(Note language in paragraph five that readers may find

offensive)

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Musk's support for AfD had little impact on election

results

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Tesla's European sales drop amid Musk's political activism

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Musk's posts amplify far-right figures and misinformation

By Andrew MacAskill, Andrew R.C. Marshall, Nick Carey

LONDON, March 4 (Reuters) -

For the past two months, tech billionaire Elon Musk has

promoted Germany's far-right party in at least two dozen posts

on his X platform, interviewed its leader, and told his 219

million followers it was the country's "only hope."

Yet Musk's support for Alternative fur Deutschland played

little part in the party's stunning second-place result in the

February 23 election, according to a Reuters review of his posts

and polling data as well as interviews with political analysts.

The Tesla CEO appears undaunted, continuing to promote

right-wing causes across Europe. While the most noticeable

impact, so far, seems to be damage to Tesla's brand, analysts

say he may have a longer-term goal for his business empire:

backing political parties that might cut back regulations he

thinks impede tech innovations.

Musk and Tesla did not respond to requests for comment for

this story.

In January, Musk bemoaned what he called Europe's "layer

cake of regulations and bureaucracy." After a European Union

official threatened to sanction him last year, Musk

responded on X

with a meme that quoted from the action-comedy movie "Tropic

Thunder": "Take a big step back and literally, fuck your own

face!"

The AfD - classified by Germany's domestic intelligence

service as a suspected extremist group - is now Germany's

largest opposition party after last month's election, despite

the stigma the far right traditionally carries due to the

country's Nazi past. One of the party's senior politicians had

to step aside last year after declaring that the SS, the Nazis'

main paramilitary force, were "not all criminals." Musk

broadcast his interview with AfD leader Alice Weidel on X on

January 9.

The AfD's growing popularity illustrates a phenomenon

spreading across Europe as populist far-right parties make their

biggest gains in decades.

Once on the political fringes, they now hold or share office

in Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, Slovakia, Finland and

Croatia. They are either the largest or second-largest parties

in the parliaments of Sweden, Austria and now Germany, and have

surged in polls in France. Support for the far right has also

grown in Romania, Belgium, Spain and Portugal.

They have been buoyed by high immigration, economic

stagnation and perceived restrictions on free speech - all

issues Musk has amplified in his X posts. These have

increasingly focused on European politics since Musk helped

President Donald Trump win back the White House in November,

according to a Reuters review of more than 20,000 of Musk's

posts and reposts.

Musk has used X to promote right-wing figures in Britain,

Italy and Romania, while pouring scorn on political leaders and

senior EU officials.

When Musk first explicitly promoted the AfD in Germany on

December 20, the party was polling at 19.3%, according to a

Reuters polling aggregate

. It eventually won 20.8% of the vote. The numbers suggest

he had little impact on the election, said three political

analysts interviewed by Reuters. Three violent attacks in

Germany by people suspected to be from the Middle East and

Afghanistan during that period might also have boosted the AfD,

which has called for the mass deportation of immigrants.

But two of the analysts said Musk had raised the party's

appeal among some voters, particularly younger ones, which could

improve its performance in the next election.

"He has helped the AfD look a bit more cool and innovative,"

said Martin Fassnacht, chair of strategy and marketing at the

WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management in Germany.

Musk's far-right cheerleading appears to be coming at a

price for Tesla, whose sales in Europe tumbled 45% in January

from a year earlier, while its rivals' rose by over 37%,

according to the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association,

which represents major car makers.

Early European sales figures for February show that decline

continuing. Four corporate-car fleet managers told Reuters that

Tesla's share of their fleets was either flat or down,

suggesting tough times ahead.

"FLIP A COUNTRY POLITICALLY"

The Reuters review of Musk's posts and reposts on X since

the start of 2024 reveals his shift of focus to Europe after

helping Trump win back the White House in November with over a

quarter of a billion dollars in campaign donations.

In Britain, he has

attacked Prime Minister Keir Starmer

, called for a jailed far-right activist to be freed, and

backed Reform, a right-wing populist party whose pledges to

reduce immigration and abandon climate-change targets closely

mirror Trump's.

In Italy, Musk has developed

close relations

with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Both have expressed

concerns about immigration and declining birth rates in Western

countries. Meloni recently called Musk a "precious genius."

In Romania,

he has promoted posts about far-right politician Calin

Georgescu

and excoriated one of the judges who annulled Georgescu's

presidential bid last year due to suspected Russian

interference.

U.S. tech platforms such as X have "immense power" to shape

public opinion in Europe, said Damian Tambini, a specialist in

media and communications regulation and policy at the London

School of Economics.

"It's not so beyond the realm of possibility that (Musk)

could flip a country politically," said Tambini. "That in turn

would create a completely different balance of power" inside the

EU, as far-right governments gain further influence in the

already fractious 27-nation bloc. Those governments could

potentially help Musk undo or water down regulations he didn't

like, said Tambini.

Musk, who leads Trump's efforts to slash the size of the

U.S. federal workforce, has publicly criticized European

business regulations, calling them bad for growth and a form of

censorship. He has been under investigation by the EU for more

than a year for potential breaches of a recent European law

intended to ensure social platforms such as X police illegal

content. The decision is still pending.

Under the EU's Digital Services Act, X could face a fine of

6% of its annual global revenue for failing to tackle illegal

content and disinformation or follow transparency rules. The

case is a major test of the EU's ability to enforce rules on

American social media companies as it seeks to tackle illegal

content and disinformation.

There have been other signs of regulatory concern over

Musk's platform in Europe.

On February 7, a German court ruled that X must release

information enabling researchers to track the spread of

election-swaying information on the platform under EU laws. On

the same day, French prosecutors said they were investigating

claims that X distorted its algorithms to manipulate discourse.

On a Tesla earnings call in January, Musk complained of

Europe's regulations while discussing seeking approval for the

company's "Full Self Driving" technology. "There's this joke:

America innovates; Europe regulates," he said on the call. "It's

like, 'Guys, there's too many refs on the field.'"

European governments are wary of Musk's growing status as "a

far-right rock star," said Asma Mhalla, a French political

scientist specializing in the politics of big tech. She

suspects his ultimate aim is to weaken European regulations and

expand U.S. power, especially given his role as a senior Trump

advisor.

"The real agenda is making the U.S. the biggest power in the

coming century," she said.

The White House declined to comment

on Musk's role in America's Europe policy.

Greg Swenson, chairman of Republicans Overseas UK, a support

network for Republican expats, said fighting to dismantle

burdensome European regulations would help all businesses, not

just Musk's. "He's doing it for the greater good."

WAR ON 'WOKE'

In his criticisms of Europe, Musk often shares unverified

information on X, including anonymous accounts that tag him,

while amplifying known spreaders of misinformation, the Reuters

review of his posts found.

Most of his posts concern mass immigration and what he

portrays as free-speech restrictions, Reuters found. He also

criticized Europe's declining birth rates and transgender

rights. He often bypasses the traditional media, politicians and

academics, preferring to amplify a small ecosystem of hard-right

accounts.

One such account is PeterSweden7, run by journalist and

political commentator Peter Imanuelsen, who has described the

September 2001 attacks on America by al Qaeda as an inside job

and the moon landings as fake.

Musk has promoted at least half a dozen of Imanuelsen's

misleading posts. In January, he reposted Imanuelsen's claim

that a man was sentenced to 20 months in prison for a Facebook

post without explaining that the man's post had urged people to

attack a hotel housing refugees.

Imanuelsen told Reuters it is not possible to include all

detailed information in a single post and he no longer believes

in conspiracy theories.

Another account Musk regularly interacts with on European

issues belongs to Tommy Robinson, a right-wing agitator with

fraud and assault convictions whose real name is Stephen

Yaxley-Lennon. He is currently in prison for defying a London

court order.

Musk has called for Robinson's release, reposting a false

claim that he is a "political prisoner," while Robinson's

account said in a January 20 post that the billionaire was

paying some of his legal fees.

Robinson's lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.

For Musk, the owners of such accounts are potential foot

soldiers in what the right frames as a battle between

restrictive left-wing politicians and right-wing free speech

advocates, said Mert Can Bayar, a researcher at the University

of Washington, who has studied Musk's social media networks.

Influencers, he added, "are good conduits to project his

worldview."

IMPACT ON CAR SALES

While Musk's influence on European politics is unclear, his

activism appears to be hurting Tesla, whose sales are struggling

in Europe after a 10.8% drop in 2024, a period when the market

was down only 1.3%.

A late January survey conducted by an electric vehicle

review website, Electrifying.com, found that 59% of Britons who

either own EVs or intend to purchase one wouldn't buy a Tesla

because of Musk. An anti-Tesla campaign is underway on X under

the hashtags #teslatakedown and #swasticars.

Musk's opinions add to Tesla's headaches. When Tesla

launched its Model Y in 2020, there were only 25 mainstream EV

models in Britain. Today there are 133 as Chinese brands flood

the market with new, more affordable electric cars.

"I wouldn't write them off yet, but they do need something

fresher,"

said Tim Albertson, CEO of Ayvens, one of Europe's largest

car-leasing firms. He declined to discuss the impact of Musk's

views on sales, but said Tesla's model "lineup is quite weak."

Ben Kilbey, who runs a communications and market

intelligence firm in Britain, has owned a Model Y for three

years but is getting rid of it because of Musk.

"I love my Tesla, I love the technology," said Kilbey. "But

I don't want to be associated with Musk's politics or public

statements."

(Additional reporting by Thomas Escritt in Berlin and Chris

Kirkham in Los Angeles. Editing by Brian Thevenot and Jason

Szep)