The saddest thing about all of this is that millions of Americans knew exactly what would happen and how bad it would get immediately. We warned everyone, we told everyone what would happen, we painted a vivid picture of the dumbest, most racist and most corrupt oligarchy, and we were dismissed and ignored by people who wanted the dumb orange fascist to come back. So here we are, in a multi-day cycle of “did Donald Trump’s biggest and dumbest benefactor do a Nazi salute” discourse. Yes, he did. Elon Musk did a Nazi salute three times on stage at an inauguration party. Predictably, this discourse is now about “did he really mean it” and “he’s autistic” and “Democrats call everyone a Nazi!”
Elon Musk’s one-armed salute before a cheering crowd during President Donald Trump’s inauguration festivities has ignited a swirl of debate about the true meaning of the tech billionaire’s gesture.
Many observers said that Musk appeared to be imitating the Nazi salute made infamous by Adolf Hitler (which is also illegal in some countries like Germany). But defenders pushed back, including some Jewish groups.
Musk himself shrugged off the scrutiny. In a post on X, he contended that Democrats were politically motivated in fueling the discussion.
“Frankly, they need better dirty tricks,” he wrote. “The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.” (He added a sleeping emoji.)
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO was a prominent guest throughout Trump’s inauguration in Washington, D.C., on Monday, Jan. 20, and was a major supporter of Trump’s campaign as well as a vocal opponent of what he considers to be “woke” politics.
I’m using People as a source because I have that f–ker muted and blocked. From what I understand, Musk has AT NO POINT said “of course I didn’t do a Nazi salute, I hate Nazis.” He can’t say it because he does not feel that way at all, and because it would be a blatant lie. And now people have to spend time and energy on “was it really a Nazi salute/or a dirty Democratic trick to convince me that it was a Nazi salute.” Four f–king years of this sh-t.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images, screencap from NPR.
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- Telsa, SpaceX and X CEO Elon Musk arrives to the inauguration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. Donald Trump takes office for his second term as the 47th president of the United States Featuring: Elon Musk Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 20 Jan 2025 Credit: POOL via CNP/INSTARimages.com
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- Telsa, SpaceX and X CEO Elon Musk arrives to the inauguration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. Donald Trump takes office for his second term as the 47th president of the United States Featuring: Elon Musk Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 20 Jan 2025 Credit: POOL via CNP/INSTARimages.com
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- Telsa, SpaceX and X CEO Elon Musk arrives to the inauguration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. Donald Trump takes office for his second term as the 47th president of the United States Featuring: Elon Musk Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 20 Jan 2025 Credit: POOL via CNP/INSTARimages.com
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- Telsa, SpaceX and X CEO Elon Musk arrives to the inauguration of U.S. president-elect Donald Trump in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. Donald Trump takes office for his second term as the 47th president of the United States Featuring: Elon Musk Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 20 Jan 2025 Credit: POOL via CNP/INSTARimages.com
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- Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk gestures as U.S. President Donald Trump delivers his inaugural address on the day of his Presidential Inauguration at the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S. Featuring: Elon Musk Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 20 Jan 2025 Credit: POOL via CNP/INSTARimages.com
To be clear: Musk never once in his statement denied it was a Nazi salute or denounced what the salute stands for. His statement wasn’t a denial or an apology because we’re taking away the intended meaning. He’s just mad it was reported on.
Context is everything, and Musk doesn’t shy away from eugenics speak, and neither does Trump. I’m surprised no one has shown this salute against the speech Trump made to his base the eve of the inauguration..he said ” if you believe in the Racehorse Theory”,…and then praised the genes of Elon’s kid, X..
Calling them out isn’t working, but calling to.each other, confirming and acting on our beliefs of equality and humanity has to be stronger than ever..I love you all here at Celebitchy, and so glad we can talk about how to RESIST THIS SHIT!
I can’t stand the man – but his point is worth taking. Dems need to get way better at communicating what they stand for in a way that truly resonates broadly with the American people. Name calling is dramatic – Nazi, Fascist etc. – is not moving the needle anymore. We use the absolute worst words to describe people all the time now – and it weakens the impact.
I see the point that you are trying to make. But I also feel – as a historian/archivist and a descendant of a Holocaust survivor – that it is important NOT to shy away from these terms when they are accurate. We need to call things for what they are, otherwise we are letting the other side set the language of discourse.
I am not saying that the left (and Democrats) have not used the terms Nazi and fascist too freely in the past. They have. However, it is not an exaggeration. It is the truth. What the left and Democrats need to do is to find a better way to communicate WHY these are the correct and accurate terms, that fascism is not a historical anomaly from the past and we have to recognize it in the here and now. It is dangerous to do otherwise.
I agree – I think the issue isn’t that we shouldn’t call Musk a Nazi when he’s literally making the Nazi salute; its that we need to be clear about what a Nazi is. It’s not the soup Nazi from Seinfeld. Its not someone who imposes rules or is strict or whatever else might make someone say “omg you’re such a nazi about X.”
There’s a clear historical meaning to the term and I think its appropriate to use when someone is literally being a Nazi.
Only because the worst has become the norm. Could anyone imagine, prior to Trump getting into politics, someone giving an obvious Nazi salute at a PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURATION, and that person not being absolutely shunned by the media and society? If the shoe fits, wear it. YES these are Nazi’s. Yes, we know well the Democrats have no PR game. But the problem is the main stream media has always embraced Trump’s antics for ratings and normalized the hate he brings.
ITA. The salute made by the dictator’s goon is the shiny object that draws the squirrel’s attention away from the acorn. TFG has released all the January 6th criminals, threatened to brand us male or female, and canceled birth-right citizenship. Musk is a distraction and calling him a nazi is not much different from the nicknames we’ve heard uttered from the orange one. There are larger more serious issues at play.
And how do you think MAGAs fall into conspiracy theories and white racist nationalists in the UK feel so emboldened and so enraged to riot in the streets? How did Jan. 6th happen?
People underestimate the power of social media and fake news to great peril.
Why do autocrats and countries like Russia and China control their media so much?
In the US (and a good chunk of the world) , it’s the billionaires who control the media. And they are now Cheeto’s besties.
lol. Ok musk is Roman centurion without a toga and was doing a Roman salute. Gosh, does that make it better?!
And the Proud Boys weren’t fascists but Hawaiian shirt wearing dudes who decided to storm the Capitol on Jan 6th 2021 to overturn a presidential election. The same bunch who showed up in Charlottesville carrying tiki torches thinking it was a frat row party?! And somehow killed a woman. https://www.npr.org/2019/06/28/736915323/neo-nazi-who-killed-charlottesville-protester-is-sentenced-to-life-in-prison
But it’s the Dems who need to find better way to convey messages, because poor, poor Musk got his feelings hurt for being called a Nazi. The same musk who owned Twitter/X and incited the mobto go after migrants in the UK.
The day when the average person has equal power to musk, then fine, let’s leave name calling to the playground.
What should we call fascists? What should we call people who do Nazi salutes?
it’s worth pointing out that the Musk (and Trump and most MAGA folks) playbook is to call anyone they don’t like traitors, America haters, socialists/communists and pedophiles
In this case, Musk has not only been platforming Nazis, he’s been promoting their posts. His grandparents were members of the Nazi party in Canada that moved to South Africa because they wanted to live in a pro-Nazi stronghold under a pro-Hitler government, and South Africa offered the largest Nazi community outside of Germany. Per Musk’s father, the family’s politics have always been centered on these right wing policies. He knew exactly what imagery he was conjuring.
Even Russian media blurred out what Musk was doing and German media called it exactly what it was: a Nazi salute
I see everyone’s point, for sure. And 100%, Dems need better messaging, and frankly, much bolder strategies (the whole building unity thing doesn’t work when only one side plays fairly. So get dirty, Dems, there is way too much at stake to keep taking the moral high ground.)
But I also feel like it’s not the fault of Democrats that the Republican party is full of people spouting and supporting the same racist ideologies that Hitler espoused; turning to Hitler’s literal playbook for inspiration; seeking to model the US military off of Hitler’s soldiers; curtailing the rights of LGBTQ folks – who were also targeted and persecuted en masse by Nazis in the Holocaust; and currently gleefully rounding up some of the most marginalized people in our society to force them into camps while they await deportation.
It’s not the fault of the Democrats that Republicans have openly embraced Nazism, and we have had to call it out so many times that accurately describing the clear and explicit Nazi behaviors these people are proudly exhibiting has lost all meaning and impact.
But it sure is scary and horrifying.
And we cannot let ourselves become desensitized to all of it, just because such an unbelievable number of the president’s cabinet, the Senate, and the House are all …. yes, absolutely and accurately, Nazis.
What was that line in Revenge of the Sith? (I can’t believe I’m quoting Star Wars) Padme says “so this is how liberty dies, with great applause”
Remember, the architects of Apartheid modeled their system after the Nazis. He absolutely knew what he was doing, and as you say, his refusal to deny it says EVERYTHING.
And remember, too, that the Nazis modeled their systems after the United States. Our history includes genocide, reservations, “camps”, slavery, racial segregation, Jim Crow laws, selective incarceration, and the so-called “war on drugs” — established to crush the “hippies” and the Black American community. What’s happening now isn’t new. What’s “new” is who’s being directly impacted.
This 👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼
Blaming this on Democrats is disingenuous. Right wing groups are celebrating that Musk so openly supports their Nazi positions. People from every walk of life are condemning him. It seems pretty much everyone saw it as a Nazi salute.
His comeback is mangled wingnut speak everytime they care called out on any of their bullsh!t. It is a script that has been taught to all the magats and nutjobs through the conspiracy sites that have taught them to be even more awful. Comfront a magat and they always comeback and belittle the person confronting them for being too serious, ignore the issue by swearing they aren’t racist, sexist and homophobic when they clearly are and/or say some version of they find mango, etc, funny because of the way people who oppose him respond.
“But defenders pushed back, including some Jewish groups.”
I don’t get how anyone, much less Jewish groups, can defend someone who’s actively and openly collaborating with Nazi parties here in Europe. And who did the Nazi salute. Not once, but repeatedly.
Blaming Dems for calling out Nazis and their Nazi behavior is not the way to go, and defending Apartheid Clyde or even trying to “get” him, or trying to find excuses (his autism! Being autistic doesn’t make one a racist though) is a choice. As is supporting any points MAGAts or their ilk are trying to make.
I don’t know of any “Jewish groups” who have shrugged this off except the ADL which is controlled by a Trumper who only calls out anti-Semitism on the left and ignores it on the right.
Ben Shapiro, who thinks anyone who doesn’t agree with him can’t be Jewish, and his pals Bethany Mandel, and Karol Markowicz were loudly defending Musk’s gesture yesterday.
The ADL’s response was appalling. There is a lot of tension in Jewish groups between the rank and file who are terrified and angry and the major donors, who are deeply conservative and siding with wealth and power.
I’m with you both.
I only quoted the text from People mag, and I don’t get how they came to making that “some” conclusion, as the ADL was the only group I saw making that statement. Sadly the ADL still get a kind of prominence they don’t deserve.
It really sucks because until Jonathan Greenblatt, The ADL was THE organization to actually combat antisemitism. But he clearly worked his ass off to destroy that legacy. One thing that I’ve been loving is how many have been reporting the ADL’s antisemitism in excusing Musk to their own website.
Oh shut up, you gaslighting piece of shit.
Someone send Elon to Mars and leave him there.
My teenage son told me “He’s just super awkward and weird. There’s no way he actually believes in Nazi stuff” if you want to know what the TikTok generation are saying. He might not say it again, though, after my husband and I jumped down his throat with facts about Musk’s history and family, Naziism, and the fetishization of the Roman Empire by emotionally stunted white men.
Our educational systems are so pathetic that younger people have no idea who Hitler was except in the most general, almost benign way. And if they are being taught in detail about WWII and all it’s ramifications including the Holocaust, I see no evidence of it. This is part of the reason we are in this fascist hellscape right now.
My teenage son said same thing. We sat him down and had a long discussion.
I looked at LinkedIn today and saw someone’s post condemning Musk. Then I looked at the comments, over 600 (!), and was shocked – it was full of “he’s just awkward/autistic/on the spectrum/you haven’t seen the whole thing/it was nothing”. I cannot believe all were real people writing this shit, I suspect part of it were bots but it feels like massive, global gaslighting so that we all start to believe we are crazy.
Everything about this is absolutely sickening. I have eyes, and these eyes 100% watched this man do a Nazi salute…3 times. Anyone making excuses for it is just as sick-minded.
We don’t call everyone a Nazi. Most of the time we’ve been way too careful. But if the shoe fits, as it does in this case…
Has anybody asked him (Elon) WHY he made that particular gesture? Something like this happens, and the reaction is to call names and make statements about the incident, but nobody ever asks the instigator WHY they do it, in the first place. Instead of putting him on the defense and trying to cover his actions, call him out on it and ask him what the point of the gesture was. Make him explain himself.
Goodness, where have you been?
Musk has been telling the world who he is, what he is, why he is and how he is.
Musk rants at us daily from Twitter/X. Really hard to miss this wannabe be emperor of the universe.
I read one ‘explanation’ that he was throwing his heart out to the trump supporters. The slapping of the palm on the chest was the clincher to me: while there’s a teeny tiny chance that one might inadvertently give a straight arm salute, ‘accidentally’ preceding it with the chest slap is beyond the realms of credibility. It took me back to trump officials on tv making the Q Anon sign while insisting they were signalling OK. Just ghastly pathetic people.
Someone on Reddit posted this video, side by side with one of Hitler doing the EXACT SAME salute.
The diction is classic Elon.
I don’t care if the words fascist, racist, Nazi or even Hitler are used every single day to describe these people. As far as I’m concerned if the shoe fits, that is exactly what you deserve to be called. The reason these words are used is because they are showing who they are without any pushback to distance themselves from those words. I don’t concern myself with being called any of those words because I don’t behave or speak in a way that gives any signs that I am any of those things. It is because I don’t display or speak in a manner to be called any of those things that I would adamantly say that not only am I not any of those things, but I would vehemently disagree with those beliefs and with Hitler and anyone like him. Not only has Elon failed to condemn such behavior and beliefs, he failed to condemn who Hitler was. Trump has even idealized Hitler. So if the shoe fits, that is exactly what you will be called. So if anyone wants to pretend as if his actions weren’t the actions of Hitler, that is on them. And I will call them whatever I want to call them, everyday without concern of how anyone (democratic or republican) feels about it. We need to stop allowing these racist fascists to tell us how to react or respond to their hate.
Yeah, I won’t be taking communication pointers from a Nazi, thanks.
And Elon Musk is a Nazi.
Not everyone, only the ones performing the Nazi Hail Hitler salute THREE times during an international occasion. Despicable schmuck.
I watched NBC nightly news last night to see if they reported it. They did not. How utterly disappointing. They did a couple of stories that were puff pieces. I think they are scared to report it.
I know CNN called attention to what he did but did not say, at the time, what he did. They were pretty shocked but should have said it was a Nazi salute.
CNN is owned by John C Malone, a massive Trumper. He controls that entire so-called ‘news’ organization now.
The comments about how this is all just a distraction because J6 criminals pardoned blah blah blah. As if we didn’t KNOW that he was going to pardon them? The insinuation behind these comments is that this is some sort of magic trick on their part when really, Trump just did the EXACT thing he said he would do. People aren’t focusing on that because it’s not even remotely surprising but the Musk nazi salute is—at least the fact that he would do it three times in such a public venue. That’s why people are focusing on it. I swear people still think it’s 2017 where Trump has to be “clever” and secretive about how he we wreaks is havoc. It’s not, guys. They are completely emboldened and do not care enough to play games anymore. They’re just gonna do whatever the fuck they want because they know they can.
If you don’t want to be called a Nazi maybe don’t do multiple enthusiastic Nazi salutes? Just a thought.