“I don’t know what Mr Musk meant with his move, but to me, as an Austrian, it looked like a Hitler salute. And to many citizens, it looked like a Hitler salute.” – Thomas Waitz, MEP
In my wildest dreams, I never thought that I would ever tell my dad, “Wow, I’m so glad Oma and Opa aren’t here anymore to witness that.”
For context, my late grandparents’ formative years were spent growing up in Germany through the 1930s and the Second World War, witnessing what happened to their country under Adolf Hitler’s rule.
I avoided news outlets on Jan. 20 for various reasons. The primary reason being that I didn’t particularly want to watch a convicted felon being sworn in to run one of the biggest superpowers of the globe.
But I heard all about it through social media.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and the man who proudly unveiled those atrocious Cybertrucks is getting lots of backlash following his actions post-speech at Donald J. Trump’s inauguration as America’s 47th president.
And honestly, that’s fair.
Musk ended his speech by putting his right hand to his chest, then extending it rigidly upwards at an angle with his palm down, then doing the same thing again, facing the crowd, while saying, “Thank you. My heart goes out to you.”
Those defending Musk’s action refer to this as a “Roman Salute,” which saw a significant rise in 1930s and mid-1940s Germany and is today generally associated with that particular time period.
Those who recognized this as not a “Roman salute” countered by saying things like: “Well if you don’t think it’s wrong, then do it. Do that gesture in a public place, do that gesture in front of your boss, post a video of you doing that gesture on the internet.”
As one dude from TikTok so eloquently verbalized: “The b*tch ain’t Roman, the b*tch ain’t from Rome, and b*tch we ain’t in Rome. So why are we acting like it’s a common thing to do?”
Replicating this gesture in public today in Germany (and Austria, too, for that matter) can actually land you in jail because it’s illegal under Germany’s criminal code.
A few days later, Musk took to X (Twitter) and made some pretty offensive Nazi-related puns, including references to Joseph Goebbels, Rudolf Hess, Hermann Göring, and Heinrich Himmler.
Germany’s health minister, Karl Lauterbach, found Musk’s action concerning, as stated in an X post, which roughly translates to: “I definitely don’t think highly of @elonmusk as a politician, from what we know of him so far. But such a gesture, given his already known close association with right-wing populists in the fascist tradition, must worry every democratically-minded person.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz wrote: “We have the freedom of speech in Europe and in Germany. Everyone can say what he wants, even if he is a billionaire. And what we do not accept is if this is supporting extreme-right positions.”
You know it’s bad and that your actions were seriously misguided when it’s being discussed at length in the European Parliament.
Note: This is an Opinion article, reflecting solely the author’s views. It does not reflect or represent the views of The Concordian as a whole.