Elon Musk angers German government with post backing far-right party

alphacyberranger@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 415 points –
Elon Musk angers German government with post backing far-right party - UPI.com
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Remember when Musk said he was working on saving all those people, but then someone else actually did it instead of just trying to show off on Twitter, so Musk baselessly called him a pedophile? You know, like a normal well-adjusted human.

I mean saying our politicians are bastards is always right but if he starts calling them pedos he might actually be arrested as thats legitimately illigal without proof.

Except he did, and he somehow won the case in court?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50695593

JDart? Wtf he was even emailing BuzzFeed journalists after the event making the same claim. Goes to show you you can put the finger on the scale of justice if you have globs of money.

Yes, absolutely absurd how he could win that case. There could never be any doubt on guilt, only the amount he should pay in compensation. It's disgusting how money can get you out of trouble.

In arguments you insult each other

"Your honor, I'd like it to go on record that opposing counsel fucked their mother"

Im literally saying our politicians, as in Germany...

USA will not arrest Musk on a matter of Slander in Germany.

Slander and libel are civil suits, it needs to be criminal acts to get him arrested in a foreign country.

And even then it wouldn't work, when apparently he can somehow pay his way out.

So whatever you were "literally" trying to say, it doesn't really work that way.

I hate current Elon behaviour too but I don't think Musk's reaction was completely "baseless", pretty sure the diver guy was the one that started the fight, insulting the submarine tesla's engineers made.

Calling him a pedo is a bit too extreme though

I mean, I can call all Tesla cars stupid, all SpaceX rockets garbage, .. doesn't mean Elon gets to insult me personally all of a sudden, does it?

He wasn't insulting the submarine itself, because it had not been built. It did not even exist in a conceptual state beyond Musk's imagination. The diver was criticizing the idea of using a submarine itself, considering the cave that those kids were stuck in had an opening just barely large enough for a full grown adult to slip through. It was, and still is to this day, the worst solution anybody could have proposed for the problem at hand, billionaire or otherwise.

But when the expert chimed in and said "thanks but no thanks" to his crappy idea, Elon Musk took it super personally and called the dude a pedophile, which is a life-ruining accusation when it comes from a multi-billionaire with millions of rabid fans who think he's the next Edison. Even if only 1% of his fanbase believed it was true, that's still a lot of people who now genuinely believe that guy rapes kids and only cared about rescuing the Thai youth soccer team because he was a child predator. They're going to spread the lie and ruin his reputation. Musk was never punished for this and gave a half-hearted apology to improve the dismal optics he was facing.

sure, I agree with your second paragraph but wdym by "the submarine had not been built"? are you just going by assumptions or do you mean something else?

Two days before there was news about the giga factory close to Berlin where they produce batteries for tesla. Its incredibly unsafe to work there. Other German car factory have 2/3 less accidents and less severe ones. The article was really alarming. Everyone spoke about it. Then followed the x about the afd. Now everyone speaks about that. Smart move. Please let's speak about people almost dying in those factories again!

Funny how there is always an event that occurs so close to Musk needing to kick up a fuss. Shame the press is not more switched on and calling it out.

I agree that people should be talking about the unsafe conditions in his (and any) factories, but lets not pretend that him openly supporting Nazis, even if he is doing it to divert attention, is still him openly supporting Nazis, and that is a serious threat.

Can you talk more about this here by posting a good quality source?

That man is not worth the amount of air he breathes. He is a tumor on society. I cannot put into words how despicable I find him.

Where is the anger? He made a stupid post, siding with what can only be described as neo nazis and got owned by the german foreign ministry on his own platform. Didn‘t stop him from doubling down with insane radical right claims, though. Anyway, that‘s a bad headline of quite an empty article if I may say so.

Downvote Musk spam. He will say/do anything to stay in the 24 hour news cycle.

The billionaire doesn’t need your help ensuring him and his businesses stay in the headlines every day. Don’t be a useful idiot.

This isn't positive Musk spam and how much of an ass he is should be known.

Agreed. The world should never forget what a total piece of shit he is.

And this is kind of effin' important. Facebook and Twitter are critical in misinformation dissemination. Musk has a lot of power not only because he is a billionaire but because he owns Twitter and can influence so many people.

Yeah Elon tusk is pulling the old “they are going to report all that I say! I am a success” bullshit like trump did on Twitter. Has Elon has his cofeve moment yet?

Nah, he's most likely using the 24/7 news cycle to surpress the articles about . This time it's the news about his tesla factory in Germany being a complete disaster for workers' safety and the enivornment. He's just hijacking the news cycle with yet another stupid thing to surpress the news that are hurting his business interests. If we'd stop giving him attention as a person, then he would have absolutely no power over those negative articles.

A few years ago I had some respect for Musk because he build electric cars and quite revolutionary space ships. Funny how that's now all gone now.

He didn’t build any of that shit.

He did, however, make a good job im convincing peolle that he does shit. He builds electric cars, he builds rockets.

Not the actual engineers and workers, it's magic Musk.

He wasn’t even a founder of Tesla. He bought them out.

His undisputed contribution is that he hired Gwynne Shotwell for SpaceX.

I see a resemblance in that thumbnail...

"...dad?"

I hope the EU fines the shit out of this douche bag

I hope the EU shuts fucking twitter down for antisemitic and Nazi propaganda

Why is this news?

If you're asking because you don't know how truly awful and scary AfD is: AfD is truly awful and the prospect of them gaining control is very scary. One of the world's richest people can make things happen in politics.

If you're asking because Musk supporting right wing politics is well known: yeah but see above. AfD is scary shit.

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They are remarkably close to being able to push the "ethnic cleansing" button. They have stated their motive, they are close to achieving the means (their popularity is not far behind what Nazis were when they took power).

https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-far-right-afd-marks-10-years-since-its-founding/a-64607308

https://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/2018-04/germany-talks-experience-report-meeting/seite-2

A personal anecdote: in 2020 entertained a German visitor (who never offered up a party affiliation, but it can be inferred) for a few hours at a bar. They managed to convey all sorts of political views supporting suppression of others but stopped short of directly calling for genocide. However any reasonable conversationalist would understand what they meant. The closest thing I can think of for this in English is "dogwhistling", however I am convinced there is a better German word for it.

They are germanys version of "Trump with a brain"

If they come to power they will cut taxes for the rich and make everyone of the norm suffer in one way or another. But ofc they are boasting about being "the voice of the people".

And they are hypocrites, like one influential woman in this party that regulary insults the LGBT+ community and wants to ban homosexual marriage is married herself to a woman in switzerland.

93A1A71EABD6B6CD658458CC1F4

Not yet, for the moment they are conted with making their lives worse. But ask again in 8 years or so.

They do want to let asylum seekers die at the border.

Imagine being so privileged (and bigoted) that you can pretend to "not understand" why the richest and potentially most powerful man on the planet is openly supporting Nazis counts as news..