First provocation of the Trump era or just a clumsy gesture linked to excitement? During a meeting of the 47th American president on Monday in Washington, a few hours after his inauguration, billionaire Elon Musk thanked the crowd on Monday for allowing Trump’s return to the White House, before hitting his left chest with the right hand, then extend your arm with your palm open. He then repeated the gesture, turning to the rest of the crowd behind him.
Historian Claire Aubin, a specialist in Nazism in the United States, estimated that Elon Musk’s gesture was indeed a “sieg heil”, the Nazi salute.
“Well, it didn’t take long,” Democratic congressman Jimmy Gomez criticized on X. “It seems like he had it inside him for a while and he was finally able to let it go,” said former Democratic congresswoman Cori Bush.
Musk denounces “a twisted move”
In recent weeks, Elon Musk has increased his declarations of support for the far-right German party AfD, but also for the far-right Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, or for the British anti-immigration party Reform UK.
During the night, the boss of X, SpaceX and Tesla denounced in a post “a twisted move”, describing this “attack” as “totally worn out”.
“Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is so tired,” he wrote.
For Brandon Galambos, a 29-year-old pastor who was present in the meeting room, the businessman’s gesture was above all “humorous”. “He’s very funny and he uses sarcasm a lot,” he said. “Obviously the left is going to pick up on this and say he’s a Nazi or whatever, but I think it was just humorous the way he did it. »
-“A clumsy gesture in a moment of enthusiasm”
The ADL association for the fight against anti-Semitism, which has clashed with the billionaire in the past, this time came to his defense. “It appears that Elon Musk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute,” the organization wrote on X.
For historian Aaron Astor, the billionaire’s salute should not be categorized as Nazi.
“I have criticized Elon Musk many times for letting neo-Nazis pollute this platform,” he wrote on X before adding: “But this gesture is not a Nazi salute. It’s a socially awkward hand signal from an autistic man where he says to the crowd ‘my heart goes out to you’.
Elon Musk announced in 2021 that he had Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism.
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