Right-wing extremists, white nationalists and neo-Nazis are celebrating an alarming move by the world’s richest man.
At a post-inauguration rally Monday, Elon Musk thanked Donald Trump supporters with a gesture that resembled a Roman salute, first placing his palm on his chest and then extending his stiff right arm toward the crowd, slightly in elevation and with his palm down. . This was not an isolated case. He then repeated the gesture.
It’s hard to overstate Musk’s influence in the new administration. The billionaire spent hundreds of millions to get Trump elected and sat through much of the transition period to help Trump shape his cabinet and new administration. Trump tasked Musk with leading the Department of Government Effectiveness, or DOGE, a quasi-governmental effort aimed at eliminating hundreds of billions in federal spending. And in his inauguration speech, Trump also embraced Musk’s life goal of colonizing Mars — as part of America’s “manifest destiny.”
Never mind that South African-born Musk intended the salute as a “Sieg Heil” salute favored by Adolf Hitler’s supporters during World War II, as some online commentators have suggested, it was eagerly welcomed by online extremists.
Christopher Pohlhaus, the leader of the famous neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe, posted the clip of Musk’s salute on Telegram with a lightning bolt emoji (evoking the Nazi SS) and the caption: “I don’t care if it It was a mistake. I’m going to enjoy the tears about this.
Another neo-Nazi leader, Christopher Hood, founder of the racial separatist movement NSC-131 in New England, also posted the clip on Telegram with the emojis ⁉️and 😁.
Andrew Torba is the founder of the far-right Christian nationalist social media platform Gab, which pioneered AI-powered Nazi chatbots. He shared the clip on his account with the caption: “Amazing things are already happening lmao. »
Far-right author Keith Woods, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center has called a “self-described ethno-nationalist and anti-Semite,” shared the clip in an article on is really dead. »
Thomas Sewell, an Australia-based neo-Nazi whose Telegram avatar is a photo of himself giving a Roman salute, posted Musk’s video calling it a “Donald Trump white power moment.”
The Proud Boys Ohio chapter posted a clip of Musk’s video on its Telegram channel with the text “Hail Trump!” »
A section of the white nationalist group White Lives Matter posted a note of appreciation on Telegram, accompanied by a photo of a banner the group had previously run on a highway overpass reading: “Elon Musk Stop White Genocide” . The caption of the telegram read: “Thanks for (sometimes) hearing us, Elon. The White Flame will resurrect.
Alternative explanations for this gesture are plausible. Musk is socially awkward, and he may have been stiffly trying to throw love to the crowd for helping put Trump back in power. “My heart goes out to you,” he said after making the gesture a second time.
However, Musk has allied himself with far-right movements in Europe, including the German extremist party AfD. After buying Twitter, which he renamed X, he welcomed back long-banned white nationalists to the platform in the name of free speech. And his X account is sometimes difficult to distinguish from far-right extremists. In late 2023, he went on a so-called “apology tour” to Israel after responding to a post about an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory about X with the words “the real truth.” He often posts Pepe frogs, as well as other images and memes associated with the alt-right, including recently temporarily adopting the handle “Kekius Maximus.”
