I no sooner write about a fight that Musk has got into in the USA about legal immigrants (the H-1B visa squabble within MAGA) than I find him starting another brawl across the Atlantic that partially covers immigration also, this time with Germany.

In this case he’s set the cat among the pigeons by writing an entire Op-Ed in support of the “Far Right” AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) Party. The entire Op-Ed can be found buried in this Daily Sceptic article, and while Musk gets stuck into how the German economy is mired in bureaucracy and regulations, plus their insane energy policies that are pricing industry out of the nation, it’s the cultural and immigration issues I want to highlight:

Germany is at a critical juncture. Its future teeters on the brink of economic and cultural collapse.
…
Germany has opened its borders to a very large number of migrants. While this was done with humanitarian intent, it has created significant cultural and social tensions. The AfD advocates a controlled immigration policy that prioritises integration and the preservation of German culture and security. This is not about xenophobia, but about ensuring that Germany does not lose its identity in the pursuit of globalisation.

I did laugh at his comment about the “Far Right” label:

The description of the AfD as far-right is clearly wrong when you consider that Alice Weidel, the leader of the party, has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka! Does that sound like Hitler to you? Please!

The DS article containing Musk’s piece also takes an axe to the OTT reactions to his piece, starting with none other than the chief editor of the very same paper, who responded with an Op-Ed of his own that tried to square the circle of admitting that Musk was right about the problems, while arguing that the AfD couldn’t fix them, whereas the current parties could. The DS scoffs at the political idiocy of that last and the overall thrust of the opposition to the AfD:

The CDU [Christian Democratic Union party] won’t be able to reverse “failed migration, energy and social policies” if they govern with the Greens or the Social Democrats. The only chance to address any of these problems lies with ditching the cordon sanitaire and forming a government with the AfD.
…
Establishment discourse always insists that the AfD is very bad, but when it comes time to explain why the AfD are very bad we get nothing but transparent lies and mischaracterisations about what the AfD stand for. Our betters want the AfD to be very bad in a way that it is not, and this raises profound questions about their real reasons for hating the AfD, and why they can never explain these reasons.

You can read the rest of the pushback against attacks on the AfD as it’s all very familiar to the crap thrown at Trump and company in the USA; the Establishment status quo is just awesome and breaking it would make terrible things happen.

But what I want to focus on is Musk’s championing of a “Far Right, Racist” party that wants to restrict German immigration because its destroying the culture of the nation – while at the same time he’s fighting to expand H-1B visa immigration in the USA and denouncing his opponents there as:

… contemptible fools [who] must be removed from the Republican Party, root and stem….The “contemptible fools” I’m referring to are those in the Republican Party who are hateful, unrepentant racists.

Ulp! Has Elon forgotten that that is exactly what Trump’s critics have been saying about him in regard to his attitudes to immigration for a decade now? “Racist, Xenophobe”, etc.

However, I don’t think his policy ideas on immigration are cognitive dissonance because within the USA there is a huge difference between the legal immigrants who have contributed hugely to the US economy in the past and present, and the 15-20 million illegal immigrants who have flooded into the USA, often without language or job skills (like just knowing how to drive a car 1 ), and often pushing up the crime and welfare stats – while the millions of legal immigrants to Germany have more resembled the latter than the former for that nation, including especially no great desire to integrate or assimilate with German culture and society but instead build their own, as Musk clearly sees.

Admittedly that last applies less to refugees from the Ukraine and other such and more the Muslim immigrants from the Middle East, as the following article sadly describes, Traditional Europe is disappearing:

To walk the streets of Dublin, Paris, or Rome today is to witness entire societies falling apart. This isn’t the Europe of old, the cradle of Western civilization. It’s something radically different.

The speed of this transformation is breathtaking—and horrifying. In just a few decades, demographic shifts, cultural dilution, and the erosion of traditional values have accelerated to the point where Europe’s past seems like a relic, something to be mocked or discarded rather than preserved.

Immigration, once celebrated as the solution to Europe’s aging populations, has instead proven to be the exact opposite. The influx of millions from the Middle East, Africa, and beyond has not been accompanied by assimilation but by the emergence of parallel societies. No-go zones—areas where police dare not tread and where national laws are superseded by other codes—are no longer whispered rumors; they are documented realities. Major cities like Malmö and Munich have become unrecognizable.

The numbers don’t lie, and neither does the rising discontent in the streets. If you want proof, just ask the average German citizen. A nation once synonymous with order and stability, Germany now finds itself in disarray.

Three out of four Germans believe their federal government is failing to combat illegal immigration. That’s not a statistic; it’s a damning verdict. Today, 75% of citizens are fed up with the left-wing coalition’s open-border experiment.

None of what the AfD – or Trump for that matter – is proposing on immigration control is extreme or unusual when compared to other nations like Singapore, Australia – or New Zealand. All these developed nations are suffering from declining birth rates where the native populations are not even replacing themselves, let alone growing, and no modern economy has ever expanded without the population also growing.

Unless that changes – and government incentives from South Korea to Japan have failed to boost birth rates – then legal immigration of highly skilled and educated foreigners, combined with incentives to assimilate to the local culture, even if only by the second generation, is the only solution.

So Musk is supporting common sense immigration controls in the face of reality – cultural and economic – for both the USA and Germany.

Of course there are groups, on both the Left and Right, who don’t even agree with that much.

===========================

An Illegal Immigrant story from the USA: ↩︎

About a year ago I’m driving to the gym. I’m stopped at a light when an illegal t-bones my truck. I was concussed, didn’t remember the hit. But I saw her coming at me. I think it was her 1st time behind the wheel. And of course she didn’t have any insurance. Or a license, or registration, or any other kind of ID. The traffic cop who was investigating visited me in the ER to take a report. I asked if he arrested her. He said he no. He told me he deals with uninsured illegals all day every day and the system can’t handle it. I asked him if if she’s actually who she said she was. He just shrugged. Said there’s no way to know. So he let her go. And she disappeared.

He eventually tracks down the car himself, since he’s desperate for money to cover his totaled truck and medical bills (even with his insurance), only to find it had been sold many times since it’s original owner died, and that the man’s insurance company has been pursuing the niece who inherited it and sold it to a mechanic who never got a new title – so both people are effectively screwed by the illegal immigrant’s actions.

Then there are the impacts on his local schools of the children of illegal immigrants:

He was looking forward to starting 5th grade this year, but due to overcrowding (because of the influx of immigrants) they decided they didn’t have room for the 5th grade class. So for 5th grade my son and his classmates were sent to a middle school instead. There’s a big size/age/maturity difference between a 5th grader and an 8th grader… we were assured the 5th graders wouldn’t intermingle with the older kids. But of course they were intermingling, and the big kids were picking on the younger kids.
…
Many of these kids have never been in any type of school. And they weren’t getting educated at home. Most (if not all) of the parents are illiterate. Not only do they not speak English, they don’t speak Spanish fluently. At home they speak the indigenous languages of Central America. The class translators (every class has a translator) can’t even translate for these kids. I complained to the principle. She was defensive and denied there was an issue. Thankfully we have school choice in our area, so we started looking for a new school. But before we could get him enrolled the school decided to retaliate. They said he “assaulted” the class translator and was drawing violent imagery (he was drawing halloween skeletons).
…
He’s in a much better school with English speakers, and he’s thriving. But it was a fucked up situation. It’s not good for a child to go through something like that–and it was completely unnecessary if not for the crush of immigrants.