful for the AfD symbolically... gave the party more reach than they might have had otherwise."

When asked about the trajectory suggested by Musk's statements predicting AfD's future dominance, Schulteis provided a measured perspective.

Schulteis [06:02]: "It is unlikely that they will be the biggest party in Germany... Their normalization in politics is remarkable."

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4. Sentiment Towards Musk’s Political Involvement in Germany

The episode delved into how Musk's involvement in German politics is perceived domestically, revealing a divided sentiment.

Overlea [07:35]: "What is the sentiment toward him being involved in German politics?"

Schulteis explained that while AfD leadership welcomes Musk's involvement, mainstream German politicians view it negatively. Leaders like Friedrich Merz and Olaf Scholz criticized Musk for meddling in German affairs.

Schulteis [07:35]: "Merz has said that he thinks that there should be consequences for Musk... It is certainly not a universal positive among party leaders."

This division underscores the tensions between emerging global influencers and established national political frameworks.

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5. Use of AI in Far-Right Campaigning

A critical topic discussed was the AfD's utilization of AI-generated content to bolster their campaign messages, particularly through nostalgic and manipulative imagery.

Overlea [08:52]: "You've written that AI generated images and content were often used to reinforce their messaging. What examples of AI did you see?"

Schulteis provided an example from a state election where AI was used to create an idealized, nostalgic vision of Germany, contrasting it with a dystopian present influenced by current political decisions.

Schulteis [09:10]: "A video that said... life was great for your grandparents... compared to today’s dystopian vision of left wing politicians."

She further explained how these AI-generated images were employed to evoke emotions and reinforce far-right narratives.

Schulteis [10:34]: "They are amplifying the kinds of things that have actually happened in real life... illustrating them for people in a way that is slightly amplified."

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6. Ethical Concerns and Regulatory Responses to AI Manipulation

The discussion touched upon the ethical implications of using AI in political campaigning and the lack of immediate regulatory responses.

Overlea [12:02]: "Was there any pushback you saw to this use of AI? Were there any calls for greater regulation or disclosure or anything like that?"

Schulteis noted that there was minimal immediate backlash or regulatory action against the AfD's use of AI, highlighting that AfD was an outlier in this tactic within German politics.

Schulteis [12:34]: "Nothing that I can think of off the top of my head... The AfD was an outlier in this sense in the German political sphere."

She also mentioned the increasing siloed nature of media consumption, which could exacerbate the effects of such manipulative content.

Schulteis [12:34]: "People's media consumption, social media consumption, getting increasingly siloed here as well."

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7. Implications for U.S.-German and EU Relations

Finally, the conversation explored the broader geopolitical implications of Germany's political shift, especially concerning its relations with the U.S. and the EU.

Overlea [13:49]: "What do you see as the implications going forward for U.S. German or even U.S. EU relations of the results of this election?"

Schulteis expressed that while foreign and security policies might not experience drastic changes, there could be shifts towards greater German independence, especially in response to the current U.S. administration's priorities.

Schulteis [14:16]: "There has the US Needing to stand up to the US now that this administration has made it clear that it's got different priorities about Europe being able to take care of itself and its own security."

She also observed that AfD's ideological alignment with the Trump administration could deepen political divides within Germany.

Schulteis [14:16]: "AfD and its kind of ideological closeness to the Trump administration... could drive further divides."

Musk's public congratulations to Germany's conservatives hinted at possible future softening of rhetoric, but Schulteis remained cautious about predicting outcomes.

Schulteis [14:16]: "Trump got on Truth Social last night and congratulated Merz's conservatives. So I do wonder if perhaps that means there's some softer rhetoric in the future."

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Conclusion

The episode provided a comprehensive analysis of Germany's recent election results, highlighting the rise of the far-right AfD and the multifaceted influence of Elon Musk. The discussion underscored the innovative yet ethically questionable use of AI in political campaigns and explored the potential long-term implications for both domestic policies and international relations. As political landscapes evolve, the interplay between technology, influential personalities, and voter sentiment continues to shape the future of governance and global alliances.

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Notable Quotes:

• Stephen Overlea [00:31]: "One in five German voters backed the far right party known as Alternative for Germany, or AfD, effectively doubling its representation in the national government."

• Emily Schulteis [02:12]: "There is a huge surge in left-leaning versus right-leaning parties."

• Emily Schulteis [04:37]: "He was certainly very active on X and posting things that, at least within that social media ecosystem, gave the party more reach than they might have had otherwise."

• Emily Schulteis [06:02]: "It is unlikely that they will be the biggest party in Germany... but the AfD has become normalized in politics."

• Emily Schulteis [07:35]: "Most of the other parties are speaking out pretty strongly against [Musk’s involvement]."

• Emily Schulteis [09:10]: "It's sort of a visualization of make Germany Great again, if you want to talk about it in American terms."

• Emily Schulteis [12:34]: "Nothing that I can think of off the top of my head... The AfD was an outlier in this sense in the German political sphere."

• Emily Schulteis [14:16]: "AfD and its kind of ideological closeness to the Trump administration... could drive further divides."

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This summary encapsulates the key discussions, insights, and conclusions from the episode, providing a comprehensive overview for those who haven't listened to the podcast.

Transcript

[Emily Schulteis]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses. Monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations Foreign.

[Stephen Overlea]

Hey, welcome back to Politico tech. Today's Tuesday, February 25th. I'm Stephen Overlea. Germany elected a new government over the weekend. Voters ousted the center left party that had been in power and chose the center Right party to take its place. But the most striking outcome of Sunday's election wasn't the actual winner. It's that one in five German voters backed the far right party known as Alternative for Germany, or AfD, effectively doubling its representation in the national government. That's a huge leap for a party that was founded just over a decade ago and whose nationalist ideology was once considered fringe. Now, the reasons for the AfD's rising popularity will surely be dissected in the coming days and weeks. But two things are Elon Musk relentlessly promoted the party in the lead up to election day, and far right politicians leaned on AI generated content to amplify their message. My colleague Emily Schulteis has been covering the election in Berlin for Politico. I called her up less than 24 hours after the results to talk about Musk's influence and what the outcome means for transatlantic relations going forward. Here's our conversation. Emily, welcome to Politico Tech.

[Emily Schulteis]

Thanks so much for having me.

[Stephen Overlea]

So the German election is over and the government will be making a shift to the right. How seismic is this shift politically and culturally?

[Emily Schulteis]

I think that there's an answer to that on two different levels. In terms of the political landscape, it is pretty massive. You've seen a surge for the main conservatives, so the Christian Democratic Union under Friedrich Merz. But I think more significantly you have seen the far right Alternative for Germany party double its result from four years ago. And so if you look at the overall sort of breakdown of left leaning parties versus right leaning parties, there is a huge surge in that. I think the second level on which to answer this is about how likely the government is to be massively different on a policy level. And when we think about security policy, when we think about Ukraine, when we think about an approach to Europe, an approach to the U.S. i think that is an area where you will see less seismic change. There will certainly be shifts, but the fact that we are likely to see the Social Democrats, the center left party, leading the current government, they are most likely going to be part of the next governing coalition. It'll be a centrist coalition if things go the way that merits is hoping. And so in that case, the overarching direction of the country, policy wise under this government, is going to shift, but not quite the same way that the landscape has got it.

[Stephen Overlea]

That's super interesting because I visited Germany very shortly after President Donald Trump won in 2016, which caught the world by surprise in many ways. And at the time, I remember hearing so much concern about the move to the right in the US politically, and viewing these results, I just can't help but think What a difference eight or nine years makes politically. It's fascinating.

[Emily Schulteis]

Absolutely. We had U.S. vice President J.D. vance come to speak at the Munich Security Conference nine days before the German election. And I think that was really proof that the far right here is seeing the global environment, kind of meet it where it is. And so you have the AfD here after Trump was elected. They did make it into the parliament the following year, but they were relatively small. Now you see that there are many more allies for a party like that on the international stage than there used to be, even if here in Germany, they're not likely to be in power.

[Stephen Overlea]

Well, one of their allies on the global stage is obviously Elon Musk. You know, alternative for Germany, or AfD, is the party that he was very heavily endorsing in the run up to the election. How much did his voice matter there?

[Emily Schulteis]

I think it was useful for the, for the AfD symbolically, because while it is unlikely that having Musk's backing swayed a large number of votes within Germany, I do think that it was useful for the AFD more in this broader goal that they are reaching of showing that they are an internationally legitimate political movement. And so between Musk being very vocal and very active in supporting the campaign, between JD Vance coming and giving the speech that he did in Munich, between having meetings with people like Hungary's Viktor Orban, that all very much fed into this idea that this is a party that should be reckoned with on the international stage. I will say, I think in terms of the vote of kind of the average German, I am not sure that Musk's support necessarily did a whole lot to sway it. But he was certainly very active on X and posting things that, at least within that social media ecosystem, gave the party more reach than they might have had otherwise.

[Stephen Overlea]

Right. He certainly is very effective at amplifying a message, if nothing else. I mean, he did tweet after the results, at this rate of growth, AFD will be the majority party by the next election. I wonder if you might put that in context or fact check that a bit. Is this a trajectory that might hold, especially when you have rich, influential dudes like Musk pushing for it online?

[Emily Schulteis]

I think that it is unlikely that they will be the biggest party in Germany, but I also think that it has been so. I have been following the party since its inception in 2013 in some form, and I think the extent to which it has become normalized, that it has cemented its place in German politics as the party that often is forcing others to talk about their issues. I think that the extent to which that has happened has been noticeable and remarkable this time around. And so, you know, if you listen to AfD leaders, their goal was never to end up in government. This time around. They are looking toward the next election in 2029. And they basically say, we believe that by then we will be part of government. So in that sense, what happens in these next four years, both in terms of how well the new government is able to lead the country, but also in terms of some of this outside legitimacy that the AfD gets, I think that they will be very decisive years in determining whether a statement like that could be feasible down the road.

[Stephen Overlea]

Musk has very much conveyed that he is in US Politics for the long haul, that, you know, this last election cycle in the US Wasn't just some fluke. I get the sense that that's likely on the global stage as well. I don't think Elon Musk as a global political influencer is going away. What is the sentiment toward him being involved in German politics? I mean, is he viewed as, like, meddling in these elections? Is he viewed as a welcome force? I guess your politics may determine that, but I'm curious what the sentiment is over there.

[Emily Schulteis]

Yeah, I mean, if you're Alice Feidel, who's the head of the AfD, then you are very thrilled that he's getting involved. But I do think that we have seen some very sharp rebukes from Friedrich Matz, the man that is slated to be the next chancellor, and from Olaf Scholz, who is the current chancellor. Both of them have said that it is unacceptable for someone of that stature for from outside to be so involved in the election. Merz has said that he thinks that there should be consequences for Musk has sort of called on the Trump administration to rein him in and to rein in other officials that have been very vocal about German politics. It's Certainly not a universal positive among party leaders. And in fact, pretty much all the mainstream parties are speaking out pretty strongly against it.

[Susan Ettlinger]

The PC gave us computing power at home, the Internet connected us, and mobile let us do it pretty much anywhere. Now, generative AI lets us communicate with technology in our own language, using our own senses. But figuring it all out when you're living through it is a totally different story. Welcome to Leading the Shift, a new podcast from Microsoft Azure. I'm your host, Susan Ettlinger. In each episode, leaders will share what they're learning to help you navigate all this change with confidence. Please join us, listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

[Stephen Overlea]

You were covering in the lead up to the election, the AfD some of its strong messages around nationalism, you know, anti immigration. And you've written that AI generated images and content were often used to kind of reinforce their messaging. What examples of AI did you see?

[Emily Schulteis]

So I would point to one that actually came not from this federal election, but from a state election in the fall that I think kind of sums it up the best, which was a video that said, you know, life was great for your grandparents. They built their house, they had this lovely life together, they went dancing, they had this community. And you don't have that anymore because of the decisions that are being made by politicians. You know, you don't recognize your country anymore, you can't afford things. There's all these people coming in that are making your, your day to day life less safe. And so it was very much this sort of core far right populist appeal of hearkening back to some idyllic time in the past that was supposedly better than today. And today is the kind of dystopian vision of left wing politicians and those sorts of things. So it's sort of a visualization of make Germany Great again, if you want to talk about it in American terms.

[Stephen Overlea]

Got it. And these ads carried images that were AI generated, right? And so it was sort of painting this nostalgic view of Germany based on imagery that was not even actually real. And I mean, the politicians spreading these images of course knew they were fake, but I think that was part of the point, right? Like what was their rationale in trying to conjure up this sort of idyllic image of Germany?

[Emily Schulteis]

In their view, they basically say every politician is painting a picture with their words on the campaign trail about these kinds of things. All they are doing is putting images to the kind of visions that they are presenting rhetorically. And in some cases there were notices very small not so noticeable, but there were notices that there was AI generated content in some of them. In many others that was not present. But, you know, I was sort of told, I asked about, for example, images of menacing looking foreigners. You've got. There were quite a few of those that you were seeing in posts on the AfD's Instagram page, for example, with messages about, you know, we should be deporting people, we need to like, crack down on our asylum system. And I asked one of their politicians, you know, is it problematic that you are creating images of a particular group and, and making them look menacing? And he basically said, all we are doing is amplifying the kinds of things that have actually happened in real life. Germans have felt that they've been threatened or they don't feel as safe. There are a lot of messages about women not walking home alone at night or these sorts of things. And so they're kind of saying, well, we're picking kernels of truth from incidents that have actually happened around the country and illustrating them for people in a way that is slightly amplified.

[Stephen Overlea]

Got it. Which obviously does raise all sorts of troubling questions about manipulation. And it's maybe based on your version of reality as opposed to actual reality. You mentioned that some of these ads carry disclaimers. That's a big debate in the US and was in our last election cycle, like, how do you signify to voters that some of these images are fake? Was there any pushback you saw to this use of AI? Were there any calls for greater regulation or disclosure or anything like that?

[Emily Schulteis]

Nothing that I can think of off the top of my head. I do know that other parties have not been using these kinds of things, so it certainly was. I would say that the AFD was an outlier in this sense in the German political sphere. The other thing I would just point to is that, like in the us, we are starting to see people's media consumption, social media consumption, getting increasingly siloed here as well. And so the material that is being produced is often kind of in this online echo chamber of support for the AfD. And so what I don't know is how many voters that were not predisposed to vote for the AfD were necessarily seeing these come up regularly. I certainly saw more of them once I had clicked on a bunch.

[Stephen Overlea]

As you can imagine, the algorithm starts spitting them out. Yeah, yeah.

[Emily Schulteis]

I think that the campaign was intense enough and most of the other parties had other political fires to be putting out. And so we didn't see this emerge as a Big theme. I do wonder how some of the discussions, as we talk now in the aftermath about how did this party get so big? How is it that one in five Germans are voting for it? I do wonder if some of those kinds of discussions will come up.

[Stephen Overlea]

Got it. You said earlier that on the policy front, we may not see such a seismic shift from Germany if sort of this centrist coalition is what winds up leading the government there. I wonder what you do see as the implications going forward for U.S. german or even U.S. eU relations of the results of this election, but also sort of this clear shift to the right and rise of AFD, if that persists.

[Emily Schulteis]

Yeah, I guess I would. I mean, so to come back to the earlier comment, in that sense, I was kind of thinking more about, specifically about foreign and security policy that I don't see there being a totally seismic shift. I do think there will be some shifts in terms of domestic policy, particularly on an issue like migration. But in terms of the impact on foreign and security and international policy and politics, we have heard some pretty strong comments from Friedrich Merz last night about needing to become more independent from the US Needing to stand up to the US now that this administration has made it clear that it's got different priorities about Europe being able to take care of itself and its own security. And so in that sense, I do think that there is a shift underway. And I think you'll see the AfD and its kind of ideological closeness to the Trump administration, maybe even further some of those divides when you've got a government in place here in Germany that disagrees quite strongly on some of those issues, and you've got a strong party in opposition that agrees very strongly with the US Administration. That said, we did see Trump get on Truth Social last night and congratulate Merza's conservatives. So I do wonder if perhaps that that means there's some softer rhetoric in the future. We'll have to see.

[Stephen Overlea]

Absolutely. Well, Emily, thank you for being here on Politico Tech.

[Emily Schulteis]

Thanks for having me.

[Stephen Overlea]

That's all for today's Politico Tech. If you enjoy Politico Tech, please subscribe. And for more tech news, subscribe to our newsletters, Digital Future Daily and Morning Tech. Our managing producer is Annie Reiss. Philip Froebos helped produce today's episode. I'm Stephen Overle. See you back here tomorrow.