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- Germany has responded to an attack from Elon Musk, saying it's "saving lives" by helping migrants.
- The billionaire had promoted the claim that Germany is facilitating "illegal" immigration to Europe.
- Berlin recently helped to fund a nonprofit that rescues migrants from distressed ships.
Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, attacked Germany's center-left governing coalition for supporting migrants on Friday and boosted a call for the German people to support a far-right extremist party instead.
Earlier this month, Germany's foreign ministry announced it was dispersing funds to two nonprofit organizations that assist asylum-seekers, including a group that conducts search-and-rescue operations in the Mediterranean Sea. Already this year, more than 2,500 people have died or gone missing while trying to cross the sea, compared to fewer than 1,700 in all of 2022, the head of the UN refugee agency said on Friday.
News of the funding spurred a protest from Italy's far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who — in a letter to her German counterpart, Olaf Sholz — wrote that she had "learned with astonishment" that Berlin would be assisting groups "engaged in the reception of irregular migrants on Italian territory and in rescues in the Mediterranean Sea," the German public broadcaster DW reported.
Musk, on Friday, amplified similar criticism and directly waded into German domestic politics, suggesting that the governing coalition should pay a price at the ballot box.
"Is the German public aware of this?" Musk asked in a Friday post on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, which he purchased for $44 billion last year. Musk embedded a post from an account that frequently shares racist attacks on migrants.
In the post shared by Musk, the account lamented the presence of humanitarian groups in the Mediterranean Sea that rescue migrants from distressed vessels.
"These NGOs are subsidized by the German government," the account posted. "Let's hope AfD wins the elections to stop this European suicide."
AfD is Alternative for Germany, a far-right political party that campaigns against migration to Europe — and has strong ties with right-wing extremists, including those of an "outright neo-Nazi nature," per an investigation by Der Spiegel. The party attracted 22% support in an opinion poll this month, compared to 16% for Chancellor Sholz's center-left Social Democrat Party, a rise that has alarmed some historians of Nazi Germany.
Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.
Germany's Foreign Office, for its part, used its verified X account to address Musk's criticism with an admission.
"Yes," it posted. "And it's called saving lives."
The migrant crisis in the Mediterranean Sea
According to the United Nations, the vast majority (83%) of migrants crossing the Mediterranean — many fleeing war, political repression, and poverty in Africa and the Middle East — end up landing in Italy. As of this month, about 130,000 migrants have arrived by boat on Italian shores. Most, however, seek to resettle in other parts of the European Union seen as more hospitable to foreigners.
Germany alone has accepted more than 6 million migrants since 2013, many having arrived by sea from countries such as Libya and Turkey. Earlier this month, Berlin released funds approved by parliament to one nonprofit, SOS Humanity, which conducts search-and-rescue operations in the Mediterranean.
Its ship, the Humanity 1, has been involved in 26 such operations, helping save more than 1,600 lives, including more than 560 children, according to the group, which said it would receive about 790,000 euros (or $835,000).
The total German funding for groups that conduct aid work with asylum-seekers, on land and sea, amounts to about $2.1 million, or about 0.3 percent of the country's foreign aid budget, Lukas Kaldenhoff, a spokesperson for SOS Humanity, said in a statement.
"Considering that on average one person dies every three hours in the Mediterranean Sea while fleeing, two million euros for search and rescue in this year's federal budget is more than sobering," Kaldenhoff said.
Musk's turn toward right-wing causes
Musk's foray into German politics comes after a public and dramatic shift to the right for the businessman. After claiming to be some type of "socialist" in 2018, Musk last year endorsed the Republican Party and has exercised his control over X to address right-wing grievances over content moderation and promote claims from far-right influencers.
An immigrant from South Africa, Musk has used his platform of more than 158 million followers on X to share everything from attacks on trans rights (he has an estranged trans daughter) to a pro-Russia plan for "peace" in Ukraine (where, via Starlink, he has intervened to thwart offensive military operations by Kyiv).
Musk's remarks on migration to Europe come as he also campaigns against "open borders" in the United States. This week he traveled to to Eagle Pass, Texas, where on a choppy X livestream he lambasted the White House for not doing more to quell the flow of migrants across the US-Mexico border.
There, too, there was an openly partisan element to Musk's commentary: Appearing beside him was a local Republican, Rep. Tony Gonazales, who is campaigning for reelection.