Elon Musk is as soon as once more on the middle of controversy after he delivered a suspicious-looking salute throughout Donald Trump’s inauguration.
In direction of the tail-end of his speech throughout Monday’s festivities in Washington D.C., the Tesla Motors CEO thumped his proper hand to his chest earlier than capturing it out diagonally along with his palms going through down. Customers on-line have been fast to level out that Musk’s awkward gesture regarded uncomfortably just like the ‘Sieg Heil’ salute used as a greeting and acknowledgment of rank in Nazi Germany.
If giving the Nazi “Sieg Heil” salute was an Olympic occasion like gymnastics, Elon Musk would’ve obtained an ideal rating of 10. Musk even nailed the facial features. Significantly, Hitler could be jealous. 😳👇 pic.twitter.com/nBxl1Gn1nx
— Invoice Madden (@maddenifico) January 20, 2025
Unsurprisingly, the clip shortly went viral and generated quite a lot of reactions from on-line customers, together with one-time UFC title challenger Paulo Costa who provided his response to the surreal second on X.
“Haha here we go,” Costa wrote.
Musk claims backlash is simply one other ‘dirty trick’
Musk has since commented on the controversy, claiming that the backlash is nothing greater than a “dirty trick” from “they.”
Piers Morgan additionally shortly got here to the protection of Musk, suggesting that whereas the salute was “ill-advised,” the Sultan of Area X by means meant to make use of it as a Nazi salute.
“Elon Musk was very ill-advised to do this kind of salute to denote his clearly stated ‘my heart goes out to you’ sentiment… but he obviously didn’t mean it as a Nazi salute and anyone who says he did is being a disingenuous idiot,” Morgan wrote.
neo-nazis are loving elon musk’s Salute
Even when Morgan is true and Musk’s sketchy salute was nothing greater than an ungainly second, the incident seems to have actually excited the Neo-Nazi neighborhood.
“Incredible things are happening already,” Andrew Torba, the founding father of Gab, a social media platform standard with antisemites and white supremacists, wrote over an image of Musk giving the salute.
“WE ARE F*CKING BACK,” the administrator of a Nazi meme channel on Telegram wrote underneath a clip of Musk giving the salute. Members of the group responded with the lightning bolt emoji, a well known neo-Nazi reference to the SS.
“I don’t care if this was a mistake, I’m going to enjoy the tears over it,” Christopher Pohlhaus, the chief of the American neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe, wrote on his Telegram channel underneath a gif of the Musk salute.
Evan Kilgore, a right-wing political commentator, wrote on X: “Holy crap … did Elon Musk just Heil Hitler at the Trump Inauguration Rally in Washington DC … This is incredible.” Kilgore later wrote: “We are so back.”
