(AFP) – Elon Musk’s hand gestures at an inauguration event for US President Donald Trump, which quickly drew comparisons to Nazi salutes, appear to have resonated in some far-right extremist spaces online. Several neo-Nazi leaders have shared clips of the viral moment from Musk’s Monday speech, in which the billionaire brought his hand to his chest and extended it straight out, twice, before saying: “My heart goes out to you.”
“Donald Trump White Power moment,” the head of a neo-Nazi group in Australia wrote on Telegram, in one of several posts AFP reviewed. Many people, including several historians, have likened the movement to the “sieg heil” used by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler — criticism that Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO, has dismissed as “dirty tricks” and “propaganda.”
On the neo-Nazi forum Stormfront, a user posted an image of Musk striking the pose under text reading, “Heil Hitler.” A chapter of the far-right Proud Boys militia group, whose members were among those Trump pardoned Monday for storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, also shared video of the moment on Telegram. The group offered a slightly different message: “Hail Trump!”
“There is no question among white supremacists that Musk was making a Nazi salute,” Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told AFP. Beirich said far-right figures were “more than thrilled” and that “generally, they believe Musk’s raised arm is an endorsement of their beliefs.”
The University of Virginia’s T. Kenny Fountain, who studies rhetoric and extremism, said that Musk’s “intention is important, but so is reception.” “If an eager audience interprets this gesture as a meaningful acknowledgment, we are in dangerous territory,” Fountain wrote on Bluesky. “Unsurprisingly, it seems many on the far-right are reading it that way.”
Andrew Torba, founder of the social media platform Gab, posted a photo of Musk and wrote, “Incredible things are happening already.” Christopher Pohlhaus, the leader of the neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe, shared a side-by-side video edit to Telegram that lined Musk’s movements up with footage of the group’s masked members making Nazi salutes while carrying swastika flags. Followers reacted with lightning bolt emojis, a reference to the Nazi regime’s SS paramilitaries.
On Musk’s social media platform X, an anonymous account that has Hitler speeches pinned on its page shared another mashup video comparing Musk’s gesture to clips of Hitler. “Sieg Heil?? Are we so back?” the post says. It received more than 2 million views. – Bill MCCARTHY
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