Elon Musk, the X owner and enthusiastic Trump-backer, has been accused of performing a ‘Nazi-style’ salute at a rally yesterday, following The Donald’s second inauguration.
A video of Musk vigorously slapping his chest before thrusting his arm diagonally to the sky, with his palms facing down, has gone viral, sending ‘Resistance’ types into meltdown. For many Democrats and their media allies, Musk’s alleged ‘Roman salute’ has provided cast-iron proof of what they have suspected all along – namely, that Trump and his acolytes are card-carrying Nazis.
Needless to say, Musk is not a Nazi, a fascist or a white supremacist, although he may well prove to be a liability to the Trump administration. It is clear Musk let his exuberance get ahead of him during yesterday’s rally. He entered the stage twirling like a giddy schoolchild and left it with both arms raised high in the air. Still, what many of the shorter clips didn’t show is that, just as he made that now infamous gesture, he can be heard saying: ‘My heart goes out to you!’ In context, it is abundantly clear what he meant when he took his hand from his chest and thrust it into the air.
Besides, the content of Musk’s speech was fairly anodyne. He was mainly excited about the prospect of ‘safe cities’, ‘secure borders’ and ‘sensible spending’ under the new administration – not to mention Trump’s ambition, shared by Musk, to send Americans to Mars. No reasonable critic could think Musk’s speech would be likely to quicken the heart of a brownshirt.
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