Photo: Mark Peterson, New York Magazine
Of all the over-the-top celebratory reactions to Donald Trump’s second inauguration on January 20, Elon Musk’s excited speech at Capitol One Arena before Trump showed up to sign executive orders really did stand out. He was jumping up and down, pumping his fist, and agitating his arms as he spoke of Trump’s election victory (which he played a major role in financing) as a “fork in the road of human civilization.” Even if he hadn’t punctuated his litany of thanks to his MAGA audience for bringing Trump back to the White House with a certain stunning arm gesture, Musk’s speech reflected the sense that certain barriers to right-wing politics had been demolished for good.
Slightly longer clip of @ElonMusk making that gesture, twice pic.twitter.com/ei0XCaBghO
— Azi™️ (@Azi) January 20, 2025
But he did make that arm gesture, twice. And to anyone with a sense of history, or any sensitivity to the risk of reinforcing some of the worst ideological impulses in human history, the connotations were unmistakable. The widespread charge that Musk had delivered a “Hitler salute” to the crowd is a bit of red herring. Yes, the stiff-armed, palm-down gesture was deployed by the Nazis. Indeed, it replaced the standard military salute in the Wehrmacht and became an obligatory salutation in the Third Reich. But more accurately, it’s a fascist salute, pioneered in Mussolini’s Italy and deployed by Franco’s Falangist movement in Spain and by the Ustaše tyrants of Croatia, among others. To this day, neofascists around the world thrust their right arms forward in this very gesture to shock sensitivities and display their excitement at a “fork in the road of civilization” they perceive in the revival of far-right politics.
Was Musk aware of this when he took the stage on Monday? Was the gesture a deliberate screw-you moment of own-the-libs trolling designed to shock consciences and thrill MAGA bully boys? I can’t peer into Elon Musk’s soul, so I can’t tell you; perhaps he was just being “exuberant” or extending his “heart” to the crowd, along with his thanks. One defense of him that I cannot credit, though, is this one from the no-enemies-to-the-right voice of Christopher Rufo:
It’s not 2020 anymore. You can’t convince America that an autistic man sharing his heart with the crowd is a “Heil Hitler salute.” The era of cancellation is officially over. https://t.co/OPTymlH7wi
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) January 21, 2025
Without the autism excuse, this is pretty much how Musk himself reacted:
Frankly, they need better dirty tricks.
The “everyone is Hitler” attack is sooo tired 😴 https://t.co/9fIqS5mWA0
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 21, 2025
The world’s richest man — and one of the most powerful as well — is far from stupid. And for that matter, there are some associations (if not that many) that do still earn “cancellation,” at least informally.
Fortunately, there is an easy way to clear this up, particularly for someone who owns a major social-media platform and uses it very often: To clarify his “gesture,” he can simply make the gesture of denouncing fascism aggressively. It’s probably a good idea anyway, given Musk’s regular interventions in European politics to back far-right political movements. If, for example, Musk is right to scoff at suggestions that the AfD party he has called the only hope for Germany is not at all the assortment of neo-Nazis many Germans fear it is, then Musk could probably help them by attacking neo-Nazism very explicitly and explaining why it’s deplorable and distinguishable from AfD. That should be worth a few dozen tweets, wouldn’t you say? He could also offer similar disdain toward the neofascists who undoubtedly do back Musk’s buddies in the Reform U.K. Party, which the tech titan seems to be trying to push to the right. For dessert, the proprietor of X might want to make it clear that while he supports free-speech rights for America’s own neofascists, he thinks they are a bunch of evil thugs who should stay many miles away from MAGA (and from the U.S. Capitol).
A few gestures like this might convince people that Elon Musk isn’t himself a neofascist, and wouldn’t think of emulating one to spur outrage in respectable circles. Then we could all move on to assess his contributions to American government via the DOGE initiative without the suspicion that it will resemble Mussolini’s March on Rome.
