On Elon Musk’s straight-arm salute and those who follow him
This essay originally published on Medium on Jan. 23, 2025.
This bird flew the Twitter coop for good the other day. For this former Tweep, Elon Musk had just gone two steps two far with his Nazi salutes at Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025.
I posted my final tweet on the site formerly known as Twitter and deleted my account.
It was a long time coming. Musk’s debasing of his platform ever since he took over its ownership was a turnoff. His increasingly erratic rants and ravings about Trump and other right-wing figures — even extremists — was troubling. Also, ‘X’ was just becoming too toxic.
But, hey, this is free speech right? I’m a journalist and that’s supposed to be sacred territory.
But Nazi salutes?
Calling out Musk and deleting my account was the easy part. In normal times, it would seem obvious that his straight-arm gesture — which Musk did a second time for good measure, with his Mussolini-like jaw thrust forward and biting his bottom lip for added emphasis — was an obvious throwback to the ‘Heil Hitler’ salutes of Nazi Germany. But these are not normal times and people — even good people — are not talking and thinking in normal ways.
I know this because even some people who are close to me and who I love dearly seem to be excusing the behaviour of the likes of Musk and Trump. They’re making excuses for their dangerous actions and language and even showing support for them.
I suspect the reason is rage. Also, fear and uncertainty.
People are pissed everywhere, including my country where Justin Trudeau who recently resigned as Canadian prime minister has been despised as the antichrist. People are turfing out governments all over, protesting loudly and sometimes dangerously, and they’re just spitting mad. About immigration. About the cost of goods. About unaffordable homes. About the economy. Lots of things, really.
When Trump won the U.S. election it came as a surprise that some people, who I have always thought were level-headed and decent, thought he could do some good.
“I don’t care for him personally, but he may be good for the country,” a friend texted me.
I thought he was joking. He wasn’t.
He followed up with a YouTube clip of Elon Musk being interviewed on Joe Rogan’s podcast.
Later, over beers, he asked if I watched it.
“Dude, why the fuck would I want to watch a fuckin’ billionaire know-it-all being interviewed by some shit who isn’t a bona fide journalist,” was my response. “Joe Rogan is no Walter Cronkite.”
When Musk stiff-armed his way into infamy, I took the opportunity to ask my friend if he still thinks I should listen to him.
His response? He said it was “rediculous” (sic) to call it a Nazi salute adding, “He said his heart goes out to the people and made that gesture. They’re just being malicious.”
I called bullshit on that, reminding my friend that Musk did it twice and that such a salute would be illegal in Germany where the people there are unfortunately too familiar with its dark history.
“A Nazi salute is straight forward in front of you,” my friend responded, “not off to the side like he did.”
I think I understand how the face palm creator was feeling on the day he sent his emoji out to the world.
Sadly, my friend isn’t the only one ignoring the obvious and excusing the abnormal. I also can’t help but feel that something fundamental is happening — a tectonic shift has occurred under our feet and even the people who are closest to us and who we admire most have fallen into the dark abyss. I’ve seen it happen before during the anti-vaccine hysteria as well as throughout Trump 1.0 and 2.0.
To say this is not to suggest that we need to be politically correct or ‘woke,’ to use the disparaging buzzword of Musk, Trump and other right-wingers. What I’m saying is that you can be a dear family member or friend and we can disagree on a wide range of things: politics, philosophy, the books we read, the music we listen to and the movies we watch. That’s healthy and human and I have had many a spirited debate on all those subjects with the people closest to me.
What I’m talking about is fundamental goodness and a basic common set of principles that we can agree on: truth, honesty, human decency, respect for others. How about kindness?
When someone — even a close friend — starts drinking the Kool-Aid, I’m not imbibing on that toxic cocktail. I’m not engaging in any silly debate where we split hairs by measuring the degree of Musk’s arm in his gesture to determine if it falls within the range of Nazi or not.
Musk’s gesture spawned all kinds of reaction — from shock horror to rage to humour like the helpful illustration above.
But in these abnormal times, he also has his defenders.
The U.S. Anti-Defamation League (ADL), to its everlasting shame as a neutered toothless watchdog playing obsequious servant to Musk and Trump, actually excused the gesture on X.
“All sides” should be given the benefit of the doubt? That reminds me of Trump’s response to a reporter’s question about neo-Nazis at the Aug. 15, 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville, VA:
“Excuse me, they didn’t put themselves down as neo-Nazis, and you had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides,” Trump said.
As Carlyn Beccia wrote on Medium, the Germans have a saying: “If you have 10 people and 1 Nazi sitting at a dinner table and willingly eating together, you have 11 Nazis.”
There have been other rationalizations and excuses for Musk’s inexcusable gesture.
There are even those who have suggested the gesture was something that those with autism do. Beccia responded, “Maybe autistic Nazis. Every autistic person I know prefers a handshake.”
Shamiha Said, who writes about Neodiversity and whose Medium profile lists her as a “Number One writer” for autism, got right to the heart of the matter in the opening sentence of her essay:
“I can’t believe that I have to clarify this, but being autistic does not make you signal a ‘Nazi Salute’, and his actions have everything to do with being a true white nationalist rather than being autistic.”
Musk himself poo-pooed his gesture saying (like a bully who just beat up some small kids in his shit-spattered X playground and laughed at the bloody mess he left on their faces): “Frankly, they” — presumbly the ‘woke’ radical left, he probably means here — “need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is soo tired.”
No, there’s nothing about Hitler that’s “soo” tired you demented billionaire demagogue worshiper. Your Nazi salute was a loud dog whistle to all the right-wing neo Nazis out there cheering on your orange hero, Trump.
“The White Flame will rise again,” a chapter of the white nationalist group White Lives Matter reportedly posted on Telegram in response to Musk’s Heil Trump. That group’s very name is described by the ADL itself as “a white supremacist phrase” used by neo Nazi groups including the Ku Klux Klan.
What Hitler wrought was evil and if it happened once, something like it can happen again, even in America. Remember George Santayana?
Until that straight-arm Nazi salute, I overlooked Musk’s over-the-top Trump enthusiasm. I even chuckled when I saw him jumping up and down like a little girl at a Taylor Swift concert during a Trump rally in the fall.
But this?
No this — like Jake Blues who I alluded to in my Twitter signoff — this was the final straw. Why, I can’t stand to even look at the logo Musk adopted (after he ditched the cute blue bird) without seeing similarities to the Nazi symbol. I wonder if he was tempted to put the ‘X’ on a red background.
No Elon, this is too far.
We Italians also have our gesture. It goes like this.
Claudio D’Andrea has been writing and editing for newspapers, magazines and online publications for about 40 years and has published a book of short fiction, Stories in the Key of Song. Visit him at claudiodandrea.ca or read his stuff on LinkedIn and Medium.com. You can follow him (for now) on Facebook but don’t bother looking for him on X.
Claudio D'Andrea 
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