Musk’s Heil Gesture Is Important To The Next Four Years — And Here’s Why – CleanTechnica

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Dozens of world leaders joined a group of fewer than 50 Nazi death camp survivors in Poland this week to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, where more than 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were murdered. The event is unalterably linked to Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s heil hand gesture during a speech on US President Donald Trump’s inauguration day a week ago.

Right wing extremists have been celebrating Musk’s straight-arm gesture, while many media pundits are excusing Musk’s action as the product of a socially awkward person.

“This was no ordinary victory. This was a fork in the road of human civilization,” Musk said during his speech. “This one really mattered. Thank you for making it happen! Thank you,” he said, then touched the left side of his chest with his right hand and extended his arm upward, repeating the motion to the crowd behind him. “My heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured.”

Musk has not explicitly denied the accusation of engaging in a Nazi salute in a dozen X posts that have referenced the act. (Musk also owns the social media site.) This is consistent with his pattern of permitting extremist, dangerous, and antisemitic comments to flourish on the site as part of his self-described “free speech absolutist” mission.

This week, in response to backlash over his heil gesture, Musk professed boredom with the topic. “The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired,” Musk posted on X several hours after he left the stage.

Tired? No. We are horrified. The US is swirling into a sewer where treason is celebrated and the common good is vilified. It is a time in which the US president has granted clemency to extreme January 6 rioters: to felons convicted on sedition charges for plotting an assault on democracy. Upon their release, “two of the most prominent of those leaders asserted, unrepentantly, that they wanted Mr. Trump to seek revenge on their behalf,” as reported by the New York Times this morning.

Getting curious and curiouser, mainstream press failed to accurately describe the hand gesture that Elon Musk made twice on inauguration day rally, which bodes darkly for a pattern of denial and subterfuge during the second Trump era. The Fourth Estate is well aware how images are used as a means of communication and representation in our highly visual social media era, as images generate media memories that situate audiences in particular modes of appreciation and understanding.

By failing to deconstruct Musk’s heil gesture, media channels are bowing to reductions in democracy, separation of powers, civil liberties, and the rule of law.

Signs and Basic Public Perception

Signs communicate certain social and political messages. “Heil” (literally, “Hail Hitler”) was a greeting given as part of the Nazi salute. The salute consisted of raising an arm and saying the phrase “Heil Hitler.” When addressing Hitler himself, the greeting “Heil mein Fuehrer” (Hail, my Leader) was used. The Hitler salute was by no means orig­i­nal. Like many of the oth­er apparatus of Hitler and Nazi Ger­many, it was derived from Caesar’s return as a conquering hero and the assumption that he would be worshiped. Someone who used the Heil Hitler salute was exhibiting a clear, direct, and incontrovertible symbol of subservience.

Known as the Roman salute in Italy, the straight-arm greeting was officially adopted in 1925 by the dictator Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime. It is now banned in Italy, although it is rarely prosecuted.

To many people, Musk’s intention was clear, and Musk’s arm gesture elicited outrage. He drew upon the heil salute to signal deference to Trump’s right-wing policies and endorse authoritarian shifts within US governing — which will benefit him as a billionaire. With the heil sign he communicated ideas, attitudes, and beliefs that move the endorsement of authoritarianism and an Us vs. Them mindset closer to a middle group of acceptance.

Kurt Braddock, a professor of communication at American University who studies extremism, radicalization and terrorism, said the gesture was a fascist salute and “people shouldn’t doubt what they saw. […] And none of it is a laughing matter.”

Oddly, Musk has found some allies in unexpected corners. Several analysts dismiss the heil as little more than a man who was caught up in jubilation of the moment. They conclude he didn’t act on premeditated thought when he saluted the crowd with famous fascist symbolism. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which tracks anti-antisemitism, disagreed with claims that Musk had performed a Nazi salute and, instead, excused Musk by explaining he made an “awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm.”

According to this camp, Musk’s gesture — lame, awkward, self-serving — was less a means to shape and inform the structure of understanding than it was a couple of spontaneous albeit inappropriate motions, according to this thinking.

The Deadly Connotations of the Heil Salute

As leaders on the continent marked the 80th anniversary of the Auschwitz concentration camp liberation, Musk insisted at a far-right rally in Germany over the weekend that the European country must move “beyond the past” and leave behind the memory of one of the deadliest genocides in history. Several leaders made clear that Musk’s advice was not welcome. Musk’s comments on “‘the need to forget German guilt for Nazi crimes’ sounded all too familiar and ominous,” said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Sunday, “especially only hours before the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.”

In Europe, the fascist salute is associated with the hate, death, and destruction of World War II.

In the US on Sunday, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker addressed Musk’s remarks at the AfD rally, asking why Trump hadn’t spoken out against them. “President Trump ought to be calling that out,” said the Democratic governor. “If he doesn’t agree with Elon Musk, if he doesn’t agree with two Sieg Heils at his own rally, and backing a party that backs Nazis, then he ought to say so. Why isn’t Donald Trump speaking out?”

For all his bombastic and duplicitous behavior, Trump is nothing if not a showman. He realizes that we are trained by our culture at a very young age to decipher and recognize signs to gain a wider understanding of our society. Musk serves as a surrogate for Trump on the world stage. Trump is testing out the waters of a shift to rule by oligarchy — he’s seeing how much he can stretch the limits of the rule of law without taking personal responsibility.

New York Times columnist David French offers an explanation for this symbolic trial run of broad new powers of control. Over the last decade, French has watched many friends and neighbors “make a remarkable transformation. They’ve gone from supporting Donald Trump in spite of his hatefulness to reveling in his aggression.” Why has this shift occurred? Pluralism is passé; no longer do we seek to create a community in which historical enemies can live in peace and flourish side by side. “In the friend-enemy distinction, ideology is secondary to loyalty,” French explains.

Meanwhile, while we’re wondering if Musk is truly extremely socially inept or functionally cruel, the Trump administration is methodically attacking clean energy policy across multiple dimensions. As climate activist Bill McKibben outlines in a recent article, the US now has:

• exited the Paris climate accords;
• paused IRA spending;
• halted wind and solar projects;
• gutted the effort to help us transition to electric vehicles;
• lifted the pause on new LNG export projects;
• canceled the Climate Corps;
• closed the various government agencies dedicated to environmental justice.

As our CleanTechnica editor Zachary Shahan outlines, Trump has long hated wind turbines, thinks solar power is stupid and hates it, and trashes electric cars with misinformation on a regular basis. His executive orders throw Biden’s “Green New Deal” in the trash.

Meanwhile, Musk goofs around the globe while the world is burning.