Summary

Elon Musk sparked outrage in Germany by endorsing the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party on his platform, X, claiming “only the AfD can save Germany.”

The AfD, which polls second ahead of Germany’s February snap election, has been labeled extremist by German intelligence.

Political leaders accused Musk of election interference, while others criticized his remarks as harmful. Musk later doubled down, calling for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s resignation.

Musk’s comments align with his past support for far-right and anti-immigration figures across Europe and beyond.

    • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      English teacher here. Often editing to use less words can make your statements more concise and accurate. For example, try “STFU Musk, you know shit”

        • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          10 hours ago

          Their advice is kind of bad… “you know shit” implies that he’s intelligent and knows things. Especially if just written down. If speaking, you may be able to convey what you want with tone and context, but even still…

          Despite it being technically incorrect, grammatically, what you meant to say was, “you don’t know shit.” E.g., “You don’t know shit about Germany” = “You know nothing about Germany.”

          English is fucking weird, and I can’t imagine learning all of these rules. Frankly, I couldn’t even explain to you how I know 3/4 of them, it’s just innate at this point.

          • Taleya@aussie.zone
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            3 hours ago

            Mm but we’re also very contextual- the ‘shut the fuck up’ implies the negative. So a native speaker automatically fills in the missing ‘all’ after shit or ‘don’t’ before know depending on regional preference

          • monolalia@lemmy.world
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            4 hours ago

            English is fucking weird, and I can’t imagine learning all of these rules. Frankly, I couldn’t even explain to you how I know 3/4 of them, it’s just innate at this point.

            Not even knowing shit = not even knowing the least (most worthless) amount possible = knowing nothing?

            All languages are weird. English has very little in the way of inflection, which makes it fairly easy to pick up (in my opinion). For example, it only has one word each for “the” and “a(n)” whereas German has “der/die/das, des/der/des, dem/der/dem, den/die/das, die, der, den, die” and “ein/eine/ein, eines/einer/eines, einem/einer/einem, einen/eine/ein”. Yes, lots of duplicates, but each instance has its own distinct grammatical function, and its much the same with adjectives and nouns, and it all has to line up; “green” is different depending on the grammatical gender and number and noun case of whatever it is that is green… for example.

            I think at some point you’re pretty much done actively learning rules unless you’re a proofreader, teacher, editor, translator, writer, philologist… you ’ll just have to move on to immersing yourself in English, whether it’s in person or via song lyrics, movies, books, forums, articles, documentation, video games. That way you’ll pick up idiomatic expressions like this one and ideally develop something like an informed sense for what sounds right (for example: “I could care less” doesn’t make much sense, and “irregardless” is a pointless double negative).

        • MutilationWave@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          Don’t listen to them, your statement was fine, your English is good, and I think what you wrote is better than their edit.

          I think they’re trying to be funny by implying that he doesn’t know shit about anything, rather than just Germany, but it’s not a well crafted joke if that was the intention.

      • MutilationWave@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        But that sounds like the other usage of shit. It can mean nothing or it could man a lot. I mean with the shut the fuck up (which is more impactful than STFU) connotation the meaning isn’t lost but it’s a more confusing statement.

    • BigBenis@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Elon has a lot of money, therefore people listen to him, therefore he knows everything about anything he pleases.