Musk salute at Trump rally celebrated by extremists online
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Many people, including several historians, have likened the movement to the “sieg heil” used by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
PHOTO: AFP
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WASHINGTON - Mr Elon Musk’s hand gestures
Several neo-Nazi leaders have shared clips of the viral moment from Mr Musk’s Jan 20 speech, in which the billionaire brought his hand to his chest and extended it straight out, twice, before saying: “My heart goes out to you.”
“Donald Trump White Power moment,” the head of a neo-Nazi group in Australia wrote on Telegram, in one of several posts AFP reviewed.
Many people, including several historians, have likened the movement to the “sieg heil” used by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler – criticism that Mr Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive, has dismissed as “dirty tricks” and “propaganda”.
On the neo-Nazi forum Stormfront, a user posted an image of Mr Musk striking the pose under text reading: “Heil Hitler.”
A chapter of the far-right Proud Boys militia group, whose members were among those Mr Trump pardoned on Jan 20 for storming the US Capitol on Jan 6, 2021
The group offered a slightly different message: “Hail Trump!”
“There is no question among white supremacists that Musk was making a Nazi salute,” Dr Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told AFP.
Dr Beirich said far-right figures were “more than thrilled” and that “generally, they believe Mr Musk’s raised arm is an endorsement of their beliefs”.
The University of Virginia’s Associate Professor T. Kenny Fountain, who studies rhetoric and extremism, said that Mr Musk’s “intention is important, but so is reception”.
“If an eager audience interprets this gesture as a meaningful acknowledgment, we are in dangerous territory,” Prof Fountain wrote on social media platform Bluesky. “Unsurprisingly, it seems many on the far right are reading it that way.”
Mr Andrew Torba, founder of the social media platform Gab, posted a photo of Mr Musk and wrote: “Incredible things are happening already.”
Mr Christopher Pohlhaus, leader of the neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe, shared a side-by-side video edit to Telegram that lined Mr Musk’s movements up with footage of the group’s masked members making Nazi salutes while carrying swastika flags.
Followers reacted with lightning bolt emojis, a reference to the Nazi regime’s SS paramilitaries.
On Mr Musk’s social media platform X, an anonymous account that has Hitler speeches pinned on its page shared another mash-up video comparing Mr Musk’s gesture to clips of Hitler.
“Sieg Heil?? Are we so back?” the post says. It received more than two million views. AFP
