Some news stations, like 9 News in Australia, had to blur out his arm because the gesture shows support for fascism
The fallout from Elon Musk’s Inaugural salute to Donald Trump’s followers has spread around the globe, with both America’s allies and enemies denouncing the radioactive fascist gesture.
On Monday, following Trump’s inauguration for a second term, Musk spoke at a rally for 20,000 at Capital One Arena in Washington, where he thanked attendees for getting the 47th president elected by slapping his hand over his heart and thrusting his arm in the air — palm down — in a classic Nazi salute. Twice.
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While the Antidefamation League inexplicably downplayed the fascist salute as “an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute,” countries with a history of fascism saw the provocative gesture for what it was.
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“There’s no such ‘probably’ or ‘similar to’ or ‘controversial’ about it. The gesture speaks for itself,” journalist Lenz Jacobsen wrote in Germany’s Die Zeit in a piece headlined “A Hitler salute is a Hitler salute is a Hitler salute.”
“Highly disconcerting,” said Charlotte Knobloch, the president of the Jewish community in Munich and Upper Bavaria, in a statement, adding the same about Musk’s recent endorsement of Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland party ahead of next month’s federal election. Germans “should be under no illusions” about Musk’s support for “anti-democratic aims.”
Berlin judge Kai-Uwe Herbst told the Berliner Zeitung that the gesture was sufficient evidence to bring a charge against someone under German law.
Michel Friedman, a former deputy chair of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, whose family perished in Poland during the Holocaust, told the Guardian that the salute was a “disgrace” and said Musk was taking America to a “dangerous point for the entire free world.”
In Italy — the victim of 30 years of Benito Mussolini’s brutal fascist regime — students hanged an effigy of Musk in the same piazza where Il Duce was strung up following his government’s collapse at the end of World War II.
“There’s always room at Piazzale Loreto, Elon…” the Communist youth group Cambiare Rotta (Change Course) posted.
Today in Milan a student activist group hung a trash-filled effigy of Musk upside down on a gate outside of piazzale Loreto, where Mussolini’s body was displayed in 1945.They left the message:”C’è sempre posto a piazzale Loreto, Elon”(There’s always room in piazzale Loreto, Elon) pic.twitter.com/J1qg1ZNZVf
In Russia, another victim of the fascist Axis powers in World War II, television reports about the salute blurred the gesture to conform with strict laws against Nazi symbols in the country.
Australia, too, was forced to blur the specter of Musk’s Nazi gesture to conform with laws banning it in the media.
Not all of the victims of Nazi and fascist persecution condemned the Musk salute. In Israel, far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a staunch Trump ally, described Musk as a “great friend of Israel,” and condemnation of Musk’s Nazi salute as “a smear.”
Elon is a great friend of Israel. He visited Israel after the October 7 massacre in which Hamas terrorists committed the worst atrocity against the Jewish people since the Holocaust. He has since repeatedly and forcefully supported Israel’s… https://t.co/VkBptanDmp
— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) January 23, 2025
Trump has praised Adolf Hitler for doing “some good things,” according to his former Chief of Staff John Kelly, and said he wished he had generals like Hitler did.
Germany lost World War II and Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker.
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