They are ripe for disruption.
Well before Mr. Musk first backed the AfD, it had become the second most-popular party in Germany. The Social Democrats, the country’s oldest party which once routinely won more than 40 percent of the vote, are polling at a historic low of 16 percent ahead of next month’s election. The Christian Democrats are favored to win, but are on course to do so with less than a third of the vote. And Britain’s Labour Party, which returned to power last June with only a third of the vote, has slumped to a 20 percent approval rating in polls.
In both countries, voters are upset about years of stagnant growth, declining public services, rising immigration and a generalized sense that their children will be worse off than they are. They feel that their governments have failed to tackle these problems — and that whomever they elect among the traditional parties, the outcome barely changes.
“Musk is using the existing party system, showing its complicity and its hollowness” to channel voters’ anger, said Quinn Slobodian, a professor of international history at Boston University and the author of “Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy.”
“He’s sort of hacking the democratic process as it exists now and showing us where the vulnerabilities are,” he added. “The question is whether or not we know how to fix them, or if it’s such a problematic virus bug that it’s going to spread through the whole system.”
Ripe for Disruption
Musk is tapping into very real grievances.
Germany, Europe’s largest economy and one-time economic engine, has not grown in five years. Its flagship carmakers, long the pride of the country’s manufacturing base, are struggling to compete with Chinese rivals (and Tesla). In Britain, a decade of austerity has left the national health service, the closest thing to a national religion, reeling, and schools literally crumbling.
