After a critical mass of Americans re-elected a convicted felon as president, I’m not sure what I had been expecting for Inauguration Day. Executive orders designed to horrify one’s conscience and reward a hungry base of supporters? Sure. Going after immigrants, legal or otherwise, and scapegoating trans people? Obviously. The richest man in the world performing a Nazi salute twice during a speech to his supporters wasn’t on my list of expectations.
And to be clear, it was a Nazi salute. You can look at the video, which clearly shows Musk performing the action that was a mandatory greeting and declaration of loyalty in Nazi Germany. He then did it again, as if to erase all doubt. This intentional act of hate follows several events in Musk’s past, which led to accusations of antisemitism.
In November of 2023, Musk responded to a post that claimed Jewish people “have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.”
The user then referenced “hordes of minorities” fleeing to Western countries, which has long been an antisemitic conspiracy theory. This conspiracy theory inspired the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue shooter. Musk responded to that tweet for his 213 million followers to see, “You have said the actual truth.”
Another recent incidence of Musk’s antisemitism was his elevation of the Alternative for Germany political party through a live-streamed conversation with their leader. “I think Alice Weidel is a very reasonable person,” he said. “Nothing outrageous is being proposed, just common sense.”
Members of this party have been convicted of using Nazi slogans while campaigning, and others have minimized the Holocaust and the Nazi era. In January 2017, the leader of the party in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, demanded “nothing other than a 180-degree reversal on the politics of remembrance.” He criticized Berlin’s enormous memorial to killed Jews in particular, referring to it as a “monument of shame.”
These were the people that Musk promoted to his followers by giving their party leader a platform. Twitter has had issues of Holocaust denial during Musk’s era, and a failure to sufficiently respond to posts that engaged in that behavior.
When an event like this happens, it’s interesting to see who most enthusiastically denies reality. Musk himself had tried to dismiss the criticism and mock his critics. If this were truly an accidental Nazi salute, one would imagine Musk would’ve immediately apologized and clarified he meant no harm. He has done nothing of the sort. Instead, he said that “the ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired,” derisively responding to anyone with a mind that was horrified by his hateful act.
But the Anti-Defamation League’s position is a much more curious case. The ADL is perhaps the foremost organization in the U.S. dedicated to combating antisemitism, and they have plenty of worthwhile initiatives on that front. Their response to Musk’s salute was as follows: “It seems that [Elon Musk] made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute, but again, we appreciate that people are on edge. In this moment, all sides should give one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit of the doubt, and take a breath.”
This fealty to Musk tells indicates that an organization like the ADL is so fearful of getting on his bad side and, at this point, his convicted felon of a co-president, that they’re willing to abandon sanity to remain beyond a weaponized Trump U.S. Department of Justice’s view.
The richest man in the world is comfortable saluting the Nazis, and the most prominent antisemitic watchdog group in America isn’t comfortable calling out that hatred on Inauguration Day. This is a harrowing indication of where American life will head over the next four years.
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