How do you come to that conclusion? Because the backlash was "too much" ? He is still (one of) the richest people in the world, and controls several huuge companies. But he got his feelings hurt, I guess? And that was "too much" ?? Poor snowflake Elon.
The Anti-Defamation League stated it wasn't a salute and that they weren't offended. Rabbi Ari Lamm wrote that Musk has repeatedly shown he's a friend to the Jewish community. David Greenfield suggested people should focus on actual antisemitism instead. Netanyahu highlighted the absurdity of the accusations and pointed to Musk's aid and engagement after the October 7th attacks.
And yes, Musk became a victim. I don't see what his current wealth has to do with it. It's hard to ignore the imbalance where one man drew the world's anger and became public enemy #1. If you call him a snowflake, I don't know what to call all those who might have been offended by his gesture
But plenty of people apparently wanted to see a “not see” salute to confirm their existing political biases and other beliefs no matter the actual intent and context.
Taking a break from Reddit and X and touching some grass generally resolves this self-inflicted mental funk.
> Yes, seeing someone on the spectrum (who’s got no political gesture training) spaz out on stage is incredibly cringy
Saying take a break from Reddit after posting the most Reddit ass comment I've ever seen.
When I first heard about it I thought "yeah right, media is exaggerigating again". Then I saw it, and I mean wtf!
I do not at all believe that's something you do by accident. Twice! Also, he could have excused it or try to explain afterwards. He did not. He just trolled.
You could all then march around the office or even out on the street with your hands raised. Surely nobody but snowflakes could be offended by that.
So? Does that means nobody else is allowed to have an opinion about the salute that he made. Sure he's pro Israel, that's not uncommon at all amongst the far right these days.
> who might have been offended by his gesture
What about the people who seem to be highly offended by people who have been offended by his gesture. What do you call them?
So literally Musk and his pals?
> society’s well-being should stop meddling.
So again, Musk et al.? I'm really confused... what are you trying to say. That only some people are allowed to meddle while everyone else should shut up and mind their own business? How do you determine that? Wealth? Political opinions? Class? Race?
Gosh yeah, all that... getting rid of slavery, and women's rights, and disability support and awareness... Truly, the world is far better off!
The problem is, meddling to interfere with others, and meddling to stop that interference, are not morally equivalent.
If a serial killer is trying to strangle me, and I'm fighting back, you wouldn't deplore "the violence on both sides", would you?
I think Netanyahu had a bit of a conflict of interest here--he couldn't afford to get on Trump's bad side!
Besides, why would the richest man on earth copy a bunch of 1940's socialists who previously socialized their car industry?
Most politicians just lift their arms up and wave like ordinary people. Musk first placed his hand on his heart, and then extended out forcefully in a clear nazi salute.
The Nazis murdered any socialists they could get their hands on.
I can see how it is easy to confuse by let’s be reasonable. The nazis could not have been socialist because that would mean a corruption one time of a system that is based on ideals.
How could you not know the Nazi’s were socialists? That was their whole thing, socialism would only work in a culturally/ethnically homogeneous society
Instead you have chosen to actively support him, harming us, out of spite due to a situation you've willingly blinded yourself to. Seriously? You're citing the ADL? That's like asking the NAACP whether Kanye really said "I love Hitler." Who gives a fuck, I have ears.
"My heart goes out to you" "Taxi!" or just a "I see you guys!" can all be accompanied by a bad arm angle in hindsight. As he obviously wasn't going for that by his own words, maybe we should consider actions more important than interpreted hand movements. And Musk has been loud about AI safety since 2016, giving name, cofounding and funding OpenAI before Sam conducted a hostile takeover and made it profit-first instead of a gift for humanity.
I've seen behavior of a lot of people akin to someone would pejoratively refer to as "MAGA Types" / common conservatives. The absolute majority of them aren't welcoming of so deep /pol/ 4chan meme politicking or signaling. They likely won't take it too seriously, but they sure as hell won't cozy up to it.
When this happened there was no live reaction because people didn't interpret this as such. This has only became a thing later. And he did not even acknowledge the crazy accusations of him having intendedly done a salute, he did not "lean in to it". What on earth would he even gain from that?!
I don’t see even entertaining the idea of ‘he did it intentionally’ meaning if he "intentionally did a n** salute" as sincere. That’s just a painted-by-bias angle to come from, trying to move goal posts. Better be wary of the people who would instead engage in that.
Except, objectively speaking, he actually did NOT do that. He basically just ignored the “controversy” because it was such an obviously false narrative meant only to smear him that I’m sure he had enough faith in most Americans who aren’t consumed by partisanship to see it exactly for what it was.
> At that time, building favor with trump voters was good for him.
Your implication here seems to be that Trump voters, en masse, want folks who are doing Nazi salutes, or am I misunderstanding you?
I think he believes that the subsection of bigotted voters deserve acknowledgement from time to time and that he has a history of such behavior.
It's another example of the 'bully lie', wherein there's absolutely no good faith debate about the point. The purpose is to test whether you will willingly swallow the lie and go along with the obvious falsehood, or you'll put yourself on the side of The Enemy.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/1i6par1/elon_musk_vs_...
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/1i7w4nz/comparison_of...
> .@elonmusk is being falsely smeared.
Elon is a great friend of Israel. He visited Israel after the October 7 massacre in which Hamas terrorists committed the worst atrocity against the Jewish people since the Holocaust. He has since repeatedly and forcefully supported Israel’s right to defend itself against genocidal terrorists and regimes who seek to annihilate the one and only Jewish state.
I thank him for this.
It is in fact important that he is not representative of Jewish people.
Depends on your standards for who is a Jewish person: by many standards (including those used by the Israeli Law of Return), the US has more Jewish people than Israel.
EDIT: To be clear, I am not, in noting this fact, arguing against the parent's argument that (this is a paraphrase) the opinion of the head of a state with a large Jewish population (whether or not it is actually the largest in the world) does not itself constitute the response of world Judaism, either in general or specifically as an exoneration of an alleged expression of fascist sympathies; that position is absolutely correct, irrespective of which country happens to have the largest Jewish population.
/s, just in case.
The elected representative of the country made for Jews which is the country that has highest Jewish population and has historical ties to Judaism has exonerated Elon.
It has symbolic meaning and fretting over a salute and boycotting the company seems performative.
Elected by 23.41%? What about the remaining 76.50%? Also 30% didn't even vote.
Also what about the president of Poland and other victims of the nazis? Did they "exonerate" him?
Of course to be fair its hard to blame a drug addict who seemingly lacks self control for his erratic public behavior.
> seems performative
If those people stop buying Tesla's cars and that hurts its share price its not performative anymore.
> fretting over a salute and boycotting the company seems performative.
Performative actions are still actions, and sometimes deliver results. If those results are as little as make some people feel better, those are still results. That said, it is hard to be more performative than the gesture it self. So if you want to criticize HN users for being performative, you should apply the same standard to Elon Musk.
This was swiftly refuted by tons of people who know who little Bibi is, including many Jews and Israelis who absolutely detest everything he has done and stands for. There are orthodox, mystic and progressive Jews alike who are all calling for his head as we speak. If you actually believe that he represents all Jews, then you lack the education to speak on any Jew but your own.
Their morally bankrupt calculus is that as long as Musk is an Israeli ally, they'll overlook the obvious. In a sad irony, this makes it more dangerous for the rest of us in the diaspora.
So if a Trump made a Twitter post "exonerating" someone who said something awful about America that would be the same? Because he represents 100% of the country.
Almost half of the countries hates Netanyahu and he's only in charge because of the support from far-right.
Regardless of this you think that a certain limited subsection of Israeli population who share Netanyahu and not the millions of Israeli's who don't let alone all the people who are Jewish are not allowed to have an opinion about his actions? Rather a silly thing to say.
If the standard is that low, I could easily produce a compilation video of the likes of Obama, Biden, Harris in compromising positions appearing to show them doing things that they obviously weren’t doing.
Partisanship has turned everyone into dishonest and uncharitable actors, and it’s so unfortunate.
https://www.propublica.org/article/doge-musk-mohammad-halimi...
All in service to a role that he took to ingratiate himself to a head of state and ended up completely alienated from leaving a wake of destruction behind him for absolutely no purpose.
And if anybody has any doubt, it's enough to listen to the guy, and his support for extreme-right.
Do I think it's problematic? Yes, but I don't blame the company or their leadership for it. For grok and xai you can very much be skeptical about the team behind it for it's actions