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The tech entrepreneur and close adviser to Donald Trump Elon Musk has taken a stunning new public step in his support for the far-right German political party Alternative for Germany (AfD), publishing a supportive guest opinion piece for the country’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper that has prompted the commentary editor to resign in protest.

The commentary piece in German was launched online on Saturday ahead of being published on Sunday in the flagship paper of the Axel Springer media group, which also owns the US politics news site Politico.

Musk uses populist and personal language to try to deny AfD’s extremist bent and the piece expands on his post on the social media platform X that he owns, on which he last week claimed that “only the AfD can save Germany”.

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[-] koper@feddit.nl 178 points 3 days ago

No respectable newspaper would platform a foreign billionaire trying to meddle in an election. The fact that the owners pushed this through, overruling their own staff, should be a clear sign to everyone: billionaires buy up news organizations to influence the population and undermine democracy. Even if the individual journalists have the utmost integrity, they will just get strong armed by upper management. The same thing happened with Bezos and the Washington Post.

[-] excral@feddit.org 21 points 2 days ago

Welt am Sonntag ist part of the Springer Media Group. They have a long history of pushing populist, conservative and right agendas and publishing Musk's opinion piece falls perfectly in line with the election meddling they are doing.

[-] Saleh@feddit.org 57 points 3 days ago

Note that political meddling and unscrupelous behaviour has always been the hallmark of the Axel-Springer Media.

They have successfully motivated the murder of the student activist Rudi Dutschke in the 60s by a Neonazi terrorist.

In 2011 they have cheered themselves for having pushed the then president of Germany Christian Wulff (it is a ceremonial role, the head of the executive is the chancellor) with a smear campaign based on lies and fabrications.

They hold the absolute majority of reprimands for violations of journalistic standards by the publishers organization ethics board Presserat.

The former editor in chief of the Bild Zeitung Julian Reichelt had to be kicked out a few years back for sexual harassment and coercion of multiple women employees. But only after the Company tried to keep it under covers and pressured another publisher to not publish their investigative research in Germany, so US media had to publish it first.

They were always like this and they will always be like this. Axel-Springer is also the main pro US and pro Israel voice in Germanys media landscape. It should be telling everyone where things are headed that they switched now from supporting the far right neoliberal FDP to the fascist AfD.

[-] Draedron@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago

Die Welt is not reapectable. Its Springer Verlag. Basically the Murdoch of Germany.

[-] yournamehere@lemm.ee 6 points 2 days ago

allies should have bombed the island of Föhr back then.

anyone remember how friede (head of the nazi news) transferred 1 billion € to one of her employees (döpfner) to start a TV station (BILD TV)? no taxes were paid because Friede is best friends with Angela Merkel. ofcourse BILD TV failed terribly but funds are used for propaganda.

anyway, if you ask the people that saw Friede Springer on Föhr grow up after WW2 might be able to tell you a story about how they let the refugees starve in the 50s. but officially everyone is just so scared of Friede Springer you'll never read about their murders.

[-] barsoap@lemm.ee 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

After the war pretty much all refugees in Schleswig-Holstein were starving, ration cards were not sufficient for anyone and refugees were in a worse situation to self-supply, housing was more than scarce, the refugee to native ratio was 3:4, multiple families sharing apartments, a family to a room. To this day many smaller cities are dominated by our version of commie blocks built back then things would've gotten very ugly without a massive building programme.

Dunno about the situation on Föhr in particular, and I don't doubt that Friede is an assclown, but you gotta be more specific. Did she, at the tender age of eight, e.g. prevent people from rummaging through already harvested fields to see what they can find? Demand payment for wool caught on fences?

Did we even distribute refugees to the islands back then? Doesn't really sound sensible or practical, there wasn't really anything more than subsistence farming going on anywhere on the Frisian islands and, short of the addition of tourism, still isn't. Industry on Föhr is like yes they have an electrician, a car mechanic, and a carpenter.

[-] yournamehere@lemm.ee 1 points 2 days ago

just saying the farmers i know all tell the same tale. refugees in SH had little to no food, but the farmers werent mistreating the people like the people of föhr did. and that her parents right? and thats that values of life she grew up with. and that explains a lot about her hate media outlet. so i just ask for the island of föhr to be removed. sylt needs sand. lets make things right.

[-] barsoap@lemm.ee 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Dude Westerland made a Nazi war criminal mayor after the war and now are a luxury resort. Practically all non-affluent natives are living on the mainland and are commuting to the island to wipe rich people's asses who faint at the sight of a carousal of punks.

I'd say take both Föhr and Sylt and give it, shovel load by shovel load, to the Halligen so they can properly prepare for rising tides. Hooge deserves to have the highest peak in the whole state.

[-] yournamehere@lemm.ee 1 points 1 day ago

agreed. btw first innenminister to SH was a Waffen SS judge. ofcourse a christian democrat.

[-] aaron@lemm.ee 7 points 3 days ago

It's already lost. Brace yourselves. Buy your fucking toilet paper now. This is hyper-fucked.

[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 3 days ago

Yes, but imagine all the rage clicks!

He's basically a professional media villain at this point. Not many people take him seriously, and I doubt the share among journalists is larger.

this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2024
453 points (97.3% liked)

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