# Elon Musk — X, December 20, 2024 — "Only the AfD can save Germany" > [!quote] "Only the AfD can save Germany" > — Elon Musk, on X, December 20, 2024 ## Artifact properties | Property | Value | |---|---| | Posted | 2024-12-20 | | Deleted | No | | Account | `@elonmusk` on X | | In reply to | A video by right-wing influencer Naomi Seibt attacking [[Friedrich Merz]]'s refusal to govern with the [[AfD]] | | Election context | Nine weeks before the February 23, 2025 federal election, after the Scholz coalition collapsed | | Repeated | Twice during the January 9, 2025 X conversation with [[Alice Weidel]] | ## Why it matters as a Social Post **1. It opened the campaign.** This five-word reply is the first move in the [[Musk AfD Campaign]]. Everything after it, the op-ed, the Weidel conversation and the Halle speech, elaborated this post. **2. It targeted the firewall, not the government.** The post answered an attack on Merz, the opposition leader who went on to win, for refusing to work with the AfD. "Only the AfD" rejects the *Brandmauer* itself: the agreement among Germany's other parties that the AfD is not a coalition partner. **3. It is a platform owner campaigning on his own platform.** Posted by the owner of X to more than 200 million followers, weeks before he joined the second Trump administration, it framed a German election as his concern. Within weeks the European Commission had folded his AfD activity into its Digital Services Act probe of X. ## Related entries - [[Musk AfD Campaign]] — the full sequence - [[AfD]] · [[Alice Weidel]] · [[Elon Musk]] - [[Elon Musk - 2023-11-15 - great replacement endorsement]] — the earlier post in this folder's Musk sequence ## Followup TODOs - **Capture archive_url.** Wayback snapshot of the post and the Seibt video it replied to.