Elon Musk, Nazi salutes and the reactionary redefinition of fascism

Blog post by Aaron Winter, Lancaster University, UK; Co-Editor, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power

In the past, I’ve warned against seeing Trump and fascism as the ultimate threat(s) because they can serve as extreme, exceptional and, in the case of the former, individualised distractions from problems in the wider system, mainstream politics and liberal democracy in ways that can position these as a bulwark despite their role in mainstreaming the far right and upholding the same inequalities and injustices. Then there was Musk’s Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration and questions about what it meant. In many ways, Musk may serve the same purpose for Trump as the latter has for American society and politics by making him look less illiberal, extreme and scary. That does not mean we should not be concerned about Trump or more importantly fascism but also be attuned to the inequalities and injustices in the system, mainstream and democracy that may not only be distracted from but also justified, exploited and exacerbated by it. We see this most acutely in how the liberal mainstream has embraced the war on ‘woke’ and migrants in order to prevent something worse. Something that, despite or possibly because of this, has been emboldened and is already occurring.

Of course, few expected much from Trump’s second inauguration on 20 January 2025. As much as many feared the new administration would oversee the rise of fascism and collapse of American Democracy, there also seemed to be an atmosphere of resignation. At the very least, many probably thought that he could not possibly do worse than in his appearance on 6 January 2021 just prior to the last inauguration. If anything, it was the events of that day that led many to assume it would not happen again, either because Trump would not get re-elected or his victory would at least satisfy the extremists. Everything seemed to be going as expected with the typical combination of procedure and ritual, albeit with extra nationalism, glitz and guests. The latter included far right celebrities such as former head of Breitbart and Trump Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and X CEO Elon Musk, as well as other tech bros. One notable guest, Brexit and UKIP funder Arron Banks could not attend his own Stars and Stripes and Union Jack Party because he was denied entry to the US. This led to outrage from those more often heard demanding tougher border controls. 

While Trump was the main attraction, he was overshadowed when Musk performed two Nazi ‘Roman’ salutes during his speech following the swearing-in ceremony and reference to a new ‘golden age’. The salute, which involved his putting his right hand to his heart and then shooting it up at an angle with the palm facing down occurred as he thanked the audience, saying ‘It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured!’. Despite the obvious meaning, many rushed to defend Musk, just as they had Trump following Unite the Right and 6 January.

Excusing the inexcusable
One line of defence was to attribute the salute to Musk having autism. This was particularly insufficient, insensitive and offensive as it came from sources without expertise and implied that it is a feature of autism or neurodivergence more generally as opposed to being a feature of his politics and ideology or fascism itself, shared, supported and enabled by a great number of institutions, people and platforms. It also made me wonder how many of these defenders also bemoan the alleged increase in such diagnoses amongst the young. This is a well-established reactionary trope that is, ironically, used to represent them as avoiding reality and responsibility. It was of course also attributed to Musk ‘trolling’ liberals. An excuse which implied that it was an intentional but insincere Nazi salute.

Another line of defence was to deny the accusation itself, often by those leveraging their credentials to do so. In Hitler, Musk, and the Art of the Smear, Gerald and Trisha Posner, citing their expertise as co-founders of Antisemitism Watch who ‘know real Nazi and fascist rhetoric and actions’ rejected such accusations as the product of uninformed young people and left ideology: ‘Almost 40% of young people get their news from TikTok. They may not know much about history, but they know that Hitler and Nazis are bad. It is why the far left takes every opportunity to paint the Trump administration and its top supporters as Nazis’. They cited well known young left-wing offenders who get their news from Tik Tok: PBS, The Guardian, and The Atlantic. Adding ‘When we watched the video clip, we thought it nothing more than him reaching out to the large crowd in a moment of intense excitement’. Historian Niall Ferguson, sharing a post by Gerald Posner and link to the article on X, said, ‘I strongly agree with this. No serious scholar of the Third Reich would confuse @elonmusk's exuberant gestures with the Hitler salute’. In saying this, Ferguson ignored not only NYU historian, Ruth Ben-Ghiat whose post on X ‘Historian of fascism here. That was a Nazi salute’ was actually quoted in the article. To the Posners, more than merely being incorrect, ‘… the Nazi analogies feed a dangerous and false narrative.  Moreover, their cavalier and inauthentic use denigrates the memory of those who died in the Holocaust from history’s real Nazis’.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) also denied it was a Nazi salute and attributed it to generalised excitement. To quote from their post on X: ‘It seems that @elonmusk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute, but again, we appreciate that people are on edge. In this moment, all sides should give one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit of the doubt, and take a breath. This is a new beginning. Let’s hope for healing and work toward unity in the months and years ahead’.

On antisemitism and Israel
It may have seemed like an odd statement to come from the ADL, particularly in light of their mandate for opposing antisemitism and safeguarding the memory of the Holocaust, as well as their expressed concerns about the rise in antisemitism in the current context and social media, and from X and Musk himself specifically. On 15 November 2023, in a reply to a post on X claiming that Jewish people ‘have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them’, which evoked the great replacement, Musk replied, ‘You have said the actual truth’. In response to Musk, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt posted: ‘At a time when antisemitism is exploding in America and surging around the world, it is indisputably dangerous to use one’s influence to validate and promote antisemitic theories. #NeverIsNow’. Musk responded claiming, ‘The ADL unjustly attacks the majority of the West, despite the majority of the West supporting the Jewish people and Israel. This is because they cannot, by their own tenets, criticize the minority groups who are their primary threat’. He also accused the ADL of pushing ‘de facto anti-white racism’. Just prior to this, in September 2023, Musk threatened to sue the ADL because he alleged that their accusations about antisemitism on X impacted advertising revenue, stating the organisation ‘has been trying to kill this platform by falsely accusing it & me of being anti-Semitic’.

Despite this, the ADL took a different line on the salute. Musk’s earlier threat and increasing power and influence may have been a factor in this, as was their mutual support for Israel post-7 October. This was pointed to by Musk in his post about the West supporting Israel and bore fruit a day after the original offending tweet on 16 November 2023 when Greenblatt praised Musk for banning the term ‘decolonization’ and phrase ‘from the river to the sea’ on X, saying, ‘I appreciate this leadership in fighting hate.’ What were clearly not an issue, were all the hateful terms, phrases and figures that were encouraged or invited back in Musk’s fight against ‘wokeness’ and ‘cancel culture’. This ‘redemption’ was consolidated in January 2024 when Musk visited Auschwitz, at the behest of a number of Jewish communal leaders, in honour of Holocaust Memorial Day. Perhaps on 20 January 2025, Musk was still benefitting from the redemption offered from this support. Even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined in to defend Musk, who he referred to as ‘a great friend of Israel’ ‘being falsely smeared’, adding: ‘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’.

Whitewashing fascism and genocide
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that those defending or denying what has been widely condemned as genocide might also make excuses for fascism or even friends with fascists. In recent years, and even more since 7 October, many governments. Figures, institutions and communal organisations, including the ADL, have chosen to defend Zionism and Israel over antisemitism and Jews. They have done so by not only conflating antisemitism with anti-Zionism, but also seeing the latter as the only or main manifestation that matters, even in the face of fascists and the far right, and weaponising it against critics and common enemies they share with Trump, Musk and the far right: Palestinians, Muslims and the left. The ADL even included pro-Palestinian activists of in their hate group database.

Like antisemitism, the Holocaust, to which 7 October is compared, has been co-opted by Israel. This is something we saw explicitly in Netanyahu’s defence of Musk. One of the most obscene examples of this was when the Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, wore a yellow star to a Security Council meeting in October 2023. The Posners’ point about denigrating the memory of those who died in the Holocaust, by labelling what Musk did a Nazi salute, works the other way. To excuse or deny Nazi rhetoric and actions, such as Musk’s denigrates that memory and exposes Jews and Palestinians to harm. This can be seen in the genocide and mainstreaming of the far right, as well as the way anti-Zionist Jews are treated. This includes the ADL taking legal action against Jewish Voice for Peace and Bannon recently stating, ‘The number one enemy to the people in Israel are American Jews that do not support Israel and do not support MAGA’ (a twist on antisemitic accusations of dual loyalty). 

The denial of genocide and representation of 7 October as another Holocaust is often consolidated by the claim that Hamas is worse than the Nazis, as Netanyahu’s advisor Mark Regev did soon after 7 October. The Prime Minister himself referred to them as merely the ‘New Nazis’. We also saw this comparison when Douglas Murray  claimed on Sky that, unlike Hamas who ‘rejoiced’ and boasted’ about their crimes, the Nazis at least felt ‘some shame’. He also shared Andrew Roberts’ Washington Free Beacon article ‘What Makes Hamas Worse Than the Nazis’. This serves not only to justify Israel’s actions and repress criticism, as well as demonise Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims using racist colonial tropes, but also to both minimise the Holocaust and whitewash Nazis. It is worth noting that Murray is also the author of the great replacement retread The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam and, like Musk and Trump, has a long history of mainstreaming the far right.

Feeding the far right
Even Musk did not deny it was a Nazi salute, saying his critics need ‘better dirty tricks’ because such attacks are ‘sooo tired’. While many more establishment figures rushed to defend him, the far right openly celebrated it. White Lives Matter posted: ‘Thanks for (sometimes) hearing us, Elon. The White Flame will rise again’. Jon Minadeo II of the Goyim Defense League said it represented ‘white power’ and that ‘white people are going to awaken’. Swedish white nationalist fight club Gym XIV called it ‘a powerful symbol’ that ‘shows clearly that we are now entering a different path in the west’. Journalist Andrea Stroppa, an associate of Musk and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, wrote: ‘Roman Empire is back starting from Roman salute’, although backtracked, saying ‘that gesture, which some mistook for a Nazi salute, is simply Elon, who has autism, expressing his feelings’. Instead of disassociating himself, Musk leaned into the fascism, but used that convenient reactionary defence of ‘humour’ when he posted: ‘Don’t say Hess to Nazi accusations! Some people will Goebbels anything down! Stop Gőring your enemies! His pronouns would’ve been He/Himmler! Bet you did nazi that coming’. While he was criticised for this by the ADL, they had clearly lost the moral high ground by this point.

Of course it was no joke, but another in a series of escalating and emboldened acts that could not be easily dismissed or defended. The next was his speech at the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) campaign launch in Halle just before the International Holocaust Day of Remembrance and the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. In it, he said: ‘I believe that it is very important that people are proud to be German. … And it is good to be proud of German culture and German values. We should not lose that in a kind of multiculturalism that waters everything down.’. Employing an antisemitic trope, he blamed ‘global elites’ and argued there is ‘too much focus on past guilt that we need to overcome. Children should not be blamed for the sins of their parents or even their great-grandparents’. He also endorsed the AfD and its leader, Alice Weidel who, when previously asked about the party's neo-Nazi associations in an interview on X, said they stand for the opposite of what Hitler did as he was a ‘socialist’. This representation of Hitler and Nazism as socialist allows the far right to demonise them (and the left), separate later generations from their crimes and whitewash fascism for them. Musk’s actions are part of a larger pattern: the reactionary right’s ongoing redefinition of fascism to shield itself while demonising the left.  This can be seen most clearly in the way that the salute has been defended as ‘Roman’, evoking Italian fascism, but not Nazism. This assumes that the distinction is clear, this is convincing, and fascism is acceptable. It seems it is to many. A 2025 Democracy Institute poll showed that Musk has been pushing AfD closer to power. While there were many other factors in addition to Musk at play, the AfD came second with 20.8% of the vote in the February 2025 German elections.  

Musk has also been meddling and mobilising the far right in Britain. Last summer, he shared a post that blamed the far-right riots on mass migration and claimed: ‘civil war is inevitable in the UK’ and openly criticised Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer and supported former EDL leader Tommy Robinson. More recently, he called for Reform Leader Farage, who referred to Musk as a ‘hero, to be replaced as he ‘doesn't have what it takes’. This was in response to Farage’s rejection of Robinson and his followers, a more overtly extreme contingent, as ‘not right’ for Reform. In some ways, Musk’s support for Robinson, can serve to make Farage look less illiberal or extreme and more acceptable to the mainstream in the same way he himself sometimes does for Trump. Musk’s European efforts were supported by JD Vance in his first international trip as VP at the 61st Munich Security Conference on 14 February where he criticised leaders in Europe for ‘retreating from some of its most fundamental values’, including free speech, as well as their record on immigration. In response, Musk posted ‘Make Europe Great Again’, a reference to MAGA and the rallying cry of a meeting of far-right leaders hosted by Vox in Spain the previous week.

Performance versus policy
Domestically, it also went beyond the politics of salutes and symbols. Immediately after taking office, Trump issued a raft of executive orders (EO) which involved purges of departments, employees, records and programmes would effectively dismantle the federal government, constitutional and democratic safeguards, and support for the most vulnerable. This was in line with Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s plan to overhaul the government through the expansion of presidential power, cuts to federal bureaucracy and changes to labour, abortion and equal rights, immigration, education, energy, climate, trade and aid policy. The EOs included ‘Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing’. In response, private companies, including Meta, and government agencies started shutting down their DEI programmes and initiatives. The Pentagon issued a pause on ‘Special Emphasis’ programmes and events such as Pride Month, Black History Month, Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday, Juneteenth and Holocaust Remembrance. This example shows the flaws in the belief that Trump’s support for Israel and Zionism is evidence of support for Jews and opposition to antisemitism (including in his antisemitism order which targets pro-Palestinian student protests), and that DEI and wider anti-racism ignores, if not targets, Jews.
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The National Security Agency (NSA), which is under the Department of Defense, is also reportedly planning a ‘Big Delete’ of websites and communications that contain any of 27 banned DEI related words, including ‘privilege,’ ‘bias,’ and ‘inclusion’. Clearly memorial days and words, unlike confederate monuments, are not needed to remember the past and not covered by the free speech argument made by Trump, Musk and others. Another EO that is related to gender and transphobia requires the federal government to define sex as only male or female and that to be reflected in official documents and policies, and travel restrictions for trans people are also on the table.

Trump also issued an EO declaring a national emergency at the border with Mexico, and ending birthright citizenship. This was followed by mass deportations. Foreign gangs and cartels were also designated ‘terrorist’ organisations. While expanding and exploiting the language and government powers around terrorism to criminalise, securitise and deport foreigners, Trump also issued pardons for almost 1,600 far-right supporters who were arrested in the Capitol riots, and commuted sentences for members of the far-right Oath Keepers and Proud Boys convicted of seditious conspiracy. Evidence of the rioters’ crimes was also wiped from the internet by the Department of Justice, as were records of federal police misconduct. This both undermines the rule of law and has serious implications for his ability to use both police and extra-judicial far-right gangs, both now emboldened and indebted, to exercise power against targeted communities and political enemies, a characteristic of fascism.

Despite the opposition to immigration, Trump also signed an EO to ‘promote the resettlement of Afrikaner [white South African] refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination’, a key cause in white genocide narratives. He also proposed the US ‘empty’ and re-colonise Gaza and ‘transfer’ Palestinians elsewhere. Although, they will not be welcome to seek refuge and asylum in the US. Trump has even announced an EO that would deport those, including foreign students, engaged in pro-Palestinian activism. Far-right misogynist influencer Andrew Tate though was welcomed into the country despite criminal investigations and civil proceedings in Romania, Britain and the US for rape, human trafficking, tax evasion, money laundering and witness tampering.

Appointments and power
There were also many new appointments, including Musk himself as head of the new Department of Government Efficiency (DoGE) which is overseeing all of this. Revolver News founder Darren Beattie was appointed acting Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs at the State Department, which deals with, amongst other things, counter terrorism and violent extremism. Beattie had been a speechwriter during Trump’s first term, but stepped down after it emerged that Beattie had appeared on a panel with white supremacist Peter Brimelow, founder of VDARE, at a H.L. Mencken Club conference in 2016. This did not stop Trump from appointing his to the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad in 2020. His appointment to a role that involved preserving Holocaust memorials was protested by Jewish organisations, including the ADL. The organisation did remove their statement from their website upon the new appointment. In January 2021, Beattie was on X warning BLM, Ibram X. Kendi, and Kay Cole James to ‘learn their places’ and ‘take a knee’ to MAGA and in October 2024, just prior to Trump’s re-election, he posted: ‘Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work … Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men’.

Trump also appointed Christian Nationalist host of Fox and Friends Peter Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, and re-appointed former senior advisor and director of speechwriting Stephen Miller who had been an architect of Trump’s immigration policy but had to step down due to promoting articles from VDARE and American Renaissance. Listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an extremist, Miller is not only Deputy Chief of Staff for policy, but also a Homeland Security advisor dealing with extremism and terrorism. According to the New Republic, ‘Beattie’s appointment—along with those of Pete Hegseth, Stephen Miller, and others—is another indication that white supremacists are flooding Trump’s White House’.

The politics of distraction
It is not only Musk’s Nazi salute that has overshadowed Trump. His wider reputation, inexperience in politics, track record at X, and role as head of DoGE have helped play a role allowing him to be easily held responsible for the purges and problems in ways that, like the salute, help distract from wider problems and powers, be they Trump or American politics and culture. According to Tom Boggioni in Raw Story ‘Musk's 'ignorance' is setting Trump up for a fall’. He argues that ‘President Donald Trump's decision to let billionaire Elon Musk enforce his agenda by dismantling the government and gutting popular programs will likely come back to haunt him.’. According to the Washington Post's Philip Bump, cited in the Raw Story article, ‘Musk is doing to the federal government what he did once upon a time to Twitter: ripping it apart and firing much of its staff to create the world he wants, rather than the one the end users want … But this is governance, not a right-wing online social club. If X crashes, users shrug. If the government crashes, people die. The former is not good for business. The latter is extremely bad for politicians.’

This seems to miss the fact that Musk’s approach and politics are ideally suited ideologically and strategically to the needs of Trump and his administration, Project 2025 and the wider domestic and global far right. Moreover, to see a politics and form of governance that appeals to fascists and the far right, as well as more elite establishment capitalists, tech bros and oligarchs, and serves their brand of both racist anti-woke ‘culture war’ politics and small government, anti-regulation corporatist capitalism inherited from Italian fascism as representing a disjuncture between running a business and government, good and bad leadership, or Musk and Trump, seems to be a misunderstanding what this is. The attack on DEI is a great example of the convergence of white supremacist and anti-regulation capitalist interests. Even if the economic chaos is more damaging to the so-called working class ‘left behind’ that Trump and others claim he champions, the fact that its cause is constructed or rationalised as an attack on ‘wokeness’ and ‘elites’ will satisfy this and the actual elites behind it benefit from the chaos in the way they did with the disaster capitalism of Iraq, the sub-prime mortgage crisis and Covid. Even when we may think it is not, chaos and crises this is good for (their) business. It worked for Musk despite claims to the contrary after all but destroying X. he may just survive the Nazi salute and this. In fact, at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in late February, a month into the new administration, Musk was gifted a bejewelled chainsaw by Argentinian president Javier Milei in honour of his work at DoGE, and Steve Bannon gave his own Nazi salute and called for Trump to be President for life.
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These developments reveal a great deal about what the original salute meant, what has now become acceptable and what the future may hold. Sure, those in power and with platforms could have heeded the many warnings about the mainstreaming of the far right, their role in it, its implications, and how to resist and stop it. Instead, the political horizon or limit of acceptability that fascism represented and was not only frequently evoked but repeatedly deferred and reset, has all but arrived. The question now is whether those calling out the Trump administration as fascists set a new political horizon. That which is opposed not just to fascism in its most explicit form, but also the inequalities and injustices in the system that do damage and fascists seek to exploit and consolidate, as well as offer a radical alternative to these instead of just compliance or compromise. If so, they need to act quickly while there is still time and before some liberal centrists argue that maybe the Democrats should give a salute as well. Everyone is doing it, it may get them votes, and it can’t hurt anyone that really matters anyway they will argue. They have already accepted the dehumanisation and deaths of migrants at the border and Palestinians experiencing genocide in Gaza. 

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Image credit: Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash