Yes, Wealthy Cowards Can Still Be Nazis

Some members of the press started equivocating moments after it happened. Maybe the obvious Nazi salute that Elon Musk made on stage—twice, in quick succession—wasn’t really a Nazi salute somehow. Commentators bent themselves into Celtic knots trying to find alternate explanations for what we all saw.

Maybe Elon’s heart was just so full! You know how just one arm goes all stiff when your heart is full. Maybe he was so overwhelmed that he forgot how to wave hello! Maybe he was trying to karate chop a fly. Anything but say that he did what it looked like he was doing, and did twice to make sure everyone saw.

The stupidest explanation I’ve seen is that Elon Musk simply didn’t know what that gesture would look like. Please. The man is so concerned over his image that he jiggered the Twitter algorithm after Joe Biden’s tweet about the Super Bowl got more impressions than Musk did. Musk is so desperate to look cool that he brought a literal, physical sink to the Twitter building because he thought it would be a delightful, fresh pun on the phrase “let that sink in.” (For context, at the time roughly 30 bazillion tweets a day ended with the phrase “let that sink in” in the hopes of seeming politically profound. Musk wasn’t just beating a dead horse with his stale, half-eaten sheet cake of a pun. He was beating the dust of a previously dead horse that had been dug up, reanimated, killed again, burned, and scattered across the dad joke section of a Waldenbooks.) The man is so concerned over how he looked on stage that he kept trying to cheerleader-jump into the shape of an X when joined Donald Trump on the campaign trail.

He knew damned well what it looked like. 

Oh, but did he mean it? Would sweet widdle Elon Musk, a mere billionaire babe in the woods do such a thing? Well, let’s look at his past actions:

· He let Nazis, previously banned, back on Twitter.

· He’s obsessed with genetics and breeding.

· He has supported the far-right in Europe, including Germany’s far-right AfD.

· He has used his enormous platform to spread antisemitic conspiracy theories.

If he’s not a Nazi, he’s been doing a hell of an impression. He’s certainly Nazi-curious.

You do not have to give a man who does the Nazi salute twice the benefit of the doubt. And you certainly don’t have to when it’s Elon Musk, who has been using a nation’s worth of resources to promote white supremacists and fascists and everything that they love.

But how do we know what was really in his heart? Is it fair to jump to such a big and vile conclusion, even with all that evidence?

We can listen to what one of Musk’s toadie fanboys said about it, which was that what he did was not a Sieg Heil, but a “Roman Salute.” How innocent! Wait, what’s a Roman salute again? Must be ancient! Nope. There’s no evidence that it was ever used in ancient Rome. It was, however used by Benito Mussolini to get the Italian fascists all fired up.

…And then the Nazis copied it, and it was modified into the Nazi salute.

It’s a fascist salute. It was an intentional fascist salute, and it was always intended to be a fascist salute. At a celebration for the inauguration of an American President.

That hair-splitting, the sidestep of calling it a Roman salute instead of a Nazi salute is a little game. It’s tiresomely common among online white supremacists, nitpicking distinctions and using insider lingo to wink at each other and feel smarter than the antifascist squares and get away with their behavior when observers who should be calling them out try to play scrupulously fair and give them the benefit of the doubt.

But let’s be clear: It’s also cowardice. White supremacists play those games because while they’ll talk about their contemptible beliefs all day long while they’re safely online, they’re way too chickenhearted to espouse them in public. Even the Neo-Nazis who march around the country “proudly” displaying their hate wear masks to disguise their identities. Because they want the smug superiority of wearing pretend uniforms and using pretend science to pretend they’re the big brave pretend Master Race without any of the real consequences of being a racist shithead. Just when you thought they couldn’t be any more disgusting.

Musk isn’t a misunderstood guy who just got too flustered up there on the great big stage. He’s a fascist who, even with all his money and all his power, is too cowardly to say what he means directly.

That was a fascist salute. Musk knows it. It was read by the vast majority of his audience as a Nazi salute. Musk knows that too.

It does not matter if it’s only the fascist salute that led to the Nazi salute.

It does not matter if he was only edgelording to appeal to white supremacists while he kept himself in his own special mental category that is somehow immune from badness.

It does not matter if it feels awfully impolite to point out that what he did was heinous and flies in the face of our democracy and everything our World War II vets fought for.

It should not matter that he is grotesquely wealthy and politically well connected.

Elon Musk made a fascist salute on stage. He did so twice and in a way that was clearly meant to evoke the Nazi salute.

He should immediately be excluded from polite society. He should be condemned by every public official and immediately removed from anything even remotely connected to our government. Every Democrat, every Independent, and every reporter in the country should be screaming at every member of the Trump administration until Musk is out on his white supremacist ear.

I would call on Republicans to do this too, but they failed to kick the white supremacists out the first time they showed up and now the Republicans run a Nazi bar. (Seriously, click that link. It’s a good story, and it’s important.)

Elon Musk made a fascist salute on stage. It was patently meant to look like the Nazi salute to anyone who saw it. Shun him. And never stop screaming at the officials who should be shunning him until they do.

Image screenshotted from a PBS broadcast.