It was definitely a Nazi salute!

Elon Musk claims he was thanking Donald Trump supporters. Wht do you think?

OPINION

Elon Musk denies the gesture he made at Donald Trump's inauguration was a Nazi salute, but -- to me -- it was a definite aggressive Heil, Hitler!

Just look at the way the "gesture" was delivered.: with a hard pat on his heart and the aggressive move into into the outstretched arm, palm down and fingers together striaght out. Then look at his face that looks like a grimace. It was far from the warm, inviting "thank you" that Musk claims it was.

And if that wasn't enough. He did it again!

Today, Holocaust Day of Remembrance, remembering the thousands killed by the Nazis during World War II, it might not matter what a simple blogger thinks, more importantly, as much as the world's richest man claims it was a simple thank you gesture, a large segment of MAGA land understood what it was. White supremacists and Nazi followers interpreted with cheersvas Musk's signal to them.

Nick Fuentes, the far right Hitler lover who dined with Trump at Mar a Lago in 2022, described Musk’s gesture as “a straight-up sieg heil, like loving Hitler energy.”

FYI: Watch Elon Musk's salute and judge for yourself.

It was not the first time Musk has expressed his admiration for Hitler's racist regime. Born and raised in apartheid South Africa, he could not help but be embued with the values that of the racist culture. He came to the United States in 1992 on a student visa. White-ruled South Africa dropped apartheid as a cultural and political  institutionalized policy around the same time and began transforming itself into a modern democratic nation in 1994. Perhaps, not coincidentally, with the writing on the wall for South Africa's integrated future, Musk became a US citizen in 1994.

"After purchasing Twitter in 2022, Musk personally intervened to restore Fuentes and others like him, who had been banned by the platform’s previous owners," reports Vox. :Two 2023 data analyses found that the amount of antisemitic content on Twitter, now X, doubled after Musk’s purchase. A 2024 NBC investigation reported that Musk’s choices allowed antisemitism and neo-Nazism to 'flourish' on the influential social media  platform, identifying hundreds of neo-Nazi accounts gaining in influence under Musk’s new policies."

As owner of Twitter, which he renamed "X",  perhaps referencing one of the movie, American History X, a film about American Nazis. Musk expressed his support for some of the anti-Jewish views expressed by the far-right extremists

who he welcomed back to his social media platform. In support of one anti-Semetic poster, Musk posted “you have said the actual truth.” He then went on to attack the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Jewish anti-hate group, for “unjustly attack[ing] the majority of the West” and its priorities that support flooding their country don’t exactly like them too much.” 

As a gesture of apology for his remarks, Musk visited Auswitz, one of Hitler's infamous death camps where millions of Jews were killed. Even in the face of the Holodaust, the visit apparently hasn't tempered his views.

More recently, Vox reports that Musk, who some have dubbed the "real" president for his closeness to Trump, has used his platform to repeatedly advance Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party.

The AfD is extreme even by the standards of the European far-right. Some of the policies and activities of the Nazi-like party supports is disturbingly familiar under the Trump regime:

According to Vox, some AfD members tried to storm the German parliament in 2020, inspired by the US insurrectionists tried to do earlier on January 6; a former AfD member of parliament was arrested in 2022 for plotting an actual coup, The AfD party targeting newcomers of color; another leading party figure, Björn Höcke, has called for an end to German guilt over Nazism and used a Nazi slogan in one of his speeches.

This weekend, Musk appeared on screen at a rally for the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party. "I think you really are the best hope for Germany," Musk told them.

"It's good to be proud of German culture and German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything," Musk said.

Then, in an apparent reference to the Nazi era, Musk added that there is "frankly too much of a focus on past guilt and we need to move beyond that."

"Children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their parents, their great-grandparents," he said as the crowd applauded.

His weekend remarks, hours before the 80th anniversary of the "Day of Remembrance," when Auswitz was liberated drew criticism in the US.

Abraham Foxman, director emeritus of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), wrote in a tweet that Musk's speech "helps place the hand gesture in perspective." While the ADL downplayed Musk's motion as an "awkward gesture" last week, Foxman disagreed, referring to it as a Nazi salute and "very disconcerting image."

"The words we heard from the main actors of the AfD rally about 'Great Germany' and 'the need to forget German guilt for Nazi crimes' sounded all too familiar and ominous," tweeted Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. "Especially only hours before the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz."

It speaks volumns that Musk's inauguration "gesture" has not elicited an apology for any possible  "misinterpretation" of his alleged thank you gesture. Instead we get jokes or over-sensitivity and accused of not having a sense of humor.

It is not funny to make the "Heil, Hitler" salute, intentional or not, a mere punchline or a sign of what has become accepted as normal in this new scary America.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AANHPI perspective, follow me on Threads, on X or at the blog Views From the Edge.