Elon Musk responds after backlash over gesture at Trump Inauguration
January 21, 2025 21:05(Image source from: Twitter.com/teslaownersSV)
Elon Musk sparked outrage after he made a one-handed gesture during a speech at President Donald Trump's inauguration. After thanking the crowd for making it, Musk placed his right hand over his heart and extended his arm straight in front of him. Then he turned around and repeated the same thing to the people sitting behind him. Many on his social networking platform X compared the gesture to a Nazi salute. In response, Musk wrote on X: “Frankly they need more dirty tricks. I'm tired of the 'Everyone is Hitler' attack." Musk, the world's richest man and a close ally of President Trump, was speaking at the Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., when he made the move. “My heart goes out to you. Thanks to you, the future of civilization is guaranteed,” said the 53-year-old after saluting with the second hand. It was immediately met with strong reactions on social networks. Claire Aubin, a historian specializing in Nazism in the United States, said the mask gesture was a “Sieg Heil,” or Nazi salute.
My talk today at the Presidential Parade
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 21, 2025
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Addressing those who believe the gesture was an obvious reference to the Nazis, he said: "My professional opinion is that you are fine, you have to trust your eyes.""We have a historian of fascism here. It was a Nazi salute, and it was also a very militant salute,” said Ruth Ben-Gyatt, a history professor at New York University. Andrea Struppa, a close ally of Mr. Musk who is in a relationship with Italy's far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, posted a video of Mr. Musk titled "The Roman Empire returns from its Roman salute." This was reported by the Italian media. The Roman salute was widely used in Italy by Benito Mussolini's Fascist Party and later adopted by Adolf Hitler in Germany. According to Italian media, Stropa later deleted the post. "The gesture that some people confuse with a Nazi salute was just Elon, who has autism, expressing his feelings by saying, 'I want to give you my heart,'" he later wrote in a post. “That’s exactly what he said on the microphone. Ilan hates extremists!”.
The gesture comes at a time when Musk's politics have moved increasingly to the right. Most recently he supported the far-right AfD party in Germany and the British anti-immigration party Reform UK. But others have also defended him, including the Anti-Defamation League, an organization that fights anti-Semitism. “It looks like Elon Musk made an awkward move in a moment of passion and not in a Nazi salute,” the group wrote in X. Mr. Musk has become one of Mr. Trump’s closest allies and has been used as a guide used for the president's policies.