Elon Musk is as soon as once more on the heart of controversy after he delivered a suspicious-looking salute throughout Donald Trump’s inauguration.
In direction of the tail-end of his speech throughout Monday’s festivities in Washington D.C., the Tesla Motors CEO thumped his proper hand to his chest earlier than capturing it out diagonally together with his palms dealing with down. Customers on-line have been fast to level out that Musk’s awkward gesture appeared uncomfortably just like the ‘Sieg Heil’ salute used as a greeting and acknowledgment of rank in Nazi Germany.
Unsurprisingly, the clip shortly went viral and generated quite a lot of reactions from on-line customers, together with one-time UFC title challenger Paulo Costa who supplied his response to the surreal second on X.
“Haha right here we go,” Costa wrote.
Musk claims backlash is simply one other ‘soiled trick’
Musk has since commented on the controversy, claiming that the backlash is nothing greater than a “soiled trick” from “they.”
Piers Morgan additionally shortly got here to the protection of Musk, suggesting that whereas the salute was “ill-advised,” the Sultan of House X by means meant to make use of it as a Nazi salute.
“Elon Musk was very ill-advised to do this sort of salute to indicate his clearly acknowledged ‘my coronary heart goes out to you’ sentiment… however he clearly didn’t imply it as a Nazi salute and anybody who says he did is being a disingenuous fool,” Morgan wrote.
neo-nazis are loving elon musk’s Salute
Even when Morgan is correct and Musk’s sketchy salute was nothing greater than a clumsy second, the incident seems to have actually excited the Neo-Nazi group.
“Unbelievable issues are occurring already,” Andrew Torba, the founding father of Gab, a social media platform widespread with antisemites and white supremacists, wrote over an image of Musk giving the salute.
“WE ARE F*CKING BACK,” the administrator of a Nazi meme channel on Telegram wrote below a clip of Musk giving the salute. Members of the group responded with the lightning bolt emoji, a well known neo-Nazi reference to the SS.
“I don’t care if this was a mistake, I’m going to benefit from the tears over it,” Christopher Pohlhaus, the chief of the American neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe, wrote on his Telegram channel below a gif of the Musk salute.
Evan Kilgore, a right-wing political commentator, wrote on X: “Holy crap … did Elon Musk simply Heil Hitler on the Trump Inauguration Rally in Washington DC … That is unbelievable.” Kilgore later wrote: “We’re so again.”
