The video evidence of the CEO's beliefs is quite unmistakable and quite clear (17s):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VfYjPzj1Xw

Worth a watch for anyone in doubt.

Is it really? Don’t be so sure. Fascist leaders NEVER expressed sympathy like “my heart goes out to you”. Fascism in Europe, obsessed with national might, left little room for public sympathy. For Hitler and Mussolini, their rhetoric was all iron fists, not compassion. Zero evidence of it exists in their public record.

Invoking “1984” doesn’t automatically make you profound or right. You sidestep with a quip, offering no counter-evidence or analysis, just a tired dystopian trope. If you’re going to accuse someone of ignoring “evidence of your eyes and ears,” at least bring a shred of proof to the table instead of leaning on literary clichés to mask a weak rebuttal. The video may raise questions, but dismissing the point with a smug one-liner only shows you’re more interested in sounding clever.

It wasn't for you, it was for everyone else who feels the same way I do about what is quite clear. There's at least 3 other prominent republicans who also Sieg Heiled, including Bannon, once Trump's chief strategist, in front of CPAC (the tea party/the GOP): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E9pXCuJnbc

You know that for it to be a Sieg Heil salute one must actually say Seig Heil while saluting?

No I don't. I've never had Sieg Heil lessons.

I am sure it must also be at exactly a 30 degree angle with even a degree off invalidating it as an official nazi salute.

There is definitely no history of deportations, loyalty purges, secret police, cowing of the judiciary and universities, provocations of anti-semitism, big lies, or attacks on institutions that might inform the greater context and there definitely aren't people who have studied fascism at our most respected universities who are warning us that fascism is here: https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000010157022/yale-c...

Europe goes beyond central Europe.

Maybe it’s the fault of my US centric education, but I must be forgetting that part of Europe that had a fun time during WWII. Even the Swiss spent the time preparing for the other shoe to drop.

So did scope of WWII.

Virtually everywhere in Europe, broadly defined, was either directly involved in WW2 or was severely impacted by it while not technically being a combatant.

Americans have a poor understanding of what’s going on with Teslas sales numbers because their market largely lacks the competition that exists elsewhere and so they overindex on lesser factors like Elon.

The real issue is simply that Tesla are attempting to maintain their pricing and margins while the cost of producing EVs is plummeting and the variety of options is increasing.

The result is that they are being severely undercut on price by BYD et al.

Tesla are going to have to either start cutting prices significantly, or accept being a low volume pseudo-premium offering.

I don't think it's just the Nazi salute to be honest. The reputational damage the US has suffered this year is insane and it's getting worse.

Since Trump was elected America has been awful to its allies, specially Canada and EU. Many Europeans, are avoiding spending money on American companies, much less one owned by Musk.

We have been pretty well informed of Musk's shenanigans in Portugal. His sieg heil spread pretty quickly.

Marketing. Being informed of is different than repeated contact with a crafted message.

Those would all affect the rest of the EV market too, but overall that is up.

How about the US EV market in Europe?

There is effectively none, besides Tesla. With the exception of Ford the US brands' Europe strategy essentially died in the financial crisis, and even Ford (which historically was a big player in Europe and designed cars specifically for the market) isn't what it was.

Better value electric cars from China

EV sales are up 25%.

It was widely covered throughout Europe. And widely despised throughout Europe across the political spectrum from left to right. To suggest it's unrelated is a profoundly unserious suggestion.

To suggest that market moves based on antics of a US CEO seems unserious to me.

Cars in particular tend to get bound up in peoples' self-image (to a rather unhealthy degree IMO, but anyway...) Few people would want the association.

Competitors have the same issue, but not the same decline :)

US EVs?

Which notable EV's does the US have besides Tesla?

Oh. We know. It is as we didn't have internet.

His association with Trump didn't help

He went to Auschwitz after being pressured to apologize for some unhinged tweets. This was all before he swig heiled twice on stage.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-68055368.amp

Wow, didn't know that. Thanks.

He also has been known to show up at costume parties dressed as a Nazi commander. (Long forgotten controversy from over a decade ago)

wtf, the only such instance I remember from a VIP is one of the UK princes. How can these people think that such stuff is acceptable is beyond me.

It came up at the same time as the UK prince as a "wealthy folks just do these things it's funny and not an endorsement you pleebs don't understand" sort of way.

For what it's worth, a UK prince is one of the few people or groups of people that I would assume were likely not hiding Nazi sympathies. Their entire country, and specifically their recent royal ancestors, where subject to Nazi aggression and responsible for countering it. There's a long history of dressing up as those you want to lampoon, especially in British media.

Well, there is Edward VIII which as an American who doesn't follow UK monarchy drama was flabbergasted and in disbelief to learn about and which triggered a wikipedia rabbithole after seeing in particular the closing credits of The Crown S2E6

I haven't watched it, and skimming the wikipedia page isn't making it obvious what you might be alluding to, other than maybe him touring Germany prior to the war.

I'm not entirely sure where the downvotes came from since other than you nobody bothered to respond, but maybe it's based on people's belief that Nazis are some special and unique threat or that the only thing that should be thought about when they are mentioned is concentration camps and their treatment of the Jewish people, but they did so much more than just that, even if that was uniquely horrifying for the period. The Jews weren't the only people sent to concentration camps, and overall, WWII cost 70-85 million people their lives. Nazi Germany affected so many people, nobody gets to claim them as uniquely their own boogie men to the exclusion of all others.

He was part of a plot to depose Elizabeth, reinstall himself as king with the help of Germany.

Hmm, from some light reading I'm unsure how active he was as "part of the plot". In any case, that sort of supports my original claim, in that the British royals not only have a history of Nazis attacking their country, but trying to meddle with their royal line and succession, which also wouldn't enamor the royals to them.

Honestly when watching I had figured The Crown was playing it up for drama or invented it whole-cloth because the whole thing was so foreign vs what I was taught about WW2 British monarchy. And that's why the way they calmly deliver receipts (artifacts from the Windsor File/Marburg Files) in the credits triggered a rabbit hole of surreal bewilderment. In fact you will find historians of the British royalty who say The Crown was very lenient in its handling. But specifically about S2E6 there's a section here that summarizes what was in the episode

https://www.history.com/articles/history-behind-the-crown-qu...

I actually ran across that and read the relevant section when googling earlier in this thread. To me it seemed unclear what his motivations allegiances were, just that enough people were worried that he was a piece on the board that could cause problems that he was removed from it. That doesn't mean it was likely, it just means that they didn't want to deal with the complications of having to think about it at all would entail, or to worry about players that would be enticed by it, etc. I imagine in a time of way you try to reduce complexities and unknown as much as possible. Even if a few people have concern over him, it may be easier to just ship him away and appease anyone's concerns if he's not meaningfully important to the war effort. He was made a major-general, but how much experience he had in that role and how good he was performing in it is unknown to me, but I suspect it was at least partially honorific or nepotism whether from the top down or emergent (do I promote the royal or the unknown? Which is safer for my career...).

But that's all during the war, and with one individual of the royals, and I would think the rest of the royals would not be happy going forward with the Nazis thinking they could mess with the line of succession/assassinate they King.

That makes it(for me) so much worse, knowing that he's been to Auschwitz and still decided to do it.

It makes it an expression of his honest ideology as opposed to a thoughtless troll.

I don’t know, it sounds exactly like what a thoughtless troll would do.

So...it makes it worse(for me). Instead of being a stupid and foolish thing he did in the moment of high emotions it just confirms he's an actual Nazi. I'm literally from Oswiecim, used to go past Auschwitz on my way to school every day - the richest man on earth doing sieg heils on stage despite visiting this place is filling me with dread.

The wealthiest man in the world is want for lack of resources? Unlikely. He's 54, he knows what he's doing.

It's easy to assume that atrocities while they're happening are as unpopular as they are after they happened but they're not.

Population level atrocities are impossible without throngs of gushing supporters waving flags and screaming about "restoring the natural order".

Always look out for flags, crosses and people with money trying to hide behind their symbols with reprehensible rhetoric.

If you think Elon could be persuaded to do that, I want what you're smoking.

There's a certain type of person who, when others criticize them for doing some offensive things, their automatic response is just to do it even harder: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/8/8/1786532/-Cartoon-Y...

I will give you some context here - in my high school (India) we were never taught any of the million horrible things Hitler did to people. We were only taught that Hitler was a very prominent leader and an icon of history that always won wars and held Germany and many other countries in his grip. It was only when I read about him on the internet that I found what kind of an SOB he actually was, many years later.

I was so stoned by all of that and the fact that our education and schooling hid that very fact from all of us. So it is up to us to teach kids when they grow up to allow them to know history as it exactly happened, without painting it, when the time is right.

What was the motivation for the curriculum to hide - or even glorify - Nazi Germany? And do those motivations keen the current students similarly uninformed?

I'm definitely not an expert on this but I think India has (well-grounded) resentment towards Churchill, and so the enemy-of-my-enemy effect may have resulted in a softening of Hitler's image and a tendency to downplay his crimes and negative attributes.

Nuance is hard, and so to some people, accepting Hitler as a villain means whoever defeated him must be a hero, so if we don't want to accept Churchill as a hero then we must reject Hitler being a villain.

(It goes without saying that this logic is faulty, but at the same time it's part of human nature and we all have to grapple with it to some extent).

I imagine most of history in India will focus on Britain being more evil than Germany.

More killed by British in India than Hitler killed. plus all the plundering of resources.

https://m.economictimes.com/news/india/independence-day-165-...

"do those motivations keen the current students similarly uninformed?"

I am afraid that is still the case. All of the kids I know within my cousins' families (8-14 years of age), have no idea about any of the Holocaust stuff.

The reason I think is the curriculum takes the holocaust not so seriously and also, the authorities believing that kids are not meant to be exposed to much details about all of the stuff. I remember it was just mentioned as "war" to us. It is still sadly the case.

Also, note that we weren't taught a bit of shit about Pol Pot, Imperial Japan etc. Nobody had any idea about the Nanjing Massacre, Unit 731 etc.

All we were just taught was just "wars" - who fought and who won.

You have to understand that nations who weren't directly involved will only be interested in broad strokes of history. Up until recently you had people in Europe and elsewhere calling themselves Maoist.

Genghis Khan is not demonized in European or American schools either.

He did that last year, yet he sieg heiled this year so the effect does not seem permanent or durable..

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/22/elon-musk...

Apology for what?

The other way around. He went there to wash his image and did the nazi salute about a year after going to Auschwitz. I would argue that is even worse.

There’s a video of him doing it.

It's actually really incredible the lengths that people will go to deny this stuff. Here's Joe Rogan, one of the most popular podcasts in the world, trying to do that, yet of course does not actually show the video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX3dJvHIvRI

Clumsy hand movement is a signature sign of autism/aspergers and anyone who watches Musk for more than 10 minutes will notice he suffers from this a lot, but it's okay to mock people for disabilities when their politics don't align with yours. I don't agree with Musk on any things, but think it's wrong to call him a nazi over clumsy hand movement.

I have aspergers, my hand movements are terrible when I try do them to 'blend in', so I usually don't bother.

I think for a lot of people, politics is more important than having humanity for other people.

Indeed.

It’s probably more related to the fact that EV subsidies were cut in Germany at the end of last year when the government ran out of money.

You’re only getting a tax discount with BEV, but no purchase discounts financed from taxes.