The three top left-wing political parties in Germany announced on Monday that they are quitting Elon Musk’s X social media platform in a coordinated move.
The German Greens, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), and Die Linke (The Left) said they will no longer post on the X platform, claiming the environment has become too “toxic” for them to remain.
The main X account for Die Linke, the direct descendant party of the Marxist-Leninist ruling party of the former Communist East Germany, wrote on Monday: “X has been sinking into chaos in recent years. Political debates thrive on exchange that reaches and informs people. X, on the other hand, is increasingly promoting disinformation. For this reason, we are no longer posting on this account.
“We continue to be present on various platforms and remain engaged in exchange there.”
Nearly identical messages were shared by the Greens and the Social Democrats, who are currently in government as the minority coalition partner to Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats.
The platform has come under increasing criticism from the political and media establishment in the wake of the 2025 snap general election, in which X’s owner, Elon Musk, publicly advocated for the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, including by appearing virtually at AfD campaign rallies in support of the anti-mass migration party.
Despite his party coming out on top in the vote, Chancellor Merz accused the United States and the Trump administration of having engaged in election “interference” in an apparent reference to Musk’s AfD endorsement.
Prior to becoming Chancellor, Merz had said during his election campaign that X or other Musk companies may face “political” or “legal” repercussions for the alleged interference. However, over a year after the elections, Chancellor Merz has yet to ban or otherwise punish X.
The move by the leftist parties in Germany to publicly quit X comes as they continue to struggle in the polls, trailing both Merz’s centre-right CDU at 22 per cent and the AfD at 27 per cent, according to the latest RTL-NTV support barometer.
The survey put the Greens at just 15 per cent, the Social Democrats at 12 per cent and Die Linke at 12 per cent.
Despite this, Chancellor Merz, who views himself as a man of the right, has refused to form a government with the AfD, choosing instead to partner with the leftist Social Democrats to form a grand coalition. Such ‘firewalls’ against populist-right parties to freeze them out of political participation are common across Europe and are going even further in Germany, where there has been a years-long push by the administrative state and its friends in the left to ban the AfD altogether.