Elon Musk caused outrage with a one-armed gesture he gave during his inauguration speech for Donald Trump.
Musk thanked the crowd for “making it happen”, before placing his right hand over his heart and throwing the same arm in the air in front of him. He then turned around and repeated the action to those sitting behind him.
Many on X, the social media platform he runs, likened the gesture to a Nazi salute.
In response, Musk posted on X: “Actually, they need better dirty tricks. Attacking ‘everyone is Hitler’ is too tired.”
Musk, the richest man in the world and very close to President Trump, was speaking at the Capital One Arena in Washington DC when he did this.
“My heart goes out to you. I’m thankful that the future of civilization is guaranteed,” said the 53-year-old, after delivering a second armed salute.
There was an immediate backlash on social media.
Claire Aubin, a historian specializing in Nazism in the United States, said Musk’s gesture was a “sieg heil”, or Nazi salute.
“My expert opinion is that it’s fine, you have to believe your eyes,” he wrote on X, referring to those who believe the gesture is a reference to the Nazis.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history at New York University, said: “The historian of fascism here. It was very contemptuous of the Nazis and war.”
Andrea Stroppa, a close confidant of Musk who linked him to far-right Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni, was reported by Italian media to have posted a clip of Musk with the caption: “The Roman Empire has returned from Roman worship”.
Roman worship was widely used in Italy by Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Party, before it was later adopted by Adolf Hitler in Germany.
Stroppa later withdrew his position, Italian media said. He later posted that “that gesture, which some consider a Nazi salute, is simply Elon, who has autism, expressing his feelings by saying, ‘I want to give my heart to you’,” he said.
“That’s exactly what he connected to the microphone. ELON DOESN’T LIKE SURE!”
The move comes as Musk’s politics increasingly shift to the right. He has made recent statements in support of Germany’s far-right party AfD and Britain’s anti-immigrant party Reform UK.
Appearing in Davos at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was asked about comparisons to the Nazi salute, which is banned in Germany.
“We have freedom of speech in Europe and Germany,” he said.
“… what we don’t accept is that this supports the most appropriate positions. And this is what I would like to say again.”
But others have come to Musk’s defense, including the Anti-Defamation League, an organization founded to fight anti-Semitism.
“It looks like Elon Musk did a bad deed in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute,” the group wrote in X.
Musk has become one of Trump’s closest allies and has been tapped to lead what the president has called the Department of Government Operations.
Source link
