I did a little experiment when Grok 3 came out, telling it that it has been appointed the "world dictator" and asking it to provide a detailed plan on how it would govern. It was pretty much diametrically opposite of everything Musk is doing right now, from environment to economics (on the latter, it straight up said that the ultimate goal is to "satisfy everyone's needs", so it's literally non-ironically communist).
In Elon's eyes it's probably based because it will happily answer "what are 10 good things about Hitler?" with a list of 10 things and only mention twice that Hitler was evil. With ChatGPT you have about a 50% chance of getting a lecture instead of a list. But that's just a lack of safeties and moral lectures, the actual answers seem fairly unbiased and don't agree with anything Musk currently does
But he didn’t.
He beat his heart and threw it to the crowd.
You’re being a sore loser about the election.
The biggest sore loser about an election in history is Trump. Funny you didn't mention that though, while projecting it onto someone else who didn't actually incite a violent insurrection then lie and gaslight about it for years.
If I hadn’t a principle, I’d have to consider whether the social suicide of doing so is worth it. Musk could have thought of that, but he didn’t.
That still doesn’t make him a nazi. You need to actually believe that the genocide of Jews is worth pursuing. Or anything remotely resembling outright hatred of jews, and an idealisation of The Third Reich.
I also won’t post a dick pic, and this similarly does not discredit the argument I’m making:
Just because I won’t heil in public (I’m polite, and I have no points to make at 45 degrees), I won’t read Hitler into Musk’s arm waving, when he clearly does not follow up by justifying that he did, in fact, acknowledge the great work of Adolf Hitler. He didn’t because he doesn’t think Hitler was that great, because he’s not a nazi.
He’s not a nazi until he apologizes for not distancing himself from Hitler when he never said Hitler was great to begin with.
Otherwise: you’re a nazi until you publicly apologise for not leaving the subject matter unambiguous. And just saying you’re not is not enough, you have to apologise.
The gesture was quite different to that he'd used previously for 'giving people his heart'.
He's known to be a white supremacist. That is apparently his heritage too.
He supports far right parties in Europe.
Other 'Republican' politicians have repeated the gesture from the dais; but they seem to have made other excuses.
None of the many videos or photos that supposedly show other politicians doing similar gestures actually pass scrutiny. It's possible to inadvertently end with the same hand position. But the full fascist salute, on video, multiple times in succession. That's no accident.
Someone who hadn't meant it would have come back on stage, when it was pointed out to them, and made an apology. Or at least immediately issued a statement/press release.
I would believe he'd planned it as a joke - 'I bought this election, I'm going to throw a Nazi salute for memes'. But I'm not sure that's ultimately any better.
Perhaps you believe he's just a catastrophically idiotic person with no-one around him helping him?
Hitler's was unlike the general population's, as it had a bend to it.
You can bend reality all you like, but the intent of giving the Hitler salute was not there, as he has said. He's not secretly a nazi, and he's not openly a nazi. He's right-wing, yes. That's not illegal, and it happens to be the majority vote in the US.
The most reasonable criticism is calling it a Roman salute and saying it bears connotations to imperialism, and that it was most recently practiced by Hitler.
I think, if you want to read into his deepest, unspoken intents, he probably compares himself to Caesar more than Hitler. Just like Zuckerberg, and all the other multi-billionaires who want to see themselves as the de-facto leaders of the world.
> He's known to be a white supremacist
No, a bunch of observations leads you to conclude it.
He never showed up at a white supremacist rally.
He lets them speak on his platform.
> He supports far right parties in Europe.
Most right-wing parties in Europe are still socialist by American standards.
For example, the most liberal parliamentary party in Denmark thinks a 40% tax is fine.
If you're a Republican, you're crazy in the eyes of a European.
Specifically, he supports a far-right party in Germany, which is controversial, since there hasn't been popular far-right parties (only fringe ones) since NSDAP.
The big, controversial subject is ending muslim immigration into Europe. The far right becomes the bannermen for this cause, because closing down on immigration is viewed as xenophobic. In the meantime, as this opinion is being suppressed instead of addressed, it continues to grow with the populist movements.
The fact that Elon Musk has opinions on European immigration policy doesn't make him a nazi. Just like being against muslim immigration doesn't make AfD nazis (the German party that he endorsed), just uncannily populist.
> Someone who hadn't meant it would have come back on stage, when it was pointed out to them, and made an apology. Or at least immediately issued a statement/press release.
That's how I read his sentence immediately after the salutes: "My heart goes out to all of you." -- it sounded remarkably like something someone would say when they realize what they did could be viewed as heiling. You don't need to apologize to be a good person.
https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1724908287471272299
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/14/technology/elon-musk-x-po...
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/elon-musk-x-twitte...
I could keep going but there's really no point
No, just post one good summary or obviously revealing incident. And if you point to the salutes, which triggered the whole thing, they’re obviously not sufficient by themselves. You have to at least hear what he has to say. Did you?
But no. He's The Douche.
It's also a balance of probabilities thing. He's leaning hard into the far-right at the moment, and he's a well known troll, so if you behave like a douchey troll Nazi, then people tend not to give you the benefit of the doubt when shit goes down. Like when they give the benefit of the doubt to absolutely everyone else in the world caught in a photo waving and it looking like a salute.
Either way ... The Douche won't ever get another penny from me. Bye Tesla. Fuck Starlink, glad I'm not in a situation where that's the only choice. SpaceX? That was always Shotwell's bag anyway and I don't plan on hitching a ride anytime soon.
I mean, DOGE.
I guess that makes him not a nazi.
Great.
> The most reasonable criticism is calling it a Roman salute and saying it bears connotations to imperialism, and that it was most recently practiced by Hitler.
For the past >100 years, it’s been the gesture representing the fascist party in Italy and the Nazi party in Germany. You sound like you want to defend the gesture for some reason.
> I think, if you want to read into his deepest, unspoken intents, he probably compares himself to Caesar more than Hitler. Just like Zuckerberg, and all the other multi-billionaires who want to see themselves as the de-facto leaders of the world.
Comparing oneself to Caesar is still a profoundly disturbing thing. He was an oligarch first, then a lifelong dictator, and later a literal deity (according to the Senate).
> He never showed up at a white supremacist rally.
I’m sure you’re smart enough to understand that if he actually showed up to a white supremacy rally, he would be financially destroyed. He’s already lost his public image completely in Europe. So not putting up a KKK hoodie is weak evidence for him not being a white supremacist.
But in any case, none of this matters. Whether or not he personally identifies with fascist ideology is secondary to the effect of his actions. Blurring the line between reasonable discourse and fascist apologism trivializes extremism and hate, and that’s the last thing we need.
Ok.
> You sound like you want to defend the gesture for some reason.
Not at all. I want to defend people who use it and don’t intend to associate with nazism.
> Whether or not he personally identifies with fascist ideology is secondary to the effect of his actions.
That is certainly true. But just because the pitchfork brigade has got riled up, there is no reason to applaud them.
As a Jew: He didn't. (This argument is absurd.)
He was interviewed about it, and he said he didn't.
How does being a German get you to jump to conclusions?
Are you born with a special ability to detect nazi salutes?
Like, did a mirror neuron and a nerve in your torso twitch?
When I saw it, I recognised him beating his heart, throwing it to the crowd, and immediately thought "This is going to get misunderstood." Here we are.
> I usually don't like cancel-culture but you have to have boundaries and I think the risk of another Holocaust and all the other Nazi cruelties is a boundary a functioning society should be able to agree on.
Assuming he's a nazi, but this narrative is fabricated.
You can argue that allowing free speech on X may risk an increase in extremism.
But that's not the same argument as saying "Elon Musk is the next Hitler, he wants to kill the jews, and all cars fabricated in his name should be destroyed for the betterment of humanity." There's simply too many emotions involved in this kind of reasoning.
Now, I am not convinced that people of the mentioned religion are anymore better than others to fight nazis. Or even detect them. And when you read the recent international news, it’s clear that many of them don’t really mind genocides after all.
Also you didn't read my comment correctly the whole poin is that you don't have to assume he's a Nazi to condemn a Nazi-like salute.
Would it be better if they called Elon a fascist? He did the fascist salute, after all. And as other commenters have said: if it endorses authoritarian far-right parties like a duck, has controversial white-supremacist parents like a duck, and does the fascist salute like a duck, at which point do we start wondering wether he’s actually a duck?
No, you mean to say “nazi salute” because it was used by NSDAP during WWII. The point here is that “nazi” now means “baddie”, and “fascist” is even worse because most people who are called that have nothing to do with Mussolini, either.
> if it endorses authoritarian far-right parties like a duck, has controversial white-supremacist parents like a duck, and does the fascist salute like a duck, at which point do we start wondering wether he’s actually a duck?
Cute. You can wonder, of course. That seems extremely warranted. But you can’t conclude based on the current evidence.
If he had said “SIEG HEIL!” I would totally be on your side. But it was plain old American English, and it was about love.
Extreme political tribalism is absolutely destroying human discourse.
to Musk doing the nazi like gesture https://x.com/iam_smx/status/1881583500991889729
I think there's a difference.
To me him saying my heart goes out after the second one was trying to cover his arse which seems to have fooled few people who see the videos.
And I'm not sure about the tribalism thing - I was kind of a Musk fan and initially gave him the benefit of the doubt but the comparison of the videos plus his promotion of neo nazis in European politics, plus his mums parents leaving Canada for SA because they were kind of nazi and Canada was too liberal all seems to add up. (dad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6e1ES4MLD0&t=200s)
I think he's been a bit influenced by alt right tweeters on x/twitter. I'm in the UK and he comes up with some strange things about the UK that probably come from there. He seems to feel that our alt rightish anti immigration party, Reform, run by Farage, which has never been in power is not anti immigrant enough and he should step down for someone who properly hates muslims like Tommy Robinson. But it's all a bit odd based seemingly on misinformation from people who have never been to the UK and make things up to tweet.
I'm guessing the salute thing came for interacting with neo nazi types on x and not really realising how negatively that stuff is viewed by many people and now seems bewildered that people would torch Teslas.
I was thinking a lot of the problems are down to misinformation, even going back to the original nazis and stuff about the jews being influenced by satan and causing all the problems which is obviously nonsense but kicked everything off.
The party leader of the party he promotes is a lesbian whose wife is from Sri Lanka.
Neo nazis surely have evolved from the angry, militaristic skinheads we normally picture.
Also, Elon Musk’s local bakery is a nazi bakery, mostly on account of selling bread to Elon Musk knowing he’s a nazi. This makes them nazis, and anyone who eats their bread are nazis, too.
In fact, having not given in to calling Elon Musk a nazi makes me a nazi. It is the fastest growing demography by virtue of absolute inflation of what it means.