This is why your hot takes can wait

A story about Elon Musk, the AfD, and a shocking terror attack in Germany has taken many twists and turns in the past 24 hours or so.

I’m always on the lookout for subjects and news stories worthy of a Substack post. When I find them, I sort of write out what I want to say in my head, and finally I get around to actually typing it out for posting.

It’s that last part which is always the hardest. Writer’s block is no joke, my friends.

But it kind of worked in my favor over the past day or so, because developments involving German society and politics - the world’s richest man endorsing a controversial German far-right political party, then a devastating attack on a German Christmas market carried out by a Middle Eastern immigrant, and now some unexpected news about the attacker’s politics - have been moving quickly.

Here’s what I had planned to write, and how it’s been overtaken by events:

Friday morning:

Elon Musk is often compared to Henry Ford, for his auto company’s innovations and for his right-wing politics, and it looks like he took that as a personal challenge.

Henry Ford was a frothing antisemite who had no qualms about doing business with Nazi Germany (to be fair, his company wasn’t alone in that regard) and whom Adolf Hitler greatly admired. Fast forward a hundred years, and the man who made electric cars mainstream is using his social media site to promote a German political party often compared to the Nazis.

Is the Alternative Fur Deutschland a “Nazi” political party? I think that comparison goes way too far - Germany has an actual neo-Nazi party, Die Heimat (formerly the NPD) which won election to the European Parliament a few years ago but has since regressed to the fringes where it belongs - but some of its members, especially in the former East Germany, come way too close to the line that separates “far-right” from “neo-Nazi.”

When even other European far-right parties don’t want to work with AfD, in no small part because they know all too well what happens to their countries when Germany gets a bit too aggressive, you know the party has some serious problems. And when an exceptionally wealthy man with the incoming President’s ear is expressing support for the party, that sets off alarm bells all over the place.

Friday evening:

And yet…the AfD party is the second most popular in Germany at the moment, with opinion polls showing support in the high teens in an extremely fractured political environment.

Germany’s governing coalition recently collapsed (lots of that going around lately) with national elections to be held in February. And it’s events like this which do more to bolster support for far-right parties than anything a redpilled US-based tech mogul is saying:

A driver plowed a car at high speed into crowds of people at a Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg, adding further tension to an election campaign already riven by a bitter debate over migration.

Right-wing parties seized on reports that the driver was a man from Saudi Arabia, even before that or any motive for the apparent attack was confirmed. The incident took place almost eight years to the day after a terrorist drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin.

At least five people were killed on Friday night, including a young child, according to the prime minister of Saxony-Anhalt, Reiner Haseloff, of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). News agency AFP reported that “60 to 80” people were injured, citing the local rescue service.

Authorities believe the driver acted alone, Haseloff said, adding that the man came to Germany in 2006 and worked as a doctor.

Germany’s election, triggered by the collapse of a three-party coalition led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz, is scheduled for Feb. 23. The opposition CDU are currently leading in opinion polls, followed by the anti-immigrant, far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which asked, “when will this madness end?”

There’s a lot of debate about what leads people to support extremist politics, and the consensus seems to be that it’s caused by social media and right-wing TV and radio and unscrupulous politicians exploiting social divisions and scapegoating unpopular outgroups.

All of these may be true, to an extent. But might I suggest that many Europeans have come to despise Muslim immigrants because, well, there have been many deadly terror attacks carried out by Muslim immigrants?

Thursday marked the eighth anniversary of the attack on Berlin’s Breitscheidplatz Christmas market when Islamist Anis Amri killed 12 people with a truck. Another victim later died from his injuries.

Only a tiny minority of migrants to Europe have done anything like this. But it only takes a small group or even just one person to carry out a devastating attack.

And how many of their fellow migrants are at least somewhat sympathetic to the killers? That’s a question many would prefer not be answered.

Saturday morning:

As I follow up on the news from yesterday’s Christmas market attack carried by a purported Islamist, I have come to realize that the killer wasn’t an Islamist at all.

In fact, his politics were kind of all over the place (lot of that going around, lately, too) and in some ways, like denouncing the wretched Saudi government and showing support for Israel after October 7, disturbingly close to my own:

The suspect in the deadly ramming at a Christmas market in Germany on Friday was an anti-Islam activist who shared pro-Israel content on social media in the wake of the October 7 attacks, The Wall Street Journal reported.

[…]

According to the Journal report, the suspect, a Saudi national who had moved to Germany in 2006, ran a website and social media channels warning against Islam and discussing women’s rights, as well as posting content in support of Israel.

[…]

A German security official familiar with the investigation told the Journal that the suspect had arrived in Germany as an asylum seeker who said he had fled Saudi Arabia due to strict Islamic laws. He was granted refugee status before obtaining permanent residence in the country.

According to the report, the suspect had posted on social media in recent days accusing the German government of allowing the proliferation of Islamization in the country and of persecuting female Saudi asylum seekers.

And now for the shocking twist ending no one expected:

He also showed support for Germany’s far-right anti-immigration AfD party, the report said.

“Well, um, this is awkward.”

Instead of carrying out this attack in the name of Islam, it appears he carried it out as a protest against Islam.

How and why that made him target a Christmas market is one I’ll leave to his psychiatric examiners. When you’ve made the decision to do something like this, chances are you haven’t been thinking rationally for quite some time.

The lesson of all this, if there is one

My first impressions of a breaking news story are often incorrect.

And there’s nothing to be gained from rushing to the keyboard to rant about it, when I may very well have to backtrack (or sheepishly delete posts and never speak of it again) days or even hours later.

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Since Bashar al-Assad decided to, um, leave Syria to get into the thriving world of Russian opthalmology, reporters and investigators have been absolutely horrified by what they’ve found in his prisons. Many have even compared it to Nazi Germany.

Turns out the Assads learned it right from the source: