The chief of the German far-right AfD party pushed back against comparisons between her party and the German Nazi party on Thursday during a discussion between billionaire Elon Musk, claiming that her party’s values were in fact the opposite of Adolf Hitler’s.
Alice Weidel stated her belief that her party stood for the opposite of what the Nazi party stood for, claiming that Adolf Hitler had been a “socialist”.
In the past, the AfD has often been compared to the Nazi party due to its members using symbols or slogans associated with Hitler. The party’s Thuringian state parliament chairman, Björn Höcke, has twice been convicted for deliberately using a slogan associated with the Nazi party.
“They state-funded private companies and then they asked for huge taxes and nationalized the entire industry, and the biggest success after that terrible era in our history was to label Adolf Hitler as right and conservative, he was exactly the opposite,” she said.
Many consider the party to be extremist, with Germany’s own domestic intelligence agency considering the party’s youth wing to be an extremist group.
“Weidel is the leading candidate to run Germany” Musk proclaimed at the start of the discussion.
“People need to get behind the AfD, or things are going to get very much worse for Germany,” he continued.
Originally published by Latin Times.
