Call it what it is: a Nazi salute

Yesterday, Elon Musk was speaking at a rally after the inauguration of the United States president Donald Trump. There he did a Nazi salute. Twice.

I have seen reactions of people saying that his isn't a Nazi salute. Many sources of news don't try to judge it and are reporting it for example as "a one-armed gesture".

Many reactions I have seen online are "Oh he didn't mean like it, just wanted to wish the crowd well", "it was an accident", "no he had his hand on his heart" or even the to me utterly deranged "it's because of his autism" which I think is a grave insult to all autistic people out there.

Meanwhile it appears to me that the Neo-Nazis seem to think this is awesome and the more popular far right is capitalizing on it. I think this will shift the Overton window(the window in which is political statements are considered "normal" and "radical" and "unacceptable" to the population) to the far-right, which I think is very concerning if you value a society in which everyone is welcome, non-violent and tolerant of ideas and science. And I think it has been shifting to the right for a while now.

I speculate that a lot of these comments are copium. If one interprets this as a Nazi salute, then, if your views are maybe (far-) right wing and like Elon Musk, then it could mean that you'd need to admit that Elon Musk is crazy far-right guy or even a Neo-Nazi, and this would maybe cause you to reflect on your own values which could make you realize you might've become extreme as well.

Or, I reckon, if you're not quite so into the right, it would have to admit that the richest person on Earth, one of the most powerful people in the world right now, did a Nazi salute and that might be really bad news.

I think Elon Musk knows damn well what he's doing. There are far-right people in the crowd. He did it twice. Twice. His colleague president pardoned violent right-extremists who stormed a major democratic building. But most importantly: I think it is impossible to grow up in The West™ and not to be taught that you should never, ever do this kind of Nazi salute as it could glorify a horrific regime which systematically murdered more than 6 million people. I think this behaviour is not "an accident", it is despicable.

And I can't believe I am writing this. If I'd do this as a kid at my school, I'd get into serious trouble. If I'd do this at work, I'd probably get fired. And if Musk does it? "a one-armed gesture".

I have doubted to write an opinion piece about this. As this will cause attention going to this, and I reckon Elon Musk knows how to play for attention. But I think it is important to make clear to you: I think this guy is a threat to the society I (would like to) live in.

Somewhere it also feels cringe to write this only now as I feel like this guy has been going insane (while also being uncomfortably cringe) for a good while now. A recent example, he tweeted "Only the AfD can save Germany", a German far/extreme right political party of which members were present at a secret meeting discussing deporting millions of German citizens.

I would also like to point out that nobody voted for him but now he has enormous powers. He holds enormous power over a car company, a huge space company, a major machine learning company, can turn the internet on and off for a lot of people, owns twitter(and therefore can influence public opinion considerably), and has more wealth than the GDP and South Africa. And now he has this weird role in the US government where he probably has enormous influence. And nobody voted for him!

At the time I thought Don't Look Up (2021) was a bit over the top but with the techbro billionaire but now it gets uncomfortably close to the truth.

Oh, and I once unironically thought Elon Musk was a cool guy. I used to even have his name on the 404 page(see source code).(it was a bad idea to create a 404 page with names cuz you never know what kind of people they are or will be)