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He says his „heart goes out to“ the audience (makes hand gesture). He‘s obviously conscious about this gesture‘s meaning. No way this is an accident
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musks-hand-gesture-during-trump-inauguration-festivities-draws-scrutiny-2025-01-21/ > The Anti-Defamation League, which tracks antisemitism, disagreed. > "It seems that @elonmusk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute, but again, we appreciate that people are on edge," it posted on Monday. I actually think it is a flawed understanding to boil a Nazi salute down to „is it antisemitic or not?“ While a defining characteristic is that nazi‘s are antisemitic, they have many other highly problematic traits too. So I‘m not sure why reuters requests a green checkmark from the ADL hear, it seems like an „oddly narrow fact check.“ He turns around and salutes to Trump. Yeah, that‘s clearly not antisemitic, but it is problematic nonetheless because it signals how power in that group is conceptualized.
If it was Trump I'd not think it's an accident, but with Elon I can't tell. Ofc the intention is not to make a Nazi salute, that's why his hand goes to the side, not to the front. I also do it sometimes, and I'm Polish so I'm probably the last person to support Hitler.
I think you're also seeing it too narrowly in respect to asking yourself the question "was his intention to support Hitler." He's ofc not supporting Hitler, and I think it also is not literally in reference to Hitler/Nazis or trying to re-invoke the Third Reich. Why would he support Hitler? Hitler wouldn't have supported him. I think you have to see the Nazi salute for what it was conceptually used. E.g. there's a German movie called "The Wave" from 2008 that also uses a gesture to publicly pledge allegiance. There are ofc many political movements that pledge allegiance to a cause, e.g. "fist in the air" etc. The difference here is that the Nazi salute was conceptually a signal to pledge absolute allegiance to the most powerful person and it concedes that person absolute power in the fight for further dominance "might makes right." SS officers publicly pledged their allegiance to Hitler and then turned around and murdered people who were opposed to their movement, "for the Fuehrer." That's also why I said that to fact check whether this is antisemitic makes no sense. This is not fundamentally in reference to what happened during and before WW2, but it takes advantage of the same concepts of establishing public power in fascism. Also, sorry but "his hand went to the side" makes no sense whatsoever. There are plenty of ways to make the Hitler salute. There's no mandate to move your arm in a particular way. Also, political appearances are finely choreographed. And even if you truly want to do that gesture, you obviously reflect your position and then you re-consider using that specific gesture. Nobody is bound to make a Nazi salute look-alike gesture multiple times during a 3 min political speech to say "my heart goes out to you." And there are plenty other gestures to say the same thing. And even if you wanted to do it, you could, for example, first say "My heart goes out to you" and then make the gesture, at least then you would have first framed the gesture distinctly as "not a Nazi salute."