That's literally unambiguously a nazi salute. I've seen them before, from actual nazis. Because I am descended from one unfortunately.
It's shameful and at no point does any word play and excuse making around it make it ok. This needs to stop now. Right now.
Add to that the literal support for the far right parties definitely and conclusively aligned with nazi ideology, such as the AfD, it's terrible for everyone.
The ADL, who is defending him, is the world's foremost anti-neo-Nazi organization. If they say not to worry, I'm going to trust their judgment, even though the photos look pretty questionable to me as a layman.
The ADL have ended up in a weird place where the important thing to them is pro-Israel anti-Palestine policy, and everything is downstream from there.
The ADL last called out Musk for reinstating and awarding a tick to Kanye West after West made anti-semitic remarks which got him banned from Twitter. However, that's not as important to them as maintaining the war in Gaza.
I think you need to watch the videos not look at the photos as the videos show more unambiguous context and do not come with a narrative explaining them away. These are plain and simple nazi salutes.
no and they never have been, outside of the US and US contextualized business not many even know what it even is
through it is maybe the worlds foremost anti-antisemitism organization
But in case you might have missed it some neo Nazis and many more non-nazi fascists have dropped their antisemitism from a core point to a not much talked about side point, blaming everything on jews is just currently not very effective. You also might have missed that Israels government hasn't been exactly anti-fascist in recent times. Giving their far right, fear driving, not so open for opposition government which is fine with committing war crimes they themself aren't that far away from fascism.
Fascism doesn't need antisemitism, it just happens to most times come with it.
b) There are leading Nazi experts who have said it is a Nazi salute.
c) ADL has far broader goals on its mind than what idiotic thing Musk does or doesn't do so their statement needs to be put in context and taken with a grain of salt.
If it's the ADL, they don't speak for everyone and they do not speak for me.
I'm literally German descended, living in the UK with little to no shit given about Trump whatsoever at all. This is Musk. What I do have a problem with is my friends and my families having a history going back nearly 100 years of misery, death and loss from the ideological constructs he's pushing for the last few years.
You can be a statesman and show respect, honour and decorum or you can be like that. There is no place in our political landscape anywhere for this.
So quite frankly stop gaslighting.
You need to understand that despite what people believe in the US, Europe is ideologically different and has a longer memory. There are literally reminders everywhere around us every day of last time.
It's going to be really interesting to see how organizations, relying on funding and/or support from the government, will twist themselves to deny what is fairly evident in plain sight hoping to avoid retaliation in general. I'm not sure what Elon was doing/intending to do but the resemblance is uncanny. And he did it twice, just to make sure. The first time, I was like eh, could go either way, he's made unique and enthusiastic gestures in public before before. The second one was more troubling. Certainly the kind of thing that would get you tackled to the floor by German police officers. Even if unintentional, you'd have some time to think about it and some 'splaining to do.
The "hey, maybe he's just a bit overexcited and socially awkward with his gestures" excuse would also be a lot more plausible if it was about someone who hasn't spent the last couple of years giving written and verbal encouragement to the far right, who happened to be exactly the sort of person who would see a Nazi salute as a super clever gesture that owns the libs, is deniable to the parts of his fanbase that don't like Nazis, and meets with uproarious approval with the parts of his fanbase that like Nazis. A bit like when he was tweeting out his approval of interviews describing the holocaust as "humane" and then promptly deleting when called out on it or retweeting neo-Nazis talking about Jews' "dialectical hatred against whites" as "the actual truth" but then apologising for it. Sure, mentally he probably has more in common with a 13 year old carving swastikas into their school desk because it's edgy than Himmler, and his far right admirers hate his H1-B visa stance to the point he seems to be really overcompensating, but that doesn't mean we should act like it's a normal way for an adult with the ear of the president to be behaving.
> who hasn't spent the last couple of years giving written and verbal encouragement to the far right
Even this is underselling his actions. He's retweeted accounts of people who are openly neo-nazis, unbanned neo-nazis, tweeted many known nazi dogwhistles himself, and recently visited the German as-close-to-openly-neonazi-as-you-can-legally-be-in-Germany party.
I looked it up because I was curious. They are a politically active organization funded by individuals, corporations, donor-advised funds and foundations. Being a politically-engaged non-profit they do not disclose who their donors are. There's always risk of conflict between ideology and figuring out who's going to pay you to keep promoting it.
Elon musk did a sign that shows that he's a Nazi. There's no ambiguity, he did the sign the neo-nazis do and it's instantly recognizable. That's my reading of the situation, with my education and background (I grew up & went to school in Sweden) - I mention the background to say that this is how the sign is interpreted where I come from.
Even more revealing are the people offering excuses / brushing this and other things off – they are either naive (or have not been following Musk's comments about the AfD etc.) or knowingly acting in bad-faith. If there is one small positive about these political times, it's that we're finding out who the authoritarian / far-right sympathisers are.
it's interpreted everywhere that way(1) except if fascists are asked to take responsibility for their action which is when it was somehow just a strange accident
(1) through I would say it's interpreted as Nazi idolizing fascists in many situations which isn't quite exactly the same as Nazi but not necessary any better either
"The Roman salute, also known as the Fascist salute,"
Also from the link:
"However, no Roman text describes such a gesture, and the Roman works of art that display salutational gestures bear little resemblance to the modern so-called "Roman" salute."
But relevant questions are: Is that salute normalized now? Is the era between WW2 and present going to end?
placement of hand before doing the salute is that of the Hitler salute
even his speech before indicates it's a Hitler salute:
"This is a new beginning. Let’s hope for healing and work toward unity in the months and years ahead"
Now this part needs a bit more explanation: The Hitler salute proper name is "Sieg Heil" which yes meas to "Hail!" someone. But it also literally translated means "victory heal".
The meaning here was to "heal" Germany (which include taking over territories in the twisted interpretation of Nazis) but also to "heal" Germany (from Jews, queer people, disabled people etc. by killing them. It also was all about creating a unified fascist Germany under Hitler. It was also about projecting power and that it's a new Germany.
I.e. "new beginning/new Germany", "heal", "unify", "let's make it grate again" (to use modern lingo) where the core aspects of "Sieg Heil" just with very perfidy interpretations of heal and unify. But then taking otherwise well meaning symbolism (e.g. the swastika) and then appropriating it and turning it into something evil was the standard mode of operation of Nazis.
So he makes a Hitler salute after saying things which Hitler (in slightly different words due to language changing over time) would have said (before going full maks off let's kill all yews).
I rally don't know how anyone could interpret it as not being a nazi salute, that would be supper naive/self blinding/foolish.
Now the more interesting interpretation is does it mean he is a Nazi?
Well probably no.
Nazi is a very specific term, and there are many other kinds of fascism which aren't Nazis (which to be clear "different" doesn't contain a judgement. It neither implies "better" nor "worse").
Through what it is is a very clear statement of "I'm a fascist" and/or "I idolizes at least some aspects of Nazi Germany".
Which, let's be honest, shouldn't surprise anyone who followed what he was doing in roughly the last year.
Trump's entire campaign ran on curbing immigration, closing the borders and deportation of illegal immigrants. The one exception to that (the H-1B story) caused a lot of upheaval in his base. Among the many crazy things he said were things like people having to go out and vote for the last time, that he will be a dictator for a day, and calling his political opponents vermin. I'll just mention Project 2025 and his former wife mentioning that he's had a book of Hitler speeches by his bedside in passing.
Among the first acts on his first day as president he shuts down an app that helped people immigrate legally.
The first swath of Biden era executive orders rescinded[1] includes migration related ones to now loosen and reduce oversight and enable more heavy handed treatment of the matter, creating the foundation to conduct the type of raids that started happening the second he was certified[2].
Then at his inauguration this unfortunate little mishap occurs. Twice, mind you. By a man who continually promotes and enables alt-right ideology.
If you squint really, really hard, it's a dog whistle. That's the best case scenario. For everyone else, Elon Musk unambiguously performed a Nazi salute.
The absence of this moment from alt-right safe spaces like r/conservative and the X/Twitter feeds of prominent influencers despite the fact that their user base seems to have loved it is, in itself, a story worth telling.
You might not agree with these policies, but they are defensible, sensible policies and not that much different from polices and statements under Obama.
Initially Hitler Germany also, at least to the outside, pushed a position of them just wanting to "deport" Jews outside of Germany. They then decided to instead place them
into forced labor camps to extract value out of them while slowly working them to death and later (but not much later) they also started with the industrialized mass killing in death camps.
Similar before murdering Jews they started with going after disabled people and then queer people as this was part of their idea of healing (i.e purging) Germany.
Not saying the US will treat immigrants like Nazi Germany did treat Jews, that would be dump.
But given how they have a profit orientated prison system which more or less forced people to extremely underplayed work and how being an illegal immigrant is a crime and given how some US companies are looking for replacing "cheap labor" from China with something else more under their control I would still be worried.
To extend on the parallels: Project 2025 sets the foundation for persecuting queer people. The Project 2025 mandate both suggests categorizing gender affirming care for children as child abuse (p 5) and suggests the death penalty for, among other things, child abuse (p 554).
In conspiracy and qanon circles leaders of the left and basically anyone voicing dissenting views have been labelled as pedophiles for years (while Trump's presence on Epstein's flight logs, pictures of Trump/Musk with Epstein and Maxwell continue to be ignored and explained away) and this I fear creates enough ambiguity to not only cause a lot of harm to those affected, but to abuse these policies and go after political enemies for supporting/enabling these now outlawed things.
As someone from Germany, the whole Project 2025 document reads like a nightmare come true again, but this bit in particular mirrors the past in the most dreadful ways.
That's literally unambiguously a nazi salute. I've seen them before, from actual nazis. Because I am descended from one unfortunately.
It's shameful and at no point does any word play and excuse making around it make it ok. This needs to stop now. Right now.
Add to that the literal support for the far right parties definitely and conclusively aligned with nazi ideology, such as the AfD, it's terrible for everyone.
The ADL, who is defending him, is the world's foremost anti-neo-Nazi organization. If they say not to worry, I'm going to trust their judgment, even though the photos look pretty questionable to me as a layman.
I was wrong; Musk endorsed the AfD, so he is a neo-Nazi. The ADL and I were wrong. https://www.npr.org/2025/01/27/nx-s1-5276084/elon-musk-germa...
The ADL have ended up in a weird place where the important thing to them is pro-Israel anti-Palestine policy, and everything is downstream from there.
The ADL last called out Musk for reinstating and awarding a tick to Kanye West after West made anti-semitic remarks which got him banned from Twitter. However, that's not as important to them as maintaining the war in Gaza.
Look at the video, it's not a bad angle or misinterpretation. And he did it twice.
I think you need to watch the videos not look at the photos as the videos show more unambiguous context and do not come with a narrative explaining them away. These are plain and simple nazi salutes.
1 reply →
> world's foremost anti-neo-Nazi organization
no and they never have been, outside of the US and US contextualized business not many even know what it even is
through it is maybe the worlds foremost anti-antisemitism organization
But in case you might have missed it some neo Nazis and many more non-nazi fascists have dropped their antisemitism from a core point to a not much talked about side point, blaming everything on jews is just currently not very effective. You also might have missed that Israels government hasn't been exactly anti-fascist in recent times. Giving their far right, fear driving, not so open for opposition government which is fine with committing war crimes they themself aren't that far away from fascism.
Fascism doesn't need antisemitism, it just happens to most times come with it.
[flagged]
a) This isn't about Trump. It's about Musk.
b) There are leading Nazi experts who have said it is a Nazi salute.
c) ADL has far broader goals on its mind than what idiotic thing Musk does or doesn't do so their statement needs to be put in context and taken with a grain of salt.
If it's the ADL, they don't speak for everyone and they do not speak for me.
I'm literally German descended, living in the UK with little to no shit given about Trump whatsoever at all. This is Musk. What I do have a problem with is my friends and my families having a history going back nearly 100 years of misery, death and loss from the ideological constructs he's pushing for the last few years.
You can be a statesman and show respect, honour and decorum or you can be like that. There is no place in our political landscape anywhere for this.
So quite frankly stop gaslighting.
You need to understand that despite what people believe in the US, Europe is ideologically different and has a longer memory. There are literally reminders everywhere around us every day of last time.
4 replies →
It's going to be really interesting to see how organizations, relying on funding and/or support from the government, will twist themselves to deny what is fairly evident in plain sight hoping to avoid retaliation in general. I'm not sure what Elon was doing/intending to do but the resemblance is uncanny. And he did it twice, just to make sure. The first time, I was like eh, could go either way, he's made unique and enthusiastic gestures in public before before. The second one was more troubling. Certainly the kind of thing that would get you tackled to the floor by German police officers. Even if unintentional, you'd have some time to think about it and some 'splaining to do.
The "hey, maybe he's just a bit overexcited and socially awkward with his gestures" excuse would also be a lot more plausible if it was about someone who hasn't spent the last couple of years giving written and verbal encouragement to the far right, who happened to be exactly the sort of person who would see a Nazi salute as a super clever gesture that owns the libs, is deniable to the parts of his fanbase that don't like Nazis, and meets with uproarious approval with the parts of his fanbase that like Nazis. A bit like when he was tweeting out his approval of interviews describing the holocaust as "humane" and then promptly deleting when called out on it or retweeting neo-Nazis talking about Jews' "dialectical hatred against whites" as "the actual truth" but then apologising for it. Sure, mentally he probably has more in common with a 13 year old carving swastikas into their school desk because it's edgy than Himmler, and his far right admirers hate his H1-B visa stance to the point he seems to be really overcompensating, but that doesn't mean we should act like it's a normal way for an adult with the ear of the president to be behaving.
> who hasn't spent the last couple of years giving written and verbal encouragement to the far right
Even this is underselling his actions. He's retweeted accounts of people who are openly neo-nazis, unbanned neo-nazis, tweeted many known nazi dogwhistles himself, and recently visited the German as-close-to-openly-neonazi-as-you-can-legally-be-in-Germany party.
Haha. That's you characterisation of the ADL? Pretty sure their funding comes from donors rather than the government.
I looked it up because I was curious. They are a politically active organization funded by individuals, corporations, donor-advised funds and foundations. Being a politically-engaged non-profit they do not disclose who their donors are. There's always risk of conflict between ideology and figuring out who's going to pay you to keep promoting it.
2 replies →
Elon musk did a sign that shows that he's a Nazi. There's no ambiguity, he did the sign the neo-nazis do and it's instantly recognizable. That's my reading of the situation, with my education and background (I grew up & went to school in Sweden) - I mention the background to say that this is how the sign is interpreted where I come from.
Even more revealing are the people offering excuses / brushing this and other things off – they are either naive (or have not been following Musk's comments about the AfD etc.) or knowingly acting in bad-faith. If there is one small positive about these political times, it's that we're finding out who the authoritarian / far-right sympathisers are.
it's interpreted everywhere that way(1) except if fascists are asked to take responsibility for their action which is when it was somehow just a strange accident
(1) through I would say it's interpreted as Nazi idolizing fascists in many situations which isn't quite exactly the same as Nazi but not necessary any better either
I mean, technically, this is a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_salute and it was used extensively during the history. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellamy_salute for example.
Not to mention that your average dabbing looks like a seig heil while snizzing.
> I mean, technically, this is ...
That's kind of the "will twist themselves to deny what is fairly evident in plain sight" OP is talking about.
1 reply →
From your link:
"The Roman salute, also known as the Fascist salute,"
Also from the link:
"However, no Roman text describes such a gesture, and the Roman works of art that display salutational gestures bear little resemblance to the modern so-called "Roman" salute."
But relevant questions are: Is that salute normalized now? Is the era between WW2 and present going to end?
1 reply →
> was used extensively during the history
As a symbol of fascism.
> average dabbing looks like a seig heil while snizzing
No one being serious would ever confuse the two.
1 reply →
okay lets see
hand placement is that of the Hitler salute
arm placement is that of the Hitler salute
high of the hand is that of the Hitler salute
placement of hand before doing the salute is that of the Hitler salute
even his speech before indicates it's a Hitler salute:
"This is a new beginning. Let’s hope for healing and work toward unity in the months and years ahead"
Now this part needs a bit more explanation: The Hitler salute proper name is "Sieg Heil" which yes meas to "Hail!" someone. But it also literally translated means "victory heal".
The meaning here was to "heal" Germany (which include taking over territories in the twisted interpretation of Nazis) but also to "heal" Germany (from Jews, queer people, disabled people etc. by killing them. It also was all about creating a unified fascist Germany under Hitler. It was also about projecting power and that it's a new Germany.
I.e. "new beginning/new Germany", "heal", "unify", "let's make it grate again" (to use modern lingo) where the core aspects of "Sieg Heil" just with very perfidy interpretations of heal and unify. But then taking otherwise well meaning symbolism (e.g. the swastika) and then appropriating it and turning it into something evil was the standard mode of operation of Nazis.
So he makes a Hitler salute after saying things which Hitler (in slightly different words due to language changing over time) would have said (before going full maks off let's kill all yews).
I rally don't know how anyone could interpret it as not being a nazi salute, that would be supper naive/self blinding/foolish.
Now the more interesting interpretation is does it mean he is a Nazi?
Well probably no.
Nazi is a very specific term, and there are many other kinds of fascism which aren't Nazis (which to be clear "different" doesn't contain a judgement. It neither implies "better" nor "worse").
Through what it is is a very clear statement of "I'm a fascist" and/or "I idolizes at least some aspects of Nazi Germany".
Which, let's be honest, shouldn't surprise anyone who followed what he was doing in roughly the last year.
Trump's entire campaign ran on curbing immigration, closing the borders and deportation of illegal immigrants. The one exception to that (the H-1B story) caused a lot of upheaval in his base. Among the many crazy things he said were things like people having to go out and vote for the last time, that he will be a dictator for a day, and calling his political opponents vermin. I'll just mention Project 2025 and his former wife mentioning that he's had a book of Hitler speeches by his bedside in passing.
Among the first acts on his first day as president he shuts down an app that helped people immigrate legally.
The first swath of Biden era executive orders rescinded[1] includes migration related ones to now loosen and reduce oversight and enable more heavy handed treatment of the matter, creating the foundation to conduct the type of raids that started happening the second he was certified[2].
Then at his inauguration this unfortunate little mishap occurs. Twice, mind you. By a man who continually promotes and enables alt-right ideology.
If you squint really, really hard, it's a dog whistle. That's the best case scenario. For everyone else, Elon Musk unambiguously performed a Nazi salute.
The absence of this moment from alt-right safe spaces like r/conservative and the X/Twitter feeds of prominent influencers despite the fact that their user base seems to have loved it is, in itself, a story worth telling.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/init...
[2] https://calmatters.org/economy/2025/01/kern-county-immigrati...
You might not agree with these policies, but they are defensible, sensible policies and not that much different from polices and statements under Obama.
fun fact:
> deportation of illegal immigrants
Initially Hitler Germany also, at least to the outside, pushed a position of them just wanting to "deport" Jews outside of Germany. They then decided to instead place them into forced labor camps to extract value out of them while slowly working them to death and later (but not much later) they also started with the industrialized mass killing in death camps.
Similar before murdering Jews they started with going after disabled people and then queer people as this was part of their idea of healing (i.e purging) Germany.
Not saying the US will treat immigrants like Nazi Germany did treat Jews, that would be dump.
But given how they have a profit orientated prison system which more or less forced people to extremely underplayed work and how being an illegal immigrant is a crime and given how some US companies are looking for replacing "cheap labor" from China with something else more under their control I would still be worried.
Nobody wanted to take them. That's why they put them in camps initially.
Sweden for example asked germany to provide jews with a jewish-non-german passport so that they could be identified as jews and denied entry.
1 reply →
To extend on the parallels: Project 2025 sets the foundation for persecuting queer people. The Project 2025 mandate both suggests categorizing gender affirming care for children as child abuse (p 5) and suggests the death penalty for, among other things, child abuse (p 554).
In conspiracy and qanon circles leaders of the left and basically anyone voicing dissenting views have been labelled as pedophiles for years (while Trump's presence on Epstein's flight logs, pictures of Trump/Musk with Epstein and Maxwell continue to be ignored and explained away) and this I fear creates enough ambiguity to not only cause a lot of harm to those affected, but to abuse these policies and go after political enemies for supporting/enabling these now outlawed things.
As someone from Germany, the whole Project 2025 document reads like a nightmare come true again, but this bit in particular mirrors the past in the most dreadful ways.
5 replies →