Tesla CEO and “first buddy” Elon Musk was hit with a wave of immediate outrage online and on cable news after he made a salute that many felt was fascist during his speech at the Capitol One Arena on Monday to celebrate President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
While getting extremely excited about the prospect of landing a man on Mars and planting an American flag, the X (formelyTwitter) owner pounded his chest and shot his right arm in an angular motion toward the sky, saying he felt it in his “heart.” He also turned his back to the audience and repeated the gesture towards the stage.
“Standing ovation for Elon Musk. By far the biggest reception of the day,” CNN anchor Erin Burnett noted. “You saw him come out with that odd-looking salute.”
“It was odd-looking,” Burnett reiterated, pointing out that they would show viewers a screenshot of the moment.
Considering the strange spectacle and the similarities to a particular other controversial hand motion, it didn’t take long for critics of the Trump-backing billionaire and Doge chief to exclaim online what they thought the world’s richest man was doing at that moment.
“Yeah Elon gave a Sieg Heil,” one user posted on Bluesky, while others pointedly accused him of giving a “Nazi salute”.
“Our new co-president Elon Musk gives a Nazi salute on day one of Trump presidency,” Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett tweeted while sharing a clip of the gesture.
At the same time, while liberals and Maga detractors flooded social media with videos of Musk’s provocative wave to the crowd, there was nothing in Musk’s excitable pro-Trump speech that explicitly referenced fascism and Nazism — and it is almost certain that the tech mogul would deny that he was making that gesture during a celebration of the new president.
Indeed, many other observers suggested that Musk was instead performing a “Roman salute” that soldiers in the ancient empire would use to greet their commanders as a show of respect and loyalty. The Roman salute, however, was later adopted in some forms by fascist states — including Nazi Germany, as some noted. Additionally, right-wing extremists celebrated the alarming gesture. “I don’t care if this was a mistake. I’m going to enjoy the tears over it,” neo-Nazi leader Christopher Pollhaus wrote on Telegram.
Some journalists, meanwhile, just shared the strange moment online and allowed others to make up their minds as to what exactly Musk was doing. Supporters of the billionaire, on the other hand, insisted that Musk was being misrepresented and taken out of context.
“Elon Musk was excited and spread his hand to the crowd. Every leftist is going to try and characterize this as a Nazi salute,” one X user wrote, while another called on “Community Notes” to get involved and point out that he merely “was extending his heart to the crowd”.
“As a person with a *strong* track record of criticizing Elon Musk, I feel extremely confident asserting that this was not a Nazi salute. Elon Musk is a friend to the Jews,” Newsweek opinion editor Batya Ungar-Sargon insisted. “This is a man with Aspergers exuberantly throwing his heart to the crowd. We don’t need to invent outrage.”
Musk later shared a clip of his entire speech on X, though the video — which he pulled from another user — curiously did not show the first salute he gave to the crowd. The footage was from Fox’s Live Now broadcast.
The Independent has reached out to Musk and X for comment.
The frenzy over Musk’s salute parallels that of another Trump acolyte who set the internet on fire when she made a similar gesture at the Republican National Convention in 2016. During her speech in Cleveland that year, Fox News star Laura Ingraham unleashed a rallying cry for Trump as he was set to accept the GOP nomination for president.
“I want to say this very plainly: We should all—even all you boys with wounded feelings and bruised egos, we love you—but you must honor your pledge to support Donald Trump now,” she exclaimed, followed by her immediately shooting her right hand up in an angular fashion. Much like Musk is now, she was accused of performing a fascist salute, and edited clips of her speech quickly became a meme.
“I do not think it is fair to say Laura Ingraham capped off her remarks at the Republican National Convention by giving a Nazi salute,” Slate writer Josh Voorhees wrote at the time. “However, I do think it is fair to say that Laura Ingraham capped off her remarks at the Republican National Convention with a hand gesture that, intentionally or not, clearly resembled a Nazi salute.”
As for what does and doesn’t constitute a Hitler salute, the Anti-Defamation League notes that “it consists of raising an outstretched right arm with the palm down,” adding that it is “often accompanied by chanting or shouting ‘Heil Hitler’ or ‘Sieg Heil.’” Additionally, the ADL states that since the end of World War II, “neo-Nazis and other white supremacists have continued to use the salute, making it the most common white supremacist hand sign in the world.”
However, the ADL decided on Monday afternoon that whatever Musk did at the Capitol One Arena didn’t meet the mark of an actual fascist gesture, describing it as merely “awkward.”
“This is a delicate moment. It’s a new day and yet so many are on edge. Our politics are inflamed, and social media only adds to the anxiety. 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,” the organization said in a statement. “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.”
Meanwhile, the outrage over Musk making this particular gesture twice onstage during Trump’s inauguration comes after the SpaceX chief had already drawn intense backlash for throwing his support behind the far-right Alternative for Deutschland, a German political party that has ties to neo-Nazis and whose youth wing has been described as “extremist” by German intelligence agencies. Musk later hosted the AfD leader for a lengthy conversation on X.
On top of that, Musk also recently signaled further support for the far-right when he changed his X username to “Kekius Maximus” and updated his profile to an edited picture of “Pepe the Frog,” a meme that had been co-opted by the alt-right and white supremacists in online spaces such as 4chan. And just a week ago, Musk — who has relentlessly promoted imprisoned far-right extremist Tommy Robinson while injecting himself into British politics — criticized the prison sentencing of a neo-Nazi who helped incited riots in the UK.
