Elon Musk sparked outrage following a one-armed gesture he made during a speech celebrating Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Musk thanked the crowd for “making this happen,” before placing his right hand over his heart, then raising the same arm in the air, right in front of him. He then turned around and repeated the action for those sitting behind him.
Many on X, the social media platform he owns, compared the gesture to a Nazi salute.
In response, Musk posted on X: “Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The ‘Everyone is Hitler’ attack is so tired.”
Musk, the world’s richest man and close ally of President Trump, was speaking at the Capital One Arena in Washington DC when he made the gesture.
“My heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured,” declared the 53-year-old man, after pronouncing the second one-armed salute.
There was immediate reaction on social media.
Claire Aubin, a historian specializing in Nazism in the United States, said Musk’s gesture was a “sieg heil,” or Nazi salute.
“My professional opinion is that you are fine, you should believe your eyes,” she posted on X, in reference to those who thought the gesture was an open reference to Nazis.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University, said: “Here she is a historian of fascism. It was a Nazi salute and very bellicose too.”
Andrea Stroppa, a close confidant of Musk’s who put him in touch with far-right Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, reportedly posted Musk’s clip with the caption: “The Roman Empire is back from the Roman salute “.
The Roman salute was widely used in Italy by Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Party, before later being adopted by Adolf Hitler in Germany.
Stroppa later deleted his post, Italian media reported. He later posted that “this gesture, which some have taken for a Nazi salute, is simply Elon, who is autistic, expressing his feelings by saying: ‘I want to give you my heart,'” he posted. declared.
“That’s exactly what he communicated into the microphone. ELON DOES NOT LIKE EXTREMISTS!”
This gesture comes as Elon Musk’s politics are moving more and more to the right. He has recently made statements in support of Germany’s far-right AfD party and Britain’s anti-immigration Reform UK party.
But some defended him, including the Anti-Defamation League, an organization founded to combat anti-Semitism.
“It appears that Elon Musk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute,” the group posted on X.
Musk became one of Trump’s closest allies and was chosen to co-lead what the president called the Department of Government Effectiveness.
