2023-12-16 16:57:11
Elon Musk continues to work on his profile, which goes far beyond that of an entrepreneur. But in which direction is he heading and does he want to tie himself to one camp? In any case, he has decided to appear this Saturday in Rome at the youth festival of Fratelli d’Italia, the ruling right-wing party of Giorgia Meloni.
The annual event is called Atreyu after a fantasy character from Michael Ende’s “The Neverending Story”. The youth movement of the Italian right-wing party, in which Meloni grew up, was always enthusiastic about fantasy literature.
In this respect, Elon Musk, the man who wants to travel to Mars, seemed to be the ideal guest to make the party youth dream. In a packed tent in the moat of Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome, which used to be a Roman mausoleum as well as a refuge and prison for the popes, and outside in front of the screens, they were already waiting impatiently in the morning for the star guest of the four-day event.
Musk worries about birth rates
But right from the start, Musk brought the audience back down to earth. The South African came onto the stage with one of his supposedly ten children on his shoulders. The child-loving Italians cheered. But soon everything became quiet.
“Every year I look at the birth rates, it’s pretty depressing, they always seem to be going down,” explains Musk in an on-stage conversation with an Italian television journalist. The journalist asks Musk how he sees Italy as an investment location. This is followed by compliments about the “greatness” of the “incredible” country and its “incredible” people; Italy is also a good place to invest – loud applause – but then Musk gets to the point: “I would like to emphasize that I am concerned about the low birth rate. A company that invests in Italy has to ask itself whether there are enough people working there.”
But that will only be a threat in fifty or sixty years, the moderator objects. “I think it’s coming faster,” Musk replies. Suddenly the motto of the meeting, “Welcome back – Italian pride,” which was posted everywhere, seemed less powerful.
The entertainer knows how to change the mood
But Musk, the entertainer, also knows how to change the mood of an audience. He comes to the question of whether migration is a solution to a dwindling population. He thinks no, because every country should be able to ensure its own survival. The entrepreneur doesn’t want to condemn “legal migration”, but he wants to stop illegal immigration, as he says, which once again earns him applause from the audience. He adds that he doesn’t want to blanketly condemn illegal immigrants if they want to work hard, are honest and “admire” rather than fight the culture of the receiving country.
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