Elon Musk, a tech billionaire turned adviser to US President Donald Trump who spread a lot of mis- and disinformation during the 2024 US election campaign, has done the same ahead of Germany’s elections on February 23.
In the run-up to the elections, Musk openly backed Germany’s far-right-populist and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. He has held a controversial live talk on his social media platform X with Alice Weidel, co-leader of the AfD parliamentary group and the party’s chancellor candidate. He has also appeared on video during the AfD party’s campaign event.
Musk was closely connected to many far-right accounts via comments and reposts, says Jan Rathje, senior researcher at the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (CeMAS). Each of Musk’s posts on X reaches millions of users worldwide.
DW Fact check takes a closer look at two claims made by the tech billionaire regarding the German federal elections.
Musk shares false post about Thierry Breton on X
Claim: On January 11, Musk shared a post on X (archived here) in which former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton allegedly admitted the EU was responsible for the annulment of elections in Romania.
“We did it in Romania, and we will do it in Germany, if necessary,” the post reads. Musk commented, “The stunning absurdity of @ThierryBreton as the bully of Europe.” His repost received over 21 million views.
DW Fact check: False.
This quote was taken out of context. The video shows Breton as a guest on “Apolline Matin,” a program by French broadcaster Radio Monte Carlo, broadcast on January 9. Breton was referring to enforcing the “Digital Services Act” (DSA) in Europe. He was not commenting on the annulment of elections.
Musk and Weidel were scheduled to speak on X shortly afterward. On the program, Breton spoke about Musk’s right to “say what he wants,” but also about the need to ensure that Musk complies with European laws.
The DSA is an EU regulation designed to prevent the distribution of illegal content and is meant to better protect users. As EU commissioner at the time, Breton was involved in shaping the act.
He responded to Musk’s claims on X by writing, “The EU has NO mechanism to nullify any election anywhere in the EU. Not at all. What is said in the video below is related only to the application of the DSA and its moderation obligations.”
The conversation can be listened to in its entirety on the radio station’s website and revolved around increasing tensions between Musk, Trump, and European politicians and laws. In this context, Breton mentioned the election in Romania and the role that TikTok played there.
In Romania, the elections were annulled after the first round. The EU Commission initiated proceedings against TikTok for alleged DSA violations. However, it was the Romanian Constitutional Court that declared the elections invalid after the Romanian secret service found evidence of Russian manipulation, including on social media.
The EU member states are in control of their elections. The EU cannot nullify the German federal elections.
The account that originally posted the video on X, Visegrad 24, regularly spreads conservative, extremist and nationalist views. The content of the account, which has 1.3 million followers, has been classified as false or misleading by fact-checkers several times in the past.
A distorted chart made from miscalculations
Claim: “Wow,” Musk wrote on January 9 on X, commenting on a graph titled “In Germany, Afghans and Pakistanis are proportionally 16 times more likely to be involved in rape than German citizens” (archived here). The bar chart supposedly shows how likely people of different nationalities are to be involved in a rape in Germany.
DW Fact check: False.
We’ve checked with the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and a professor of criminology — the numbers in the graph were incorrectly linked and ultimately misinterpreted.
The graph was posted (archived here) on January 6 by an account that regularly visualizes data on migration and crime in Europe. The graph links BKAdata with data from the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) from 2017 to 2021.
The BKA compiles annual data on crimes recorded by the police in Germany — the police crime statistics. These numbers refer to people of different citizenships who were suspected of rape and sexual assault. These numbers, therefore, do not only include suspects of rape, as the title of the graph suggests but also include suspects of sexual assault.
It’s also important to note that these are suspects, not convicted offenders. The actual number of offenders can therefore be lower. “The acquittal rate for sexual offenses is much higher than for other offenses, which means that the police data is particularly subject to reservations,” said Ralf Kölbel, a professor of criminology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
And there’s another detail, Kölbel pointed out: There are significantly more men in the Afghan population group than in the population group with German citizenship. And “sexual offenses are committed predominantly by men,” he said.
In response to a #Faktenfuchs query, a spokeswoman for the BKA wrote: “A ratio of the number of suspects in certain population groups to the total number of the same population groups can only be calculated if the comparison figures are not unequal.”
However, the figures from the Federal Statistical Office only refer to people with permanent residence in Germany. In contrast, the PKS figures also include suspects without a permanent residence, such as tourists or people passing through.
The BKA said the proportions in the graph were “incorrect.” The graph, therefore, shows an incorrectly calculated probability that people of a certain citizenship are more likely to commit rape.
Musk uses X to spread misinformation
Rathje says it was important to talk about Musk “because he has a lot of resources that he can turn into power.” We currently see how Musk is transforming his economic power into political power, he added. Musk is also increasingly spreading misinformation in and on the German federal election campaign.
Social media platforms such as X have come under scrutiny because misinformation and hate speech are barely being moderated. Recent studies have shown that posts by Musk and right-wing users were favored by the X algorithm and that thousands of illegitimate accounts amplify AfD and Musk posts.
Several institutions and people have already left X. But Rathje says we should not underestimate how people who are still undecided and are still active on the platform can be influenced by such posts.
This article was originally written in German.
Ines Eisele contributed to this report.
Edited by: Rachel Baig
This article was created as part of the cooperation between the ARD fact checkers of ARD-faktenfinder, BR24 #Faktenfuchs, and DW Fact check.
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