Comment by computerthings

Can you show me someone doing that at a funeral? Because as a German I'm telling you, you can say about your heart whatever you want, if you do that on anything but a right-wing extremist funeral without other witnesses, you're in deep shit instantly. I know the US is more "free speech" about that, but this is still where that gesture originates or rather, why it's this big of a deal.

You could say I care more about what I know what Elon did, than what he may think he did. He's just someone wearing it like a "funny" hat. He has no clue, and that does not matter.

You brought up the WP article on the nazi salute not mentioning moving the hand to the heart first, as if that implies they are different gestures. However, apart from Neo-Nazis, the original Nazis including Hitler did the salute that way, too. Obviously video footage of Nazis doing the salute that way weighs more than WP just not mentioning it can be done that way.

> There is no named gesture called "my heart goes out to you"

No, the one on the nazi salute has mentions no possibility of confusing the two, and IMO there is none. Haaretz said it best: "you don't usually hurl it like a discus".

> A good thing to have in the intellectual tool belt is the Invisible Gorilla, in that people don't always see what other see if you change the context.

I'm not concerned that Americans, in that moment (where "making a scene" has a extremely high threshold for cause) didn't think much of it. I'm concerned with what I think of it, and while even that is under debate, that starts with the basic fact that it's a nazi salute, not remotely something like a "my heart goes out to you" gesture, especially one would repeat to his leader on top of that, and that particular one to boot, the one who said he could shoot people in broad daylight and his followers would not mind.

If I show someone the middle finger, either because I was told it means "hi, how are you?", or because I want someone to think I don't like them, but in reality I'm just trolling and I really do like them; that doesn't change that I'm showing them the middle finger. If I do it while reciting a poem and time it with the line "and my middle chakra yearns for thee", I'm still showing them the middle finger, that just makes it seem like some plausible deniability thrown in on purpose. I mean, this is not an obscure gesture.

And even though Musk endorsed the German AfD, and keeps courting Neo-Nazis, I'm not even sure he is fully aware of what he is doing. Maybe he is, or maybe he finds it very based and contrarian. What is inside his mind is not really something I can or care to guess at. The way he pretended to be good at Path of Exile doesn't allow me to assume he has any real thought process until he verbalizes it and I recognize it as coherent. I'm concerned with the media and other people I do hold to a higher standard.