One thing that’s pretty easy to see about Elon Musk’s infamous hand gesture. Donald TrumpThe opening ceremony of is that he worked with consideration. As video of the event shows, he threw his back into it, taxing himself so much that he collapsed from the exertion.
mango
– Aaron Roper (@atrupar.com) January 20, 2025 at 2:58 pm
And then he turned and repeated the gesture in the other direction, in case anyone had forgotten it.
Elon Musk gave back-to-back Nazi salutes at Trump’s inauguration parade.
— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes.bsky.social) January 20, 2025 at 3:07 pm
I’m not here to litigate that mainstream media outlets, always wary of defamation lawsuits and angry MAGA emails, are used as descriptors of this gesture, familiar to anyone. Who has seen WWII film reel? Instead, I want to flag that we’ve been down this road before, during Donald Trump’s first administration, when white nationalists appropriated the “OK” hand gesture to troll progressives.
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To recap: It was a “joke,” white nationalists started around 2015. OK started flashing on the hand signal. As a symbol of racial solidarity. It wasn’t a sign of well-being the way most people do. They usually exaggerate for effect, sometimes turning their hand upside down to make it look particularly awkward and therefore conspicuous. Its purpose was twofold: first, to signal fellow passengers as fascist sympathizers; Second, to plunge liberals into ugly, divisive debates over the “true” meaning of the gesture.
The OK sign was only the most prominent version of the fascist peekaboo, but there are many other ways that far-right trolls like progressives use coded language, only to proclaim innocence and express outrage when at it. The voice is raised.
The troll worked beautifully. Every time some Proudboy or The police Or local GOP officials or online trolls Or Brett Cavanaugh’s assistant flashing an exaggerated OK hand gestureProgressives who understood this strategy called it fascist signaling. In response, mainstream journalists and moderates eager to prove their resistance to hysteria berated progressives as “idiots,” insisting they weren’t “real” racists—from Trump. Despite their love! – but were pretending to be racist to get a reaction instead. They rarely pause to ask why someone who is not a racist would be okay with merely “pretending” to be a racist, especially since acting like a racist means People see you as racist.
The pretzel logic phase ended within a few years, when one of these “ironic” racists opened fire on a mosque in New Zealand, killing 50 people. He flashed the OK hand sign during his arrest. Since you can’t kill people with “irony”, the mainstream media finally had to admit that the gesture was a troll. And A sincere symbol of white nationalist beliefs. No apologies to those who didn’t need 50 murders to arrive at the obvious truth, but hey, at least the scolding stopped.
The OK sign was only the most prominent version of the fascist peekaboo, but there are many other ways that far-right trolls like progressives use coded language, only to proclaim innocence and express outrage when at it. The voice is raised. It’s not just about bashing the left, though. This is a recruiting tactic. After prompting progressives to yell at them, authoritarians will appeal to centrists with some form of, “Don’t you hate those stupid leftists?” Once the fork is in the mouth, they draw their victim in, “But you know, the fascists had some good ideas. Would you like to read some Curtis Yarwin about the need to avoid the dictator-phobia of the past?” Will you?”
Musk spends all his time on Twitter, chatting with far-right trolls, so the odds he’s unaware of how it works are almost nil. Its behavior follows a standard script. By making offensive public gestures, He is now tweeting “Liberals are crazy”.“The ‘Everybody’s Hitler’ Attack Is So Tired.”
But what’s really tiring is the tiresome “Who am I?” The good news is that most of the reaction shows that progressives have learned how to deal with peekaboo trolling. The first step is to refuse to get involved in the “debate” about the “real” meaning of the gesture. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, DN.Y. modeled how to do it, as she often does. After Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Which has led to Trump’s pardon.insisted that Musk merely “made a whimsical gesture in a moment of excitement.” He replied softly on Twitter saying, “People can literally stop listening to you as any credible source of information.”
A large part of peeping trolls is fueling broad arguments by preying on the often false belief among progressives in the power of argument and evidence. These no-go debates drain progressive energies and make it easier for the right to paint the left as “form”. As counterintuitive as it sounds, this “whatever dude” response can make it easier for people, especially fence-sitters, to be open to reasoning. They are invited to trust what their eyes and ears say. It’s a more inviting way to convince people to look at the evidence.
Without wasting too much energy doing a frame-by-frame analysis to determine whether something meets the correct definition of a “Nazi” salute, progressives and smart journalists have learned to spend time on these things. What really matters: context and impact.
One might not believe Musk meant the gesture he put so much effort into. And it’s true! We can’t know with absolute certainty what Musk means, especially since nothing he says about his thought process can be trusted. After not wasting energy arguing about clues, one can point to the bigger picture. For example, Musk not only supports MAGA in the US, but Also the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, an extremist, far-right group. whose leaders have Fined for using Nazi slogans., Holocaust memorials condemned.and declared that Germans should be “proud of achievements. of German soldiers in two world wars.” Musk remains in support of the AfD, although German courts have found that “some AfD members favor a two-tier society in which ‘ethnic’ Germans are given more rights than . People from immigrant backgrounds,” NBC News reported..
Some news outlets have wisely sidestepped the debate over what Musk “means” to focus on a more consequential topic: the impact of his behavior. On this, there is no debate: Loud and proud Nazis were over the moon about the musket salute.
“Right-wing extremists are upset over Kasturi’s right-wing salute.announced the headline in Rolling Stone. Wired went with a similar headline.: “Neo-Nazis love Elon Musk’s Nazi-like salute at Trump’s inauguration.” It is difficult to deviate from examples. Thanking Musk for the gesture, a white nationalist group tweeted, “The white flame will rise again.” Another poster, Who helped create a chatbot named Adolf Hitler.shared the clip with the caption, “Unbelievable things are already happening lmao.” Reporting to this effect is far more helpful than disputing the exact meaning of the word “fascist.”
Most people, if they made this gesture innocently, would be angry about neo-Nazis trying to claim common cause with them. As Ed Kilgore discussed in New York on Tuesday.“It’s an easy way to clean it up, especially for someone who owns a large social media platform and uses it frequently.” All Musk needs to do is “signal aggressively condemn fascism.” He added that a clear rejection of fascism and white nationalism “should be worth a few dozen tweets, wouldn’t you say?”
Musk, however, reserves his anger against racists and seems unconcerned by neo-Nazis praising him. It’s inconsistent behavior to an honest fault, but it certainly echoes the left-wing trolling model we saw with white nationalists who flashed an “OK” sign. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what Musk has in his heart, but how he acts. When someone makes fun of anti-racists and smiles warmly at racists, they are promoting racism. At every turn, Musk’s attitude is friendly and helpful to the worst in our society. As Ocasio-Cortez said, those who refuse to see her behavior for what it is aren’t worth listening to.
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