Berlin, 29 January 2025 (dpa/MIA) – German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Tuesday strongly criticized US billionaire Elon Musk for his support of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, calling it "disgusting."

Scholz told journalists on the sidelines of an election campaign event in Berlin that, as a Social Democrat, he was used to wealthy media entrepreneurs intervening in German politics, but "what is new is that he [Musk] is intervening in favour of right-wing politicians all over Europe."

"And this is really disgusting," he added, stressing that such actions harm the democratic development of the European Union.

Musk has given full-throated endorsement of the anti-immigrant and anti-EU AfD on several occasions in the run up to Germany's federal elections set for February 23.

His campaigning on behalf of the AfD, along with insults he has lobbed at other German politicians, has led critics to accuse him of trying to use his influence to interfere in German politics.

Musk spoke by video link to a crowd of several thousand AfD supporters at a campaign rally in the central German city of Halle on Saturday. In his brief speech, the billionaire friend and adviser to US President Donald Trump praised the AfD as the "best hope" for Germany.

In an apparent reference to the Holocaust, in which Nazi Germany systematically murdered millions of Jewish people and other innocents, Musk said there was nowadays "too much of a focus on past guilt."

Scholz condemned Musk's remarks, saying: "We are very happy about the United States that freed our country and helped us to become a democracy again. And this is why I'm so angry about Elon Musk intervening for the far right and Elon Musk also not acting adequate to this killing of so many Jews and other people, people in Europe, done by Germans in the past."

On Monday, the chancellor participated in the central commemoration of the 6 million Jews murdered under Nazi rule at the site of Nazi Germany's Auschwitz-Birkenau complex of concentration and extermination camps in Poland. Leaders and survivors marked 80 years since Soviet troops liberated the Nazi-run death camp.