Elon Musk has caused outrage over a one-armed gesture he gave during a speech celebrating the inauguration of Donald Trump.
Musk thanked the crowd for “making it happen”, before placing his right hand over his heart and then thrusting the same arm out into air straight ahead of him. He then turned and repeated the action for those sitting behind him.
Many on X, the social medial platform he owns, have likened the gesture to a Nazi salute.
In response, Musk posted on X: “Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.”
Musk, the world’s richest man and a close ally of President Trump, was speaking at the Capital One Arena in Washington DC when he made the gesture.
“My heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you that the future of civilisation is assured,” the 53-year-old said, after giving the second one-armed salute.
There was immediate backlash on social media.
Claire Aubin, a historian who specializes in Nazism within the United States, said Musk’s gesture was a “sieg heil”, or Nazi salute.
“My professional opinion is that you’re all right, you should believe your eyes,” she posted on X, in reference to those who believed the gesture to be an overt reference to Nazis.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University, said: “Historian of fascism here. It was a Nazi salute and a very belligerent one too.”
Andrea Stroppa, a close confidant of Musk who has connected him with far-right Italian PM Giorgia Meloni, was reported by Italian media to have posted the clip of Musk with the caption: “Roman Empire is back starting from Roman salute”.
The Roman salute was widely used in Italy by Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Party, before later being adopted by Adolf Hitler in Germany.
Stroppa later deleted his post, Italian media said. He later posted that “that gesture, which some mistook for a Nazi salute, is simply Elon, who has autism, expressing his feelings by saying, ‘I want to give my heart to you’,” he said.
“That is exactly what he communicated into the microphone. ELON DISLIKES EXTREMISTS!”
The gesture comes as Musk’s politics have increasingly shifted to the right. He has made recent statements in support of Germany’s far-right AfD party and British anti-immigration party Reform UK.
Appearing at the Davos at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was asked about the comparison to a Nazi salute, something that is banned in Germany.
“We have the freedom of speech in Europe and in Germany,” he said.
“… what we do not accept is if this is supporting extreme right positions. And this is what I would like to repeat again.”
But some have defended Musk, including the Anti-Defamation League, an organisation founded to combat anti-Semitism.
“It seems that Elon Musk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute,” the group posted on X.
Musk has become one of Trump’s closest allies and has been tapped to co-lead what the president has termed the Department of Government Efficiency.
