Elon Musk, the wealthiest person in the world, owner of Tesla, SpaceX and the social media platform X, is leveraging his staggering fortune—approaching half a trillion dollars—to finance and promote fascist forces throughout the world.
On Friday, Musk endorsed Germany’s neo-Nazi Alternative für Deutschland in elections scheduled for early next year. “Only the AfD can save Germany,” Musk declared in a statement posted on X. Alice Weidel, the AfD’s candidate for chancellor, responded enthusiastically, “You are perfectly right!,” adding that “socialist [former Chancellor Angela] Merkel ruined our country” and “the Soviet European Union” was destroying Germany.
The AfD, founded 11 years ago, is a vicious anti-immigrant and anti-refugee party. Björn Höcke, head of the party in the state of Thuringia has been found guilty of using Nazi slogans and, according to a court ruling, can be called a fascist. Höcke and other leading members have trivialized the crimes of the Third Reich and called for an end to a culture of “shame” over the Holocaust. In 2018, AfD leader Alexander Gauland referred to Hitler and the Nazis as “just a speck of bird shit in over a thousand years of successful German history.”
Capitalizing on the widespread hatred for the establishment parties of the German ruling class, including the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the AfD has made significant gains in recent years. In September, it became the first far-right party to win a state election, in Thuringia, since the Nazi period.
Musk’s intervention in German politics followed a meeting this week at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort with Nigel Farage, the leader of Britain’s fascistic Reform UK party, and the party’s treasurer, Nick Candy. According to Farage, they discussed with Musk strategies for “saving the West.” The two leaders of the Reform UK party issued a statement following the meeting declaring, “We learned a great deal about the Trump ground game and will have ongoing discussions on other areas.”
A more immediate issue of concern for Farage was the prospect that Musk could donate £100 million ($127 million) to the party, which, if it goes through, would be the largest political donation in the UK by far.
Among the other fascists and neo-Nazis that Musk has befriended is Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, with whom Musk has met repeatedly since she came to power in 2022. Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party traces its origins to Mussolini.
In the Western hemisphere, Musk has championed far-right Argentine President Javier Milei, who both Musk and Trump have held up as a model for the policy of a second Trump administration. Musk has praised the “Milei model” which aims to dismantle public services, labor protections, and all regulations on corporate exploitation.
Musk’s promotion of the fascist right corresponds to his own political proclivities, which go back to his family background in apartheid South Africa. In the process of emerging as Trump’s main financial and political backer, Musk has embraced what he has called “Dark MAGA,” while utilizing his ownership of X to systematically promote far-right and neo-Nazi individuals and groups.
The central role of Musk in promoting the growth of the far-right throughout the world underscores a more fundamental political point: Billionaires are toxic to democracy. The capitalist oligarchy has amassed unimaginable wealth at the expense of the working class. The world’s ten richest individuals—nine of them Americans—now collectively hold $2.1 trillion, a sum greater than the GDP of most nations.
In the United States, the re-election of Trump, as the WSWS has noted, signifies the violent realignment of political forms to correspond with social reality. The government that will come to power on January 20 is a government of, by and for the oligarchy, committed to a policy of destroying social programs and vastly increasing the exploitation of the working class.
But the same processes are evident in every major capitalist country. The capitalist ruling elite has spent trillions bailing out the rich. The imperialist powers have initiated a new global war, which requires the subordination of all of society to militarism. The political corollary is the turn to fascism.
The growth of the far-right is driven not by broad popular support for dictatorship and an assault on immigrant workers and refugees. Rather, extreme-right neo-fascist parties are able to benefit from 1) the support of significant sections of the capitalist oligarchy; and 2) the absence within the political establishment of any expression of the interests of the broad mass of the population. The response of the nominally “left” parties to the promotion of the far-right is not opposition, but adaptation and capitulation.
The defense of the rights of the working class requires a frontal assault on the wealth and privileges of the capitalist oligarchy. As WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North remarked on Friday, “Musk’s use of his wealth to finance fascist leaders and their parties testifies to the relevance of the demand raised by Trotsky in the founding program of the Fourth International for the ‘expropriation of separate groups of capitalists.’”
“The socialist program of expropriation,” Trotsky wrote, “i.e., of political overthrow of the bourgeoisie and liquidation of its economic domination, should in no case during the present transitional period hinder us from advancing, when the occasion warrants, the demand for the expropriation of several key branches of industry vital for national existence or of the most parasitic group of the bourgeoisie.”
In the case of Musk, the occasion certainly warrants. The response of the working class to Musk and his global conspiracy to promote dictatorship and fascism must be the fight for the expropriation of his wealth, along with the wealth of all the capitalist oligarchs, built up through the exploitation of millions of people. The defense of the most basic democratic rights depends upon it.