Elon Musk hits out at 'media propaganda' following 'Nazi salute' accusations

Elon Musk has spoken out at the response to his one-armed gesture at a speech celebrating the inauguration of Donald Trump.

At Monday’s ceremony, the Tesla boss thanked the crowd for ‘making it happen’ before placing his right hand over his arm and thrusting it out into the air straight ahead of him. He then repeated the action, which many have compared to a Nazi salute.

The debate surrounding the gesture sparked furore on Twitter/X, the social media platform Musk owns.

“This honestly could not look more like a Nazi salute,” journalist Owen Jones said.

At the time, CNN anchor Kasie Hunt remarked the gesture “was evocative of things that we have seen through history” and “not something you typically see at American rallies”.

In response to the controversy surrounding the gesture, the SpaceX chief said on his platform: “Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired."

Musk also quoted a post shared by the X account @libsoftiktok which boasts four million followers. The post questioned why the media failed to express outrage over political figures with their arms raised. Musk replied: “The legacy media is pure propaganda. You are the media now.”

The Anti-Defamation League claimed in a post that is was an 'awkward gesture' and Musk should be given 'grace'.

They wrote: “It seems that Elon Musk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute, but again, we appreciate that people are on edge.

“In this moment, all sides should give one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit of the doubt, and take a breath.”

Others on social media argued Musk was making a “Roman salute” – a gesture made by soldiers to greet commanders in a show of respect. The gesture was later adopted by fascist regimes, including the Nazis.

Someone argued: “He just used body language to say ‘my heart is yours’ also known as the Bellamy or Roman salute.”

Michel Friedman, author and former deputy chair of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told the German newspaper Tagesspiegel that he saw the inauguration live on television and according to him, Mr Musk had unambiguously emulated the fascist salute when he shot his right arm in an angular direction with the palm facing down.

“I thought to myself, the breaking of taboos is reaching a point that is dangerous for the entire free world. The brutalisation, the dehumanisation, Auschwitz, all of that is Hitler,” said Mr Friedman, who belongs to a family of Polish Jews. Most of his family, excluding his parents and grandmother, died in a Nazi Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp.

Musk, the world’s richest man, was a big supporter and a close ally of Trump during his re-election campaign.

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