1) Expressed outright support for Tommy Robinson, whose supporters regularly use Nazi salutes.
2) Expressed outright support for the AdF, whose supporters and politicians use Nazi phraseology.
3) Spoken in support of the January 6th insurrectionists, which included avowed neo-Nazis.
I loath the cry of "Nazi" or "fascist!" at everyone to the right of Ken Clarke, truly loath it. The UK Tory party is overwhelmingly made up of good, kind, decent people I happen to disagree with. As were the Republican party of Mitt Romney, GWB, John McCain, Dick Cheney, and even Mike Pence. But what we're seeing in the US now is something else, this is different. Red lines and norms don't seem to matter any more, only winning (or more importantly, your opponents losing).
Do I know Musk deliberately did a Nazi salute? No. Am I certain he didn't? Also, sadly, no. I can't be. I think he probably should be given the benefit of the doubt. Probably. But how can he really be so stupid, really be so spectacularly ignorant, to give his ongoing support to the aforementioned without knowing exactly who he's supporting? Like how?
I fear we're going to be giving the benefit of doubt until all doubt is extinguished, and we know for certain that drip by ignored drip we watched the US's shonky-at-best democracy sink without a trace.
Have a look at the final 'here' link. I've been addressing that. In fact, most of my notes have been about the dangers of Elon Musk for quite some time.
I agree with everything you said except for the part about him deserving the benefit of the doubt. Are we forgetting the times on X when Musk promoted or seconded anti-Semitic sentiments? Or the very fact that he has turned Twitter into a right-wing cesspool by re-platforming people who got tossed off for hate speech?
Helen speaks as if we haven't been spending the last year wondering, with good reason, "Why does Elon Musk increasingly sound like a Nazi apologist?" As if this is all coming out of the blue, rather than one more thing to throw on the pile of mounting evidence.
Does Musk get prejudged for growing up a rich kid in South Africa during Apartheid? I don't know—I seem to remember a time when nobody felt that to be worth mentioning, when Musk was actually quite well liked. So I think it's fair to say he was never assessed such a *prejudgment*. Is it fair as a post-judgement? Sure seems so.
I'm a longtime veteran of policing my own side and wagging my finger at progressives who throw around charges of racism and white supremacy with reckless abandon. But for the life of me I can't understand how anyone could see this as a symptom of any kind of "derangement". Even if I were inclined to defend Musk here, I'd be doing so along with an angry, irritated condemnation of the man for, at best, his utter carelessness and seemingly trying to make a fool out of those who support him and make excuses for him.
Because does it look like he actually gave Nazi salutes? Oh my God yes! In fact it looked even *more* like it when I watched the actual video, so no, you can't blame it on chopped-up memes. Seriously, watch it. It was not some soft, touching of the breast and followed by a natural extension of the arm like he was waving to everyone. It was nothing like the stills that Helen showed here. It was an abrupt, quick slicing motion of the arm from the breast to the air, with no wave of the hand at the end.
If I was actually going to intentionally make a Nazi salute, I honestly can't see how it would look any different.
Maybe it wasn't. But I can tell you which side looks more "deranged" for claiming it to be one way or the other, emphatically so.
You mean the AfD, not AdF. Your accusation that they used "Nazi phraseology" is ironic, because the incident you refer to is another case of woke derangement exactly like this one. The phrase "everything for Germany" was written once onto some obscure knives issued to the SS and nowhere else; it's a generic phrase anyone patriotic could think of and use, and the fact that nobody had ever heard of it forced the German left to claim the guy should have heard of these knives because he was once a history teacher. Lol. Great dog whistle that only history teachers can understand.
You've become a snake eating your own tail: you know this meaningless gesture was a secret Nazi code because Musk supports a right wing party, which has also been accused of making secret Nazi codes by the left. It's leftist derangement all the way down.
Helen is the very opposite of unserious. She's a model of thoughtfulness, intelligence and principled consistency. Even when I disagree with her I know I'll learn a little bit more if I try and understand why I disagree with her.
I can’t think of many things more childish than referring to someone on the right of the political spectrum as a Nazi or fascist. There are plenty of legitimate criticisms of Elon Musk, but this fantasy that he’s a secret Nazi or fascist as if he’s raging against the Treaty of Versailles and demanding the removal of Jews is just laughable. It’s the left wing equivalent of QAnon.
Well argued as usual. Just don’t get your hopes up that people will stop being deranged. By all means keep telling them why it’s important they do, just don’t get your hopes up and feel bad when they don’t listen. We need you healthy Helen!!!
It has just boggled my mind over the past few years how people keep immediately leaping to the "NAZI!" accusation.
There are a number of valid concerns about Trump, Elon, et al.; but would it not make more sense to examine those issues instead of just making up nonsense like this?
Agreed. Every time I see comments such as Syl's [edit: I meant e.pierce] above, it just points to the tribal nature of much of this. This says to me something like 'my enemies are being dumb and I want them to continue to be dumb,' rather than wanting those with whom you disagree to spend some time learning and maybe, just maybe, we can also do the same and then we can perhaps, together, figure out the truth.
Again, as Orwell pointed out after barely escaping an assassination attempt by communists during the Spanish Civil War, leftists are always stabbing each other in the back. Pathological extremism becomes entrenched via stabbing critics and reformers in the back. Helen is just one example of such stabbing.
I’m just pointing out that without destroying the pathology, the disease will continue to spread.
Liberals have an inherent bias against doing the necessary dirty work.
There is a bunch of other crucial stuff such as dealing with the evolutionary psychology of humans in adapting to punctuated, dynamic equilibrium in social systems. TechnoEconomic disruption drives social disintegration and that results in pathological personalities, social parasites, being able to exploit increasing chaos. See Iain McGilchrist and John Vervaeke.
The historical pattern is that deep paradigm shifts EVENTUALLY lead to such social parasitism being regulated, after structural change to institutions and economic patterns.
Consciousness raising is necessary but not sufficient.
Not sure its a real thing but this case is evidence for it, as it seems that real nazi's have also jumped to the conclusion that Musk’s gesture means he is one of them.
"On the neo-Nazi forum Stormfront, a user posted an image of Musk striking the pose under text reading, "Heil Hitler.""
It doesn’t matter, brainwashed leftards aren’t capable of abandoning their attachment to toxic thinking. The exceptions prove the rule, in the rare case of someone on the left EXITING THE VAMPIRE CASTLE , the Dictatorship Of The Intolerant Minority (Taleb) insures that they will get stabbed in the back. As many of your articles make clear.
Leftards are a gangrenous social cancer that needs to be hacked off to save the patient.
as a person who grew up around, and was very much part of, this 'leftard' world, all I can say is that they have similarly dismissive things about the right, and have for decades. That attitude isn't helping.
Here's an example. I personally believe that the concept of god is so obviously incorrect that I have, in the past, thought of all Christians, Muslims, etc as actually just stupid people, and had very rude things to say about them. Never made good conversations with religious people. How would any Christian ever consider that maybe their belief might be wrong by talking about them that way? They would just dig in deeper. You calling them 'leftards' and them calling you something like 'NAZI' simply won't do anything except have each side dig in deeper. It simply won't resolve anything.
You miss the point. There is nothing to resolve. Their mental dysfunction is rooted in their DNA, not the exploitation of their pathological genetic personality type by propagandists and ideological tribalists. See Nassim Taleb’s Dictatorship Of The Intolerant Minority.
I’ve been around something like 1,000 leftards for over 50 years, the crazies and extremists aren’t hard to separate from the herd. They are the ones that stab the reformers like Helen in the back, or those that stand by silently when the stabbing are taking place.
You could begin to change because you don’t have the genes for full blown leftist extremism, sadism, sociopathy, neuroticism, authoritarianism, criminality, etc. (presumably)
Even if you are correct here, you are still engaging with hyperbolic and extremist ways of expressing your point. So even if you were right, your just being off-putting. How do you expect the herd to, you know, hear?
Also, I don't think that this kind of (probably metaphorical?) genetic essentialism you espouse here is true. I'm somewhat familiar with Taleb, though I haven't read that book, but am not convinced by your thesis. And your aggressiveness aren't swaying me to take you any more seriously.
I've trained myself to ignore the aggressive extreme dogmatists in my comments now. It's not them we have any hope of reaching, but people who might be leaning towards a narrative unrooted in reality or authoritarian ism but are not yet fully embedded and can still have a worthwhile, civil, reasoned conversation.
I was going to suggest that since you are remarkably sane and civil, you should come check out the neighborhood over at Blocked and Reported too. Of course you’re already subscribed! Carry on 😂
ShaunPhilly, you are a classic example of someone that can’t stop projecting your mental dysfunction. You prove my point about the impossibility of leftards actually changing and abandoning their toxic mental patterns. You are a data point.
Does anyone remember the "Obama Terrorist fist bump"? Conservatives hardly have any ground to stand on making fun of liberal stupidity on this. Both sides now live in the world of truthiness where something doesn't need to literally be true, it just has to represent a deeper truth (according to them).
Our President insists Obama is a Muslim and wasn't born in the US and lots of people believe that. Like much else, neither side has a monopoly on dumbfuckery to demonize the other side and there isn't a single bad epistemological habit that one side displays more than the other. It's all just myside bias. A steady stream of this sort of stuff during the Obama presidency. The main difference to me if any is just the pretense of being too smart to fall for nonsense on the PMC left.
I'll be among those at the front of the line who complain about leftists labeling as "fascism" every mainstream conservative idea (hardly a new phenomenon), and I support the idea of aspiring to look at as many things as possible from a charitable starting point. But at the same time, I can hardly fault anyone for seeing Elon's demonstration and interpreting it as Nazi symbolism.
It wasn't just that Elon's arm was in the air (as memes have shown, every politician everywhere has been photographed with his or her arm in the air in a way that, removed of context, could be interpreted negatively). Rather, for me it was the motion with which is arm got into that position - he appeared in video to have thrown it into the air with an aggressive snap, a movement that in itself was more evocative of unfortunate history than the angle in which is ended. Add in some of Elon's previous statements and behaviours, and - if we're going to be as charitable to the hoi polloi as I suggest we should be to Elon - it should not be a stretch to understand *why* people reached a critical conclusion. Some, maybe many, of the people who reached (or quickly expressed) that conclusion are certainly "deranged" in a political sense, but I'm not sure that it follows that anyone whose historically reasonable sensitivity to Naziism was triggered, and speak of that publicly, are deranged.
I'm personally certainly open to the argument that Elon's gesture was, in fact, an unfortunate expression of his exuberance and his somewhat atypical personality. If that is the case, though, one might reasonably expect a thoughtful acknowledgement of that on his part. It wouldn't take much - a brief tweet of clarification perhaps. But as far as I know, that hasn't happened. Perhaps this is because of the effects of polarisation, or perhaps it's because the gesture wasn't entirely benign. Or maybe just because, even though he didn't intend for it to look like a Sieg heil, he's enjoying the outrage.
But don't be surprised when reasonable people are shocked what *appears* to be Nazi symbolism; be more concerned about a time when people are *not* shocked by such a thing.
Neither you nor I (unless you are an intimate of Elon) knows if his action on the stage was a planned, or a spontaneous, display. Nor can we know for sure, if it *was* deliberate, how he intended it to be perceived by others. But you surely must acknowledge that it's not especially surprising, upon seeing a man on a stage - any man - put his hand on his chest and throw his arm into the air with his palm flat in the manner that Elon did, that many even very reasonable people might see a stark similarity to a gesture made famous by German fascists? I don't think I'm crazy or deranged, I'm not a lefty and I'm not an Elon hater (though neither do I pedestalise the man) but that motion most certainly organically evoked an unpleasant historical parallel for me.
I cannot dispute that apparent derangement is a factor in much of the public reaction to that motion. Derangement pollutes too much of our political discourse these days all over the place. But I don't think everyone who interpreted negatively is doing so because they are deranged trolls.
Also, I didn't say that Elon should apologise, merely that he might, if he feels that his gesture is being interpreted in ways that he didn't intend, clarify his actual intentions.
Many years ago I was in an improv comedy workshop, and at some point in the heat of the action a joke escaped my lips that came across as anti-semitic even to my own surprised ear, something that I absolutely hadn't intended, and the energy immediately deflated from the room. I made a brief and honest acknowledgement of my error, and the group moved on and we had a great remainder of the workshop, from which I made some good friends. Dealing with it directly, rather than ignoring it, surely mitigated any misunderstanding of my character.
> Dealing with it directly, rather than ignoring it, surely mitigated any misunderstanding of my character.
The world is full of people who made grovelling apologies in front of your lefty drama queens and were still aggressively cancelled, so no, it didn't "surely" do anything. You got lucky, but lots of other people in identical situations didn't. Which is why reasonable people don't want to pander to crazy people.
Look let me spell this out in baby steps:
1. The fact that nobody is a mind reader doesn't give you carte blanche to assign any thought process you want to someone. It has to actually be plausible and fit the known facts.
2. The belief that Elon Musk is a secret Nazi, signalling to lots of other secret Nazis in the audience, is a Scooby Doo level idea that no reasonable person could possibly have. The left literally expect to rip off Musk's mask and hear him say, "I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you pesky kids!" which is the kind of belief children have, not properly functioning adults. Which is why so many people - even the Guardian and the ADL - are trying to tell you it's deranged behavior.
3. No reasonable person could have this idea because there is no evidence Elon Musk shares any beliefs in common with the Nazis other than maybe thinking rockets are cool, but there is clear evidence he shares many beliefs they strongly rejected e.g. freedom of speech, support for a Jewish homeland, voting as the way to select a leader.
4. In fact, Musk is a right wing capitalist libertarian who sees workers as expendable resources, whereas the National Socialist German Workers Party were left wing socialist totalitarians who called each other comrade and gave speeches about the virtues of the working class. They are literally exact opposites. The left can't see this because they are lied to systematically by their media, and of course because they would really prefer to imagine that everyone's favourite villain was ideologically on the other side. But it's not true. Hitler was unsurprisingly like every other 20th century despot: a far left extremist who differed from the others only in being ahead of his time in adopting racial oppression as his rallying cry.
5. Also, who is meant to see this secret Nazi salute? What are they meant to think? Why did he say "my heart goes out to you" at the same time instead of something anti-semitic? Do you think Republican rallies are full of Jew-hating Nazis? If so, why do they support Israel so much? What was this salute supposed to achieve, being as he was surrounded by the sort of people who regularly give Jews lots of high-spec military weapons without even hesitating? If the Republicans were actually split so massively on the issue of anti-semitism, wouldn't they have noticed this by now and started in-fighting about it? Of course they would, and the reason they haven't is because there are no Nazis in the Republican party.
The left has been sucked down a conspiracy theory - for that's what it is - that makes less logical sense than an alien coverup. At least the alien theorists have DoD insiders who tell them there's a conspiracy. The left doesn't even have that! Instead they think there's a massive conspiracy being coordinated by hidden hand signals on live TV, which is the sort of thinking that schizophrenics engage in.
Agreed Helen with a big exception: Elon doesn't excel at anything technical. He is mediocre at best, and likely, just incompetent in technical matters.
He is not the founder of anything he currently owns, he brought every single company.
There are many examples where he tries to dazze the public with hollow techno babble, hust to be put in place for a competent engineer or programmer, sometimes like in the Twitter acquisition, by a software developer of his own company.
Yes, SpaceX and Tesla have some of the best engineering talent in the world, but they are all often tied to the tantrums and useless projects imposed by Elon.
Elon is a manipulative, narcissistic, and a rich business man, nothing else.
I often compare him to Henry Ford in that he harnessed an opportunity presented by a new technology while having personal shortcomings. Modern day "tech" success mostly centres around the personal credibility & accessibility to convince VC money to back a project and if picked correctly assures big $ because the internet is an inherently monopolistic market. The internet economy only needs 1-of-anything per sector.
I’m just not seeing how it’s deranged or hyperbolic to be alarmed when a guy who supports the AfD does a Nazi-looking salute. And I say that as someone who thinks the left is both those things most of the time.
At what point does nationalism/nativism become white supremacy and then Nazism? I find the label "far right" to be facile because in the political spectrum of Germany nationalist values have been so taboo for so long maybe they can't conceive of any right that isn't "far"?
If you really want to assess Musk's nazi-ness what are his attitudes to Jews & Israel?
My understanding is that the AfD never purged their extremist elements like LePen did in France or the Sweden Democrats. Rather, former leaders have left the party citing that it has been taken over by its most extreme elements.
Thank you for taking the time to answer - whatever weight of accusations against these parties the lever mainstream politicians could pull to end their ascendancy has been there all along: concede to the population's demands for less immigration and refocus on working class economic welfare. Too much to ask apparently. But why, why is that so difficult?
Both TDS and MDS are rooted in numerous clear examples of the opposition being deranged. And yes, those terms then end up getting used more cavalierly by some supporters than is justified. But...TDS and MDS are legitimate. Multiple "respectable" media sources ran with the Nazi symbolism. What other explanation is there beyond MDS?
When it is, you can give examples of it. The same way you can for white supremacist beliefs. This is why I said 'spurious accusations' used for any criticism & linked one.
Are you arguing that MDS is legitimate because legacy media presented it? That's backwards: it just means legacy media is in the grip of MDS, just as they have been with TDS. Which is a big part of why they are legacy.
Helen, I wrote some of this down below, but I wanted to make sure you see it.
I am a longtime liberal and yes, in my view, progressive, with a history of pushing back against my side's overuse of charges of racism and white supremacy and the like. I very much appreciated your take on the toxic nature of many of the so-called diversity and inclusion programs which were sweeping over the corporate world several years ago.
I am also a huge critic of Trump and, I'm sure, must sound like a broken record when I advise people not to lead with the racism when criticizing him. There are so many more salient and relevant criticisms of the man that aren't larded with the baggage of the left's cultural overreaches of recent years. I bemoan the credibilty we have utterly exhausted on the matter of racism to the point that now actual racism has a much easier time getting along in what we once called "polite society".
Point being, I am the last person to make spurious charges of racism. And I'm not here to tell you that Elon Musk made a Nazi salute. But your assertion that the very idea that he might have done so is "ridiculous" confounds me.
I am aware of how cut-up memes can make something look worse than it actually is. I made sure to watch the actual video so that I wasn't getting deceived by something that was clearly just a wave or a salutary gesture. I wasn't.
For God's sake, Helen, did you watch it? Are you honestly going to compare those pictures of other politicians merely holding up their arms waving in acknowledgement of the crowd—a common and well understood gesture—to what Musk did, and say that it's the same thing? The man made an abrupt, brisk motion from his hand on his breast to a quick slicing motion through the air on the opposite side. It looked nothing like the standard politician salute-and-wave that we are all accustomed to. In fact, it's hard to imagine how an actual, bonafide Nazi salute could have looked any more like a Nazi salute than what Musk did.
Is it possible that Musk was just being awkward? I suppose. Does it seem likely? Obviously he isn't directly copping to it, but was he trolling, or worse—sending a plausibly deniable signal to his newfound friends on the alt-right? Many of them seem to think so. And I'm sure you're questioning why someone like Musk would do something so inflammatory and seemingly self-destructive. Great question!
I've been asking the same thing repeatedly about Musk for the past year or so as he has engaged in one display of self-destructive behavior after another. Starting with impulsively over-paying for a social media platform, pricing the shares to match with a cultural meme popular with potheads, because he was unhappy with the reach of his posts, and then literally telling his advertisers to go fuck themselves as they abandoned his platform after increasingly becoming uncomfortable with his online behavior.
That online behavior is, of course, the really mystifying part—why this man has seemingly gone out of his way to give people quite good reason to wonder whether a guy who grew up rich in Apartheid-era South Africa might have absorbed a thing or two from his upbringing which could be considered a bit troubling. From re-platforming white nationalists to agreeing with and endorsing various anti-Semitic comments and conspiracy junk, Musk doesn't exactly seem to want the benefit of the doubt when it comes to his sympathies with the extremist right.
And yet you're not only willing to bend over backward to give it to him, you claim that anyone who believes he was actually doing what it absolutely looks like he was doing is just ridiculous and deranged. After all, once he had finished giving what looked virtually indistinguishable from two Nazi salutes, he clutched his breast with his hand and said, "From the bottom of my heart". Why would he do that, unless he was going for plausible deniability? And why deny anything if you were going to give a Nazi salute? What would be the point?
Because of course, in this day and age, not even someone as drunk with power as Musk is at the moment would think he could get away with saying "Heil Hitler" and openly acknowledging Nazi sympathies. But would it make sense for him to burnish the brand that he's amassing among actual, real white supremacists while denying it on the surface? Could it possibly seem that way to a drug addict who's now clearly relishing the taste of cultural impunity that comes along with being part of Trump's entourage? Is he just doing it because he gets off on the fact that he can get away with it, like Trump constantly does with his inflammatory comments?
I'm sorry, Helen, but it is far from "ridiculous", given everything we've seen from Musk over the past year or so, to wonder if he might be playing footsie with some of the really bad bros he's been cozying up to on what is increasingly resembling Gettr thanks to his stewardship, while he frolics around like a child on Christmas morning playing with the new toy that is the MAGA imprimatur. He's having a rollicking good time sticking it to the American left, all while cozying up to an American autocrat and having business incentives to do so in China and Russia. Power corrupts, as they say.
Are there good reasons for Musk to have given a Nazi salute? No. Are there Elon Musk reasons? Hard to say no.
Go watch an actual video of Hitler doing the salute. Then think for a second that in fact, it is a different movement. And then think that even if it was the same movement, it wouldn't make any sense for Musk to do one.
The whole point of things like the Nazi salute, the Swastika etc was building up the Nazis as a coherent political force. Shared rituals bind people together. Everyone is supposed to do it together, otherwise it has no point. Musk didn't ask everyone to partake in a shared ritual of any kind because it had nothing to do with the Nazis.
My friend, this is not a poly-sci dissertation. We are talking about interpreting the actions of a man who spends half his time in a ketamine-hole, and was jumping up and down like a cheerleader onstage at a Trump rally. The man is not well, clearly has a bad and worsening case of "Twitter brain" (or "X brain", as it were), and seems to be coming unhinged.
Do I really think Musk is a Nazi sympathizer? Hell if I know. Am I concerned about the fact that he's been *acting like one* for the past year or so, and that he now serves at the right hand of POTUS? Hell yes.
It's not a question of whether Musk's views align precisely with anyone's academic definition of Naziism. It's a question of whether this guy is getting too comfortable and possibly even willing to wink-wink with the extremists that he re-platformed and handed a megaphone to, because they are among some of his most vocal supporters these days, and like Trump, this man thrives on the validation of his fanbase. After all, they're the reason he's so rich.
And if that's the case, then the shared ritual you mention, the people saluting with him, are all of the people on alt-right media who *really did* interpret his motion, complete with the plausible deniability of the subsequent "bottom of my heart" hand gesture, as a cloaked signal.
As I mentioned, of course it wasn't meant to be overt—otherwise he wouldn't deny it. Because you can't be in Musk's position and be overt these days about subscribing to certain views, but that doesn't mean you can't subscribe to them. And people who genuinely do subscribe to them, who operate on the margins of society, are accustomed to being restricted to these kinds of smoke signals insofar as support from society's elite class is concerned. They look for the wink and nod, not the shout out.
If Musk really wasn't trolling or signaling, then he deserves heavy criticism for his carelessness and stupidity, for doing what really did look very much like a Nazi salute. It is not fair to tell people that the reasonable default is that he is not being further influenced by the people whose influence we've been concerned about for quite some time.
He doesn't deserve any criticism for being attacked by the left, because the left attack anyone on the right in this way. It's not done in good faith so why engage at all?
He hasn't been acting like a Nazi sympathizer for a year either. This is all in your heads. Read the article again until you get it: this behavior is deranged.
I'm sorry, but I don't agree that it isn't done in good faith. I'm not blaming him for being attacked by the left. I'm blaming him for giving people quite good reason to speculate about what's going on inside his head.
And if you don't think he's been showing worrying signs of sympathies to white nationalists and their ilk since November of '23, when he seconded some rather execrable tweets, I'm inclined to say you haven't been paying much attention.
You can re-emphasize the claim that it's deranged all you want. That's not an argument, and I don't need to re-read the article to refute it. It doesn't help your case any more than with those who say opposition to Trump is deranged. I think it's deranged to simply ignore what's right in front of your face.
Again, I'm not claiming to know one way or another. And as to whether or not he sincerely believes anything like this or is just blowing a dog whistle for the sake of the people upholding the membership of his tens-of-billions-in-the-hole social media boondoggle, or is simply acting in bizarre ways or with fewer inhibitions because of his well acknowledged drug addiction, or perhaps even being just plain awkward (though I am really not too keen on that explanation—he's not a teenager) I don't claim to know.
But one thing I do know is that what he did was no simple politician wave to the crowd, and for Helen to post stills of Obama and Hilary holding their arms up and claiming it's the same thing is to me a far better example of not arguing in good faith.
It's fair to speculate about what Musk wants, given that he's rich and influential. It isn't fair to call him a Nazi because of a deliberate misinterpretation of an innocent gesture, and then blame the victim for getting beaten up.
There have been arguments made in this very article, and I made some more elsewhere in this thread, but I'll reiterate them again to try and help you.
Firstly, go watch videos if for some reason stills haven't convinced you. There are plenty of them on X. Look, for example, at a video of AOC doing the exact same arm motion whilst saying something far more aggressive than "my heart goes out to you". Look at the video of Tim Walz doing the same thing.
The point people are trying to make with these photos ISN'T that if that if Hillary Clinton's arm was angled 10 degrees more the right could have legitimately gone crazy over her Nazi sympathies. They couldn't and wouldn't. The point here is that it's not ever reasonable to spaz out over people waving their arms around unless they're literally saying "Heil Hitler" whilst doing it. Be like the right! Focus on what people are actually saying.
There's a pattern here which is worth recognizing: this belief that people are trying to coordinate secret uprisings through hand signals and obscure phrases ("dog whistles") is one the left keep having problems with. It's some weird side effect of their ideology. Remember the trucker who was fired because someone took a photo of his hand hanging out of his truck making an OK sign? They claimed the OK sign was a secret signal indicating support for white supremacy - being made to nobody in particular, on a road. DERANGED. Didn't stop the left chimping out and blowing up the poor guy's life though.
The left has such a big problem with this kind of derangement because there's no such thing as dog whistles but they are convinced there is. Dog whistles don't exist, they don't even make sense to exist. Hitler in particular did NOT use anything even approximating "dog whistles", ever, but because the left don't seem to actually study WW2 history they don't realize that. Hitler was always crystal clear about exactly what he believed, right from day one, to the extent that he wrote a helpful book outlining not only his beliefs but also how he came to believe them. His rallies were full of very literal statements in which he lays out his ideology: that's why his rise was legitimately scary! People wanted what he was selling. He didn't pretend to be an LGBT activist whilst subtly nudging and winking during his speeches.
I try not to jump to conclusions and accuse people of Nazism. But 1. Musk has said enough crazy and quasi-fascist things over the past few years that he's lost the benefit of the doubt, and 2. I watched the video and it looked like a pretty deliberate seig heil, not a wave or other vague arm gesture. Maybe there's some ambiguity? But again, see point 1.
I say this as someone who is not affiliated with either party, the progressive left has lost their collective minds and the Democratic apparatus is desperate to climb back into the power seat. As for republicans, they have every right to give the dems s#it but they'd fair better in the end if they didn't rub the opposition's nose in it
What fascinates me about this is that the ADL and even the Guardian have tried to tell the left that they're being deranged about this and it's had zero impact. They were just instantly disowned. I wonder if they're now realizing what sort of monster they've built over the years. Nearly a decade of non stop pseudo-history designed to trigger their base as hard as possible has created a psychosis they thought would lead to victory, but now it hasn't they have discovered they can't turn it off.
To be fair "Is it good for Israel?" is the ADLs only question when evaluating national level issues. The ADL is the ideal type of woke identity organization, just for one group only. But in this case good for Israel happens to also be factually accurate.
Sure, and the ADL has been in recent years a very left wing organization. That's why it's interesting how instantly the left shitcanned them and how little their prior loyalty pledges mattered.
Look, I like about half of what Elon does, was a fan for a long time, recently read his biography, and think he’s the most important entrepreneur of this century (at least), but I can’t read this type of shit anymore.
The fact that even Musk supporters are claiming it was a troll makes something very obvious: Musk did a salute that is nearly identical to a Roman salute. He did it for one of three reasons:
1. To signal his fascist sympathies (either intentionally or a slip)
2. He’s trolling
3. He was some how trying express his love/heart to a crowd with that specific motion.
You can make a case that it's #3, but I actually think it's extremely weird to make that assumption. I've lived on this Earth for over 40 years, and I can count on exactly zero fingers the number of times I've seen someone make that motion in a non-Nazi way. It's certainly possible that Elon Musk is the first, but it's a very strange conclusion to jump to. At the very least, it's beyond dumb to talk to other people like they didn't see what they clearly saw.
Defend Musk all you want. The guy gave a fascist salute on purpose, as a joke, or on accident, but he definitely did it.
#2 seems the most likely, which is also strangely the most pathetic.
Musk has very recently:
1) Expressed outright support for Tommy Robinson, whose supporters regularly use Nazi salutes.
2) Expressed outright support for the AdF, whose supporters and politicians use Nazi phraseology.
3) Spoken in support of the January 6th insurrectionists, which included avowed neo-Nazis.
I loath the cry of "Nazi" or "fascist!" at everyone to the right of Ken Clarke, truly loath it. The UK Tory party is overwhelmingly made up of good, kind, decent people I happen to disagree with. As were the Republican party of Mitt Romney, GWB, John McCain, Dick Cheney, and even Mike Pence. But what we're seeing in the US now is something else, this is different. Red lines and norms don't seem to matter any more, only winning (or more importantly, your opponents losing).
Do I know Musk deliberately did a Nazi salute? No. Am I certain he didn't? Also, sadly, no. I can't be. I think he probably should be given the benefit of the doubt. Probably. But how can he really be so stupid, really be so spectacularly ignorant, to give his ongoing support to the aforementioned without knowing exactly who he's supporting? Like how?
I fear we're going to be giving the benefit of doubt until all doubt is extinguished, and we know for certain that drip by ignored drip we watched the US's shonky-at-best democracy sink without a trace.
Have a look at the final 'here' link. I've been addressing that. In fact, most of my notes have been about the dangers of Elon Musk for quite some time.
Nope, sorry, I did a 'this' list. Anyway, it's this one.
https://substack.com/@helenpluckrose/note/c-86492418?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=1nm3qt
I agree with everything you said except for the part about him deserving the benefit of the doubt. Are we forgetting the times on X when Musk promoted or seconded anti-Semitic sentiments? Or the very fact that he has turned Twitter into a right-wing cesspool by re-platforming people who got tossed off for hate speech?
Helen speaks as if we haven't been spending the last year wondering, with good reason, "Why does Elon Musk increasingly sound like a Nazi apologist?" As if this is all coming out of the blue, rather than one more thing to throw on the pile of mounting evidence.
Does Musk get prejudged for growing up a rich kid in South Africa during Apartheid? I don't know—I seem to remember a time when nobody felt that to be worth mentioning, when Musk was actually quite well liked. So I think it's fair to say he was never assessed such a *prejudgment*. Is it fair as a post-judgement? Sure seems so.
I'm a longtime veteran of policing my own side and wagging my finger at progressives who throw around charges of racism and white supremacy with reckless abandon. But for the life of me I can't understand how anyone could see this as a symptom of any kind of "derangement". Even if I were inclined to defend Musk here, I'd be doing so along with an angry, irritated condemnation of the man for, at best, his utter carelessness and seemingly trying to make a fool out of those who support him and make excuses for him.
Because does it look like he actually gave Nazi salutes? Oh my God yes! In fact it looked even *more* like it when I watched the actual video, so no, you can't blame it on chopped-up memes. Seriously, watch it. It was not some soft, touching of the breast and followed by a natural extension of the arm like he was waving to everyone. It was nothing like the stills that Helen showed here. It was an abrupt, quick slicing motion of the arm from the breast to the air, with no wave of the hand at the end.
If I was actually going to intentionally make a Nazi salute, I honestly can't see how it would look any different.
Maybe it wasn't. But I can tell you which side looks more "deranged" for claiming it to be one way or the other, emphatically so.
Sounds like gaslighting by a histrionic“everyone’s a Nazi!!!” partisan. Nice try.
Sadly when we're expressing ourselves we can't control how we'll be perceived by every last person who stumbles over our expression.
You mean the AfD, not AdF. Your accusation that they used "Nazi phraseology" is ironic, because the incident you refer to is another case of woke derangement exactly like this one. The phrase "everything for Germany" was written once onto some obscure knives issued to the SS and nowhere else; it's a generic phrase anyone patriotic could think of and use, and the fact that nobody had ever heard of it forced the German left to claim the guy should have heard of these knives because he was once a history teacher. Lol. Great dog whistle that only history teachers can understand.
You've become a snake eating your own tail: you know this meaningless gesture was a secret Nazi code because Musk supports a right wing party, which has also been accused of making secret Nazi codes by the left. It's leftist derangement all the way down.
Yep. The Nazi salute denialists are unserious people.
Helen is the very opposite of unserious. She's a model of thoughtfulness, intelligence and principled consistency. Even when I disagree with her I know I'll learn a little bit more if I try and understand why I disagree with her.
I can’t think of many things more childish than referring to someone on the right of the political spectrum as a Nazi or fascist. There are plenty of legitimate criticisms of Elon Musk, but this fantasy that he’s a secret Nazi or fascist as if he’s raging against the Treaty of Versailles and demanding the removal of Jews is just laughable. It’s the left wing equivalent of QAnon.
Well argued as usual. Just don’t get your hopes up that people will stop being deranged. By all means keep telling them why it’s important they do, just don’t get your hopes up and feel bad when they don’t listen. We need you healthy Helen!!!
It has just boggled my mind over the past few years how people keep immediately leaping to the "NAZI!" accusation.
There are a number of valid concerns about Trump, Elon, et al.; but would it not make more sense to examine those issues instead of just making up nonsense like this?
Indeed it would, Esme. I am sure we cannot be in the minority for thinking this way. I hope to God we are not.
Thanks for once again being a voice of reason, Helen. 😮💨
You want the mentally dysfunctional, infantile woke-left to stop having tantrums and begin to think rationally??? lolololol
Yes, don't you? If not, why not?
Agreed. Every time I see comments such as Syl's [edit: I meant e.pierce] above, it just points to the tribal nature of much of this. This says to me something like 'my enemies are being dumb and I want them to continue to be dumb,' rather than wanting those with whom you disagree to spend some time learning and maybe, just maybe, we can also do the same and then we can perhaps, together, figure out the truth.
Again, as Orwell pointed out after barely escaping an assassination attempt by communists during the Spanish Civil War, leftists are always stabbing each other in the back. Pathological extremism becomes entrenched via stabbing critics and reformers in the back. Helen is just one example of such stabbing.
I’m just pointing out that without destroying the pathology, the disease will continue to spread.
Liberals have an inherent bias against doing the necessary dirty work.
There is a bunch of other crucial stuff such as dealing with the evolutionary psychology of humans in adapting to punctuated, dynamic equilibrium in social systems. TechnoEconomic disruption drives social disintegration and that results in pathological personalities, social parasites, being able to exploit increasing chaos. See Iain McGilchrist and John Vervaeke.
The historical pattern is that deep paradigm shifts EVENTUALLY lead to such social parasitism being regulated, after structural change to institutions and economic patterns.
Consciousness raising is necessary but not sufficient.
I’m arguing against pathological tribalism. Not sure why you jumped to a stupid conclusion.
Syl? Your comment appears to have landed in the wrong sub thread.
no, just a brain fart. I intended to reply to you and for some reason I said the wrong handle.
I like your comment, ShaunPhilly. Have you heard of horseshoe theory?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory
Not sure its a real thing but this case is evidence for it, as it seems that real nazi's have also jumped to the conclusion that Musk’s gesture means he is one of them.
"On the neo-Nazi forum Stormfront, a user posted an image of Musk striking the pose under text reading, "Heil Hitler.""
https://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/musk-salute-at-trump-rally-celebrated-by-extremists-online/news-story/4c4744a97f7e59bf872d2a79780d5c0b
It doesn’t matter, brainwashed leftards aren’t capable of abandoning their attachment to toxic thinking. The exceptions prove the rule, in the rare case of someone on the left EXITING THE VAMPIRE CASTLE , the Dictatorship Of The Intolerant Minority (Taleb) insures that they will get stabbed in the back. As many of your articles make clear.
Leftards are a gangrenous social cancer that needs to be hacked off to save the patient.
But you don’t need to do that, others will.
as a person who grew up around, and was very much part of, this 'leftard' world, all I can say is that they have similarly dismissive things about the right, and have for decades. That attitude isn't helping.
Here's an example. I personally believe that the concept of god is so obviously incorrect that I have, in the past, thought of all Christians, Muslims, etc as actually just stupid people, and had very rude things to say about them. Never made good conversations with religious people. How would any Christian ever consider that maybe their belief might be wrong by talking about them that way? They would just dig in deeper. You calling them 'leftards' and them calling you something like 'NAZI' simply won't do anything except have each side dig in deeper. It simply won't resolve anything.
You miss the point. There is nothing to resolve. Their mental dysfunction is rooted in their DNA, not the exploitation of their pathological genetic personality type by propagandists and ideological tribalists. See Nassim Taleb’s Dictatorship Of The Intolerant Minority.
I’ve been around something like 1,000 leftards for over 50 years, the crazies and extremists aren’t hard to separate from the herd. They are the ones that stab the reformers like Helen in the back, or those that stand by silently when the stabbing are taking place.
You could begin to change because you don’t have the genes for full blown leftist extremism, sadism, sociopathy, neuroticism, authoritarianism, criminality, etc. (presumably)
and you missed mine.
Even if you are correct here, you are still engaging with hyperbolic and extremist ways of expressing your point. So even if you were right, your just being off-putting. How do you expect the herd to, you know, hear?
Also, I don't think that this kind of (probably metaphorical?) genetic essentialism you espouse here is true. I'm somewhat familiar with Taleb, though I haven't read that book, but am not convinced by your thesis. And your aggressiveness aren't swaying me to take you any more seriously.
I've trained myself to ignore the aggressive extreme dogmatists in my comments now. It's not them we have any hope of reaching, but people who might be leaning towards a narrative unrooted in reality or authoritarian ism but are not yet fully embedded and can still have a worthwhile, civil, reasoned conversation.
I was going to suggest that since you are remarkably sane and civil, you should come check out the neighborhood over at Blocked and Reported too. Of course you’re already subscribed! Carry on 😂
ShaunPhilly, you are a classic example of someone that can’t stop projecting your mental dysfunction. You prove my point about the impossibility of leftards actually changing and abandoning their toxic mental patterns. You are a data point.
I didn’t miss your point, I’m just saying that it is irrelevant, weak and won’t actually change anything. Your scientific illiteracy is noted.
Does anyone remember the "Obama Terrorist fist bump"? Conservatives hardly have any ground to stand on making fun of liberal stupidity on this. Both sides now live in the world of truthiness where something doesn't need to literally be true, it just has to represent a deeper truth (according to them).
That was indeed stupid but in was 15 years ago, didn't become a pattern or a meme on the right and hasn't been repeated since.
Our President insists Obama is a Muslim and wasn't born in the US and lots of people believe that. Like much else, neither side has a monopoly on dumbfuckery to demonize the other side and there isn't a single bad epistemological habit that one side displays more than the other. It's all just myside bias. A steady stream of this sort of stuff during the Obama presidency. The main difference to me if any is just the pretense of being too smart to fall for nonsense on the PMC left.
I'll be among those at the front of the line who complain about leftists labeling as "fascism" every mainstream conservative idea (hardly a new phenomenon), and I support the idea of aspiring to look at as many things as possible from a charitable starting point. But at the same time, I can hardly fault anyone for seeing Elon's demonstration and interpreting it as Nazi symbolism.
It wasn't just that Elon's arm was in the air (as memes have shown, every politician everywhere has been photographed with his or her arm in the air in a way that, removed of context, could be interpreted negatively). Rather, for me it was the motion with which is arm got into that position - he appeared in video to have thrown it into the air with an aggressive snap, a movement that in itself was more evocative of unfortunate history than the angle in which is ended. Add in some of Elon's previous statements and behaviours, and - if we're going to be as charitable to the hoi polloi as I suggest we should be to Elon - it should not be a stretch to understand *why* people reached a critical conclusion. Some, maybe many, of the people who reached (or quickly expressed) that conclusion are certainly "deranged" in a political sense, but I'm not sure that it follows that anyone whose historically reasonable sensitivity to Naziism was triggered, and speak of that publicly, are deranged.
I'm personally certainly open to the argument that Elon's gesture was, in fact, an unfortunate expression of his exuberance and his somewhat atypical personality. If that is the case, though, one might reasonably expect a thoughtful acknowledgement of that on his part. It wouldn't take much - a brief tweet of clarification perhaps. But as far as I know, that hasn't happened. Perhaps this is because of the effects of polarisation, or perhaps it's because the gesture wasn't entirely benign. Or maybe just because, even though he didn't intend for it to look like a Sieg heil, he's enjoying the outrage.
But don't be surprised when reasonable people are shocked what *appears* to be Nazi symbolism; be more concerned about a time when people are *not* shocked by such a thing.
No it's deranged. Why would he or anyone else apologize to crazy people who are just deliberately trolling? That's exactly what they want.
Neither you nor I (unless you are an intimate of Elon) knows if his action on the stage was a planned, or a spontaneous, display. Nor can we know for sure, if it *was* deliberate, how he intended it to be perceived by others. But you surely must acknowledge that it's not especially surprising, upon seeing a man on a stage - any man - put his hand on his chest and throw his arm into the air with his palm flat in the manner that Elon did, that many even very reasonable people might see a stark similarity to a gesture made famous by German fascists? I don't think I'm crazy or deranged, I'm not a lefty and I'm not an Elon hater (though neither do I pedestalise the man) but that motion most certainly organically evoked an unpleasant historical parallel for me.
I cannot dispute that apparent derangement is a factor in much of the public reaction to that motion. Derangement pollutes too much of our political discourse these days all over the place. But I don't think everyone who interpreted negatively is doing so because they are deranged trolls.
Also, I didn't say that Elon should apologise, merely that he might, if he feels that his gesture is being interpreted in ways that he didn't intend, clarify his actual intentions.
Many years ago I was in an improv comedy workshop, and at some point in the heat of the action a joke escaped my lips that came across as anti-semitic even to my own surprised ear, something that I absolutely hadn't intended, and the energy immediately deflated from the room. I made a brief and honest acknowledgement of my error, and the group moved on and we had a great remainder of the workshop, from which I made some good friends. Dealing with it directly, rather than ignoring it, surely mitigated any misunderstanding of my character.
> Dealing with it directly, rather than ignoring it, surely mitigated any misunderstanding of my character.
The world is full of people who made grovelling apologies in front of your lefty drama queens and were still aggressively cancelled, so no, it didn't "surely" do anything. You got lucky, but lots of other people in identical situations didn't. Which is why reasonable people don't want to pander to crazy people.
Look let me spell this out in baby steps:
1. The fact that nobody is a mind reader doesn't give you carte blanche to assign any thought process you want to someone. It has to actually be plausible and fit the known facts.
2. The belief that Elon Musk is a secret Nazi, signalling to lots of other secret Nazis in the audience, is a Scooby Doo level idea that no reasonable person could possibly have. The left literally expect to rip off Musk's mask and hear him say, "I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you pesky kids!" which is the kind of belief children have, not properly functioning adults. Which is why so many people - even the Guardian and the ADL - are trying to tell you it's deranged behavior.
3. No reasonable person could have this idea because there is no evidence Elon Musk shares any beliefs in common with the Nazis other than maybe thinking rockets are cool, but there is clear evidence he shares many beliefs they strongly rejected e.g. freedom of speech, support for a Jewish homeland, voting as the way to select a leader.
4. In fact, Musk is a right wing capitalist libertarian who sees workers as expendable resources, whereas the National Socialist German Workers Party were left wing socialist totalitarians who called each other comrade and gave speeches about the virtues of the working class. They are literally exact opposites. The left can't see this because they are lied to systematically by their media, and of course because they would really prefer to imagine that everyone's favourite villain was ideologically on the other side. But it's not true. Hitler was unsurprisingly like every other 20th century despot: a far left extremist who differed from the others only in being ahead of his time in adopting racial oppression as his rallying cry.
5. Also, who is meant to see this secret Nazi salute? What are they meant to think? Why did he say "my heart goes out to you" at the same time instead of something anti-semitic? Do you think Republican rallies are full of Jew-hating Nazis? If so, why do they support Israel so much? What was this salute supposed to achieve, being as he was surrounded by the sort of people who regularly give Jews lots of high-spec military weapons without even hesitating? If the Republicans were actually split so massively on the issue of anti-semitism, wouldn't they have noticed this by now and started in-fighting about it? Of course they would, and the reason they haven't is because there are no Nazis in the Republican party.
The left has been sucked down a conspiracy theory - for that's what it is - that makes less logical sense than an alien coverup. At least the alien theorists have DoD insiders who tell them there's a conspiracy. The left doesn't even have that! Instead they think there's a massive conspiracy being coordinated by hidden hand signals on live TV, which is the sort of thinking that schizophrenics engage in.
Agreed Helen with a big exception: Elon doesn't excel at anything technical. He is mediocre at best, and likely, just incompetent in technical matters.
He is not the founder of anything he currently owns, he brought every single company.
There are many examples where he tries to dazze the public with hollow techno babble, hust to be put in place for a competent engineer or programmer, sometimes like in the Twitter acquisition, by a software developer of his own company.
Yes, SpaceX and Tesla have some of the best engineering talent in the world, but they are all often tied to the tantrums and useless projects imposed by Elon.
Elon is a manipulative, narcissistic, and a rich business man, nothing else.
Historical revisionism won't help. The man founded SpaceX and is key to it's achievements. Read any biography.
I often compare him to Henry Ford in that he harnessed an opportunity presented by a new technology while having personal shortcomings. Modern day "tech" success mostly centres around the personal credibility & accessibility to convince VC money to back a project and if picked correctly assures big $ because the internet is an inherently monopolistic market. The internet economy only needs 1-of-anything per sector.
*dazzle
*by a competent
I would have agreed with you a few weeks ago Helen. But since he started heavily backing the AfD in Germany, I don’t know what to think.
That's a good solid thing to criticise him on that won't undermine credibility. This is what I am asking people to do. e.g.,
https://substack.com/@helenpluckrose/note/c-86492418?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=1nm3qt
I’m just not seeing how it’s deranged or hyperbolic to be alarmed when a guy who supports the AfD does a Nazi-looking salute. And I say that as someone who thinks the left is both those things most of the time.
The AfD have nothing in common with the Nazis so you're engaged in circular reasoning.
At what point does nationalism/nativism become white supremacy and then Nazism? I find the label "far right" to be facile because in the political spectrum of Germany nationalist values have been so taboo for so long maybe they can't conceive of any right that isn't "far"?
If you really want to assess Musk's nazi-ness what are his attitudes to Jews & Israel?
My understanding is that the AfD never purged their extremist elements like LePen did in France or the Sweden Democrats. Rather, former leaders have left the party citing that it has been taken over by its most extreme elements.
Thank you for taking the time to answer - whatever weight of accusations against these parties the lever mainstream politicians could pull to end their ascendancy has been there all along: concede to the population's demands for less immigration and refocus on working class economic welfare. Too much to ask apparently. But why, why is that so difficult?
Both TDS and MDS are rooted in numerous clear examples of the opposition being deranged. And yes, those terms then end up getting used more cavalierly by some supporters than is justified. But...TDS and MDS are legitimate. Multiple "respectable" media sources ran with the Nazi symbolism. What other explanation is there beyond MDS?
When it is, you can give examples of it. The same way you can for white supremacist beliefs. This is why I said 'spurious accusations' used for any criticism & linked one.
Are you arguing that MDS is legitimate because legacy media presented it? That's backwards: it just means legacy media is in the grip of MDS, just as they have been with TDS. Which is a big part of why they are legacy.
Helen, I wrote some of this down below, but I wanted to make sure you see it.
I am a longtime liberal and yes, in my view, progressive, with a history of pushing back against my side's overuse of charges of racism and white supremacy and the like. I very much appreciated your take on the toxic nature of many of the so-called diversity and inclusion programs which were sweeping over the corporate world several years ago.
I am also a huge critic of Trump and, I'm sure, must sound like a broken record when I advise people not to lead with the racism when criticizing him. There are so many more salient and relevant criticisms of the man that aren't larded with the baggage of the left's cultural overreaches of recent years. I bemoan the credibilty we have utterly exhausted on the matter of racism to the point that now actual racism has a much easier time getting along in what we once called "polite society".
Point being, I am the last person to make spurious charges of racism. And I'm not here to tell you that Elon Musk made a Nazi salute. But your assertion that the very idea that he might have done so is "ridiculous" confounds me.
I am aware of how cut-up memes can make something look worse than it actually is. I made sure to watch the actual video so that I wasn't getting deceived by something that was clearly just a wave or a salutary gesture. I wasn't.
For God's sake, Helen, did you watch it? Are you honestly going to compare those pictures of other politicians merely holding up their arms waving in acknowledgement of the crowd—a common and well understood gesture—to what Musk did, and say that it's the same thing? The man made an abrupt, brisk motion from his hand on his breast to a quick slicing motion through the air on the opposite side. It looked nothing like the standard politician salute-and-wave that we are all accustomed to. In fact, it's hard to imagine how an actual, bonafide Nazi salute could have looked any more like a Nazi salute than what Musk did.
Is it possible that Musk was just being awkward? I suppose. Does it seem likely? Obviously he isn't directly copping to it, but was he trolling, or worse—sending a plausibly deniable signal to his newfound friends on the alt-right? Many of them seem to think so. And I'm sure you're questioning why someone like Musk would do something so inflammatory and seemingly self-destructive. Great question!
I've been asking the same thing repeatedly about Musk for the past year or so as he has engaged in one display of self-destructive behavior after another. Starting with impulsively over-paying for a social media platform, pricing the shares to match with a cultural meme popular with potheads, because he was unhappy with the reach of his posts, and then literally telling his advertisers to go fuck themselves as they abandoned his platform after increasingly becoming uncomfortable with his online behavior.
That online behavior is, of course, the really mystifying part—why this man has seemingly gone out of his way to give people quite good reason to wonder whether a guy who grew up rich in Apartheid-era South Africa might have absorbed a thing or two from his upbringing which could be considered a bit troubling. From re-platforming white nationalists to agreeing with and endorsing various anti-Semitic comments and conspiracy junk, Musk doesn't exactly seem to want the benefit of the doubt when it comes to his sympathies with the extremist right.
And yet you're not only willing to bend over backward to give it to him, you claim that anyone who believes he was actually doing what it absolutely looks like he was doing is just ridiculous and deranged. After all, once he had finished giving what looked virtually indistinguishable from two Nazi salutes, he clutched his breast with his hand and said, "From the bottom of my heart". Why would he do that, unless he was going for plausible deniability? And why deny anything if you were going to give a Nazi salute? What would be the point?
Because of course, in this day and age, not even someone as drunk with power as Musk is at the moment would think he could get away with saying "Heil Hitler" and openly acknowledging Nazi sympathies. But would it make sense for him to burnish the brand that he's amassing among actual, real white supremacists while denying it on the surface? Could it possibly seem that way to a drug addict who's now clearly relishing the taste of cultural impunity that comes along with being part of Trump's entourage? Is he just doing it because he gets off on the fact that he can get away with it, like Trump constantly does with his inflammatory comments?
I'm sorry, Helen, but it is far from "ridiculous", given everything we've seen from Musk over the past year or so, to wonder if he might be playing footsie with some of the really bad bros he's been cozying up to on what is increasingly resembling Gettr thanks to his stewardship, while he frolics around like a child on Christmas morning playing with the new toy that is the MAGA imprimatur. He's having a rollicking good time sticking it to the American left, all while cozying up to an American autocrat and having business incentives to do so in China and Russia. Power corrupts, as they say.
Are there good reasons for Musk to have given a Nazi salute? No. Are there Elon Musk reasons? Hard to say no.
Go watch an actual video of Hitler doing the salute. Then think for a second that in fact, it is a different movement. And then think that even if it was the same movement, it wouldn't make any sense for Musk to do one.
The whole point of things like the Nazi salute, the Swastika etc was building up the Nazis as a coherent political force. Shared rituals bind people together. Everyone is supposed to do it together, otherwise it has no point. Musk didn't ask everyone to partake in a shared ritual of any kind because it had nothing to do with the Nazis.
My friend, this is not a poly-sci dissertation. We are talking about interpreting the actions of a man who spends half his time in a ketamine-hole, and was jumping up and down like a cheerleader onstage at a Trump rally. The man is not well, clearly has a bad and worsening case of "Twitter brain" (or "X brain", as it were), and seems to be coming unhinged.
Do I really think Musk is a Nazi sympathizer? Hell if I know. Am I concerned about the fact that he's been *acting like one* for the past year or so, and that he now serves at the right hand of POTUS? Hell yes.
It's not a question of whether Musk's views align precisely with anyone's academic definition of Naziism. It's a question of whether this guy is getting too comfortable and possibly even willing to wink-wink with the extremists that he re-platformed and handed a megaphone to, because they are among some of his most vocal supporters these days, and like Trump, this man thrives on the validation of his fanbase. After all, they're the reason he's so rich.
And if that's the case, then the shared ritual you mention, the people saluting with him, are all of the people on alt-right media who *really did* interpret his motion, complete with the plausible deniability of the subsequent "bottom of my heart" hand gesture, as a cloaked signal.
As I mentioned, of course it wasn't meant to be overt—otherwise he wouldn't deny it. Because you can't be in Musk's position and be overt these days about subscribing to certain views, but that doesn't mean you can't subscribe to them. And people who genuinely do subscribe to them, who operate on the margins of society, are accustomed to being restricted to these kinds of smoke signals insofar as support from society's elite class is concerned. They look for the wink and nod, not the shout out.
If Musk really wasn't trolling or signaling, then he deserves heavy criticism for his carelessness and stupidity, for doing what really did look very much like a Nazi salute. It is not fair to tell people that the reasonable default is that he is not being further influenced by the people whose influence we've been concerned about for quite some time.
He doesn't deserve any criticism for being attacked by the left, because the left attack anyone on the right in this way. It's not done in good faith so why engage at all?
He hasn't been acting like a Nazi sympathizer for a year either. This is all in your heads. Read the article again until you get it: this behavior is deranged.
I'm sorry, but I don't agree that it isn't done in good faith. I'm not blaming him for being attacked by the left. I'm blaming him for giving people quite good reason to speculate about what's going on inside his head.
And if you don't think he's been showing worrying signs of sympathies to white nationalists and their ilk since November of '23, when he seconded some rather execrable tweets, I'm inclined to say you haven't been paying much attention.
You can re-emphasize the claim that it's deranged all you want. That's not an argument, and I don't need to re-read the article to refute it. It doesn't help your case any more than with those who say opposition to Trump is deranged. I think it's deranged to simply ignore what's right in front of your face.
Again, I'm not claiming to know one way or another. And as to whether or not he sincerely believes anything like this or is just blowing a dog whistle for the sake of the people upholding the membership of his tens-of-billions-in-the-hole social media boondoggle, or is simply acting in bizarre ways or with fewer inhibitions because of his well acknowledged drug addiction, or perhaps even being just plain awkward (though I am really not too keen on that explanation—he's not a teenager) I don't claim to know.
But one thing I do know is that what he did was no simple politician wave to the crowd, and for Helen to post stills of Obama and Hilary holding their arms up and claiming it's the same thing is to me a far better example of not arguing in good faith.
It's fair to speculate about what Musk wants, given that he's rich and influential. It isn't fair to call him a Nazi because of a deliberate misinterpretation of an innocent gesture, and then blame the victim for getting beaten up.
There have been arguments made in this very article, and I made some more elsewhere in this thread, but I'll reiterate them again to try and help you.
Firstly, go watch videos if for some reason stills haven't convinced you. There are plenty of them on X. Look, for example, at a video of AOC doing the exact same arm motion whilst saying something far more aggressive than "my heart goes out to you". Look at the video of Tim Walz doing the same thing.
The point people are trying to make with these photos ISN'T that if that if Hillary Clinton's arm was angled 10 degrees more the right could have legitimately gone crazy over her Nazi sympathies. They couldn't and wouldn't. The point here is that it's not ever reasonable to spaz out over people waving their arms around unless they're literally saying "Heil Hitler" whilst doing it. Be like the right! Focus on what people are actually saying.
There's a pattern here which is worth recognizing: this belief that people are trying to coordinate secret uprisings through hand signals and obscure phrases ("dog whistles") is one the left keep having problems with. It's some weird side effect of their ideology. Remember the trucker who was fired because someone took a photo of his hand hanging out of his truck making an OK sign? They claimed the OK sign was a secret signal indicating support for white supremacy - being made to nobody in particular, on a road. DERANGED. Didn't stop the left chimping out and blowing up the poor guy's life though.
The left has such a big problem with this kind of derangement because there's no such thing as dog whistles but they are convinced there is. Dog whistles don't exist, they don't even make sense to exist. Hitler in particular did NOT use anything even approximating "dog whistles", ever, but because the left don't seem to actually study WW2 history they don't realize that. Hitler was always crystal clear about exactly what he believed, right from day one, to the extent that he wrote a helpful book outlining not only his beliefs but also how he came to believe them. His rallies were full of very literal statements in which he lays out his ideology: that's why his rise was legitimately scary! People wanted what he was selling. He didn't pretend to be an LGBT activist whilst subtly nudging and winking during his speeches.
I try not to jump to conclusions and accuse people of Nazism. But 1. Musk has said enough crazy and quasi-fascist things over the past few years that he's lost the benefit of the doubt, and 2. I watched the video and it looked like a pretty deliberate seig heil, not a wave or other vague arm gesture. Maybe there's some ambiguity? But again, see point 1.
Helen thank you for your thoughtful, measured, reasoned piece.
I say this as someone who is not affiliated with either party, the progressive left has lost their collective minds and the Democratic apparatus is desperate to climb back into the power seat. As for republicans, they have every right to give the dems s#it but they'd fair better in the end if they didn't rub the opposition's nose in it
What fascinates me about this is that the ADL and even the Guardian have tried to tell the left that they're being deranged about this and it's had zero impact. They were just instantly disowned. I wonder if they're now realizing what sort of monster they've built over the years. Nearly a decade of non stop pseudo-history designed to trigger their base as hard as possible has created a psychosis they thought would lead to victory, but now it hasn't they have discovered they can't turn it off.
To be fair "Is it good for Israel?" is the ADLs only question when evaluating national level issues. The ADL is the ideal type of woke identity organization, just for one group only. But in this case good for Israel happens to also be factually accurate.
Sure, and the ADL has been in recent years a very left wing organization. That's why it's interesting how instantly the left shitcanned them and how little their prior loyalty pledges mattered.
Look, I like about half of what Elon does, was a fan for a long time, recently read his biography, and think he’s the most important entrepreneur of this century (at least), but I can’t read this type of shit anymore.
The fact that even Musk supporters are claiming it was a troll makes something very obvious: Musk did a salute that is nearly identical to a Roman salute. He did it for one of three reasons:
1. To signal his fascist sympathies (either intentionally or a slip)
2. He’s trolling
3. He was some how trying express his love/heart to a crowd with that specific motion.
You can make a case that it's #3, but I actually think it's extremely weird to make that assumption. I've lived on this Earth for over 40 years, and I can count on exactly zero fingers the number of times I've seen someone make that motion in a non-Nazi way. It's certainly possible that Elon Musk is the first, but it's a very strange conclusion to jump to. At the very least, it's beyond dumb to talk to other people like they didn't see what they clearly saw.
Defend Musk all you want. The guy gave a fascist salute on purpose, as a joke, or on accident, but he definitely did it.
#2 seems the most likely, which is also strangely the most pathetic.