Elon Musk got on stage at President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday and waved the closest thing we have seen to a Nazi salute behind the presidential seal, but, as usual, he will get away with it. In just a few weeks, America will have forgotten the gesture he made and grant the same plausible deniability he and Trump have received for the past few years.
We have to stop letting them sneak in racist, fascist dog-whistles because they do not deserve our charitability.
Musk’s defenders can claim it was a “Roman salute,” an acknowledgement used between soldiers in ancient Rome. However, there is no historical evidence for any such gesture being used.
Instead, the motion Musk made, which is more commonly referred to as the fascist salute, has been used by Benito Mussolini’s Italian Fascist party and is nearly identical to Adolf Hitler’s Sieg Heil.
Musk should know better than to make such a gesture, and Trump should know better than to platform someone who sympathizes with fascists. It is no longer a stretch to assert that MAGA is adopting the language and symbols of authoritarianism, and they can no longer hide behind plausible deniability.
Trump has gotten away with claiming there are “good people on both sides” of a white-nationalist protest in Charlottesville, Virginia. He has gotten away with asserting that Hitler “did some good things.” He has gotten away with mimicking fascists by prosecuting his political opponents and calling them vermin. Musk has gotten away with allowing white-nationalism to flourish on his social media platform, X.
Trump and Musk have been making white-nationalist, authoritarian dog-whistles for years now, and the American people have simply let them get away with it. Many of us have tried to be charitable and granted them far more deniability than they deserve.
We deserve leaders who have zero tolerance for fascism and racism, and at the very least we deserve leaders who are intelligent enough to think before making any gesture remotely similar to the Sieg Heil at the United States Presidential Inauguration.
After just one day in office, Trump, with Musk at his side, has already embarrassed this nation, signaling a very dark time for our country.
This story was written by Joseph Schamber. He can be reached at [email protected].
