Summary

Elon Musk livestreamed a conversation with Alice Weidel, co-leader of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, on his platform X, endorsing her and urging support for the AfD ahead of Germany’s February 23 election.

The livestream, which drew over 200,000 viewers, raised concerns across Europe about Musk’s influence in foreign politics.

AfD, under observation for extremism, has gained popularity amid discontent with Chancellor Scholz’s government.

Musk’s promotion of Weidel and controversial remarks on other European issues are being monitored for violations of the EU’s Digital Services Act.

  • Roflmasterbigpimp
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    134 minutes ago

    Unbelievable how many People can give an in-depth analysis from an Ocean away what exactly the Problem is and how to fix it.

    How about you start by don’t electing Musk and his Sidekick as President?

    That would be a good start and a lot of help for everyone.

  • Flying SquidM
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    308 hours ago

    Why is Germany not just blocking Twitter? I don’t get it.

      • @[email protected]
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        31 hour ago

        After the actual Nazis banned a party, people made it far more difficult to ban parties.

        You can try it, but it could fail. And the whole spectacle means more attention for them.

      • @BMTea
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        -44 hours ago

        In Germany, they view extremist politics as anything to do with Islam, so if you promote the expulsion of Muslims or their reeducation or forcing them to sign pledges to Israel to become citizens, you’re just being German.

        • Roflmasterbigpimp
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          239 minutes ago

          How about you stfu?

          You seem to have no Idea what you are talking about.

      • @FourPacketsOfPeanuts
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        5 hours ago

        The afd is not the root problem and won’t go away if it were banned

        The problem is moderate politicians persistently ignoring (and patronising) the working class over serious reservations they have over immigration and cultural dilution

        Same as everywhere else…

    • @[email protected]
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      257 hours ago

      Why are we just letting Nazis take over again? Seems like we had a solution to them before.

      • @FourPacketsOfPeanuts
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        -55 hours ago

        When large parts of the population say they’d like less islamic immigration and, instead of listening, politicians patronise them, what you end up with are Nazis…

        • @[email protected]
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          2 hours ago

          It’s Mexican immigration they care about. But if they wanted their jobs to be taken by skilled immigrant workers, they’re gonna get that with trump. Whoops. Leopards.

    • Andy
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      48 hours ago

      That might be a good idea, but I think that folks need to examine fundamental factors underlying the rise of the far right and the ways in which limiting speech may be a weak remedy.

      • Flying SquidM
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        58 hours ago

        Germany has never had a problem with it before (post-WWII).

        • Andy
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          28 hours ago

          What’s the use of that information? They have that problem now.

          It appears to be an internationally occurring problem.

          • Flying SquidM
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            58 hours ago

            No, I mean they have never had a problem limiting Nazi speech before.

            • @froh42
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              25 minutes ago

              Quite contrary, we have a big problem censoring Nazi speech.

              We have some very specific rules when something can be censored and when it can’t - and the far right has quite some training in “just not saying that, maybe only implicating it a little”.

              So any legal action outlawing then needs to rest on really solid legal basis or it will fail. Such a failure would be the propaganda the right wishes for.

              Consequently they are always just shy of openly saying things but implying them. Like having election posters where their politicians can say “No we’re not showing a Hitler salute in that image, we were just miming a roof of a house over a bunch of kids”

              Sometimes a single politician gets caught with doing something too far, but then (of course) the whole party acts like they are shocked.

              Getting rid of this shit is not easy, unfortunately. We can’t censor what we don’t like willy nilly.

    • @[email protected]
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      18 hours ago

      If you block certain social media channels that you personally don’t agree with while being in charge, you set a dangerous precedent for other people blocking things they don’t agree with should they ever come to power.

      And censorship doesn’t address the root cause in the first place. Alt-right / far-right clowns know that they are often operating outside of the law or at the very least skirting a line that makes them prone to being observed, so they’ll typically operate with VPNs or other obfuscation tech that will let them access Twitter regardless.

      All a block achieves is that regular citizens can’t inform themselves about the crap that is being spewed to invalidate claims made by the right.

      • Flying SquidM
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        138 hours ago

        Germany has never had a problem with censoring Nazis in the past. I see no reason why they should start.

        And I have no problem censoring harmful propaganda. The idea that harmful propaganda should be allowed because of some nebulous concept of freedom of speech is nonsense.

        • @[email protected]
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          67 hours ago

          The AfD is a legitimate political party. Legitimate as in, they haven’t been caught with anything openly anti-constitutional.

          Individual members have been, and were tried in court, and if found guilty were publicly expelled from the party, hence they operate under the guise of plausible deniability for the time being.

          Nazi propaganda has been blocked once it’s confirmed anti-constitutional, but you can’t block a political party just like that.

          And blocking Twitter as a whole is quite a big difference to blocking certain individuals or groups. No matter how much crap is on there, there are still a lot of legitimate postings, not least from legit government actors etc.

          • DerGottesknecht
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            11 hour ago

            they haven’t been caught with anything openly anti-constitutional.

            The federal party is suspected to be anti constitutional and several state level partys have been declared as anti constitutional by the Verfassungsschutz, so that’s not completely true.

        • @[email protected]
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          27 hours ago

          No, where did I say that? All I said is that as long as they are a legitimately recognized party, they can’t be censored.

          I’m all in favor of banning the AfD, but only after this has been achieved, can their public channels, mouthpieces and whatever be censored, not the other way around.

      • Flying SquidM
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        138 hours ago

        A world propaganda mouthpiece with millions of users is not “reality TV bullshit” and dismissing it like it has no effect is the wrong thing to do.

    • @[email protected]
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      13 hours ago

      Of course, billionaires knows best about politics and shit, we leftist love to simp for them.

      /S