Summary
Elon Musk’s address to Germany’s far-right AfD party, where he downplayed Germany’s Nazi past and criticized multiculturalism, has sparked global alarm.
Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, called the remarks “incredibly dangerous,” warning of their potential to embolden right-wing extremists and threaten Jewish security worldwide.
Critics highlighted Musk’s alignment with far-right ideologies, including his Nazi salutes at Trump’s inauguration.
AfD are openly very strong supporters of Israel and pushed for resolutions against BDS in 2019 and now supported an “anti antisemitism” resolution in the German parliament, which is designed in a way that shifts the blame for antisemitism away from German Nazis and onto Muslims and Leftists critical of Israel.
The BDS resolution was already used to silence critics of Israel, disproportionately affecting Jews critical of Israel. Now the new resolution suggests having the interior intelligence screen scientists and artists to make sure they are “without a doubt” not antisemitic, aka they most not have voiced any criticism of Israel. The most cynical aspect of it is that it does mention last years Berlinale as an example for antisemitisim because a Jewish documentary director called Israel an Apartheid state. Meanwhile the resolution does not refer to a terror attack by a Neonazi, who tried murdering Jews in a synagogue in Halle a few years back.
Unfortunately the Social Democrats, Greens, Liberals and Conservatives were all in on it.
The AfD is only displaying the most extreme form of a sentiment prevalent in German politics. Downplay German fascism and antisemitism by the right and center and blame it all on people crirical of Israel.
There is a great podcast about the insanity of Germanys way of dealing with it, interviewing Emily Dische-Becker, who is one of the writers of the Jerusalem definition of antisemitism. The Jerusalem definition is an alternative definition to the IHRA definition with the goal to properly seperate between antisemitism and criticism of Israel.
https://thedigradio.com/podcast/the-german-question-w-emily-dische-becker/
That’s a really good episode. Honestly, watching how fanatically pro Israel and anti Palestinians the Germans have been during this genocide you’d think deNazification never happened.
Hello I’m German and I would like you to stop grouping all of us together. The debate about Israel and Palestine in combination with the AFD caused huge rift in our society and comments like this just stokes the flames for fascist like the AFD.
Many Germans are aware about whats happening in Palestine and are in open protest.
So please stop.
Ok I am sorry if I upset you and I know it’s wrong to generalize given that there are many Germans opposed to what’s going on but your government, police, media and cultural institutions have been so brazen in how they are white washing genocide, oppressing protests and dissent while dehumanising Palestinians. Seeing Germany’s official support for Israel in the ICJ while sending them weapons to kill civilians is disgusting.
It really does seem that the lesson learned from the world war was that it’s OK for Israel to commit a genocide because “we did it to them”
