Is Elon Musk an Asshole or Is He a Nazi?

These are not mutually exclusive options.

During Trump’s inauguration, billionaire Trump sugar daddy Elon Musk gave a speech at the end of which he performed the Heil Hitler Nazi salute. Emphatically. Twice.

There’s little doubt that the Nazi salute was a Nazi salute; everyone saw it. Since we are in hell, though, the media and the public are now debating what it means.

Far right neo-Nazis are thrilled, taking it as a sign that Musk and the new administration support Nazis. The supine ADL, eager to support Trump’s violent Zionism, rushed to betray its entire history of antifascist commitments by insisting that Musk’s salute was simply an innocent “awkward” gesture, with no political content. Musk himself (predictably) scoffed at the idea that performing a Nazi salute has anything to do with Nazis. “Frankly,” he posted on twitter, “they need better dirty tricks. The 'everyone is Hitler' attack is sooo tired.”

Many others, like Charlie Warzel at the Atlantic, have more or less tried to split the difference, arguing that Musk did in fact do what he obviously did, but that it indicates that he’s an asshole, not a Nazi. He didn’t throw a Nazi salute to show his devotion to Adolf Hitler, the argument goes; he threw a Nazi salute to show how edgy he is and to troll the libs. The goal was to get leftists and Democrats and Jews (like Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker, or the Jewish Council of Public Affairs) to call him a Nazi, which (supposedly) is ridiculous and makes the anti-Nazis look foolish and powerless.

I suspect that the asshole-edgelord-trolling explanation is more or less correct; Musk fancies himself a daring provocateur and likes to enrage and frighten his critics.

But being an asshole edgelord troll is by no means at odds with promoting Nazi ideology or embracing fascism. On the contrary, using Nazi symbols to demonstrate contempt for norms and to signal dominance over the left and marginalized people is precisely how Nazis use those symbols. It’s what those symbols are for.

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Trolling and entitlement

Right-wing trolling involves cheerfully, vengefully violating norms in order to show the dull conformity and staid boringness of liberal scolds. More, it’s an assertion of power and impunity. Screaming the n-word in a crowded chatroom, or openly denying the Holocaust, or misgendering people, is a dare, and an effort to normalize slurs and bigotry. If you can say that without consequences, it demonstrates your power, and the impotence of the groups you’re insulting. It’s a way to claim territory and space, and to drive out all those marginalized people who have no sense of humor/don’t want to hang out with people who deny their humanity and are organizing to murder them.

This kind of sneering edgelord trolling, then, is not an alternative to actual fascist organizing. It is a fascist tactic. And Elon Musk, who has been deeply embedded in antisemitic and right wing online communities for some time, is very aware of this.

When Musk explains to himself what he’s doing, in the murky recesses of what I suppose we have to call his brain, he probably doesn’t say, “Hitler is cool and we need more Hitlering in the world.” Instead he tells himself something like, “Leftists, Jews, trans people, Black people—they have way too much power to CENSOR THE DISCOURSE. As a brave proponent of FREE SPEECH it would be cool to show that I HAVE THE POWER over those sneaky Jews. Hyuk hyuk!”

Using a Nazi salute in a very public space, then, is an assertion of entitlement. It demonstrates impunity. Or as Sartre put it, “[Antisemites] delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.”

In this sense, Musk made the Nazi salute precisely so he could winkingly disavow it—and precisely so that he could force orgs like the ADL to disavow it. Musk has attacked the ADL before, threatening to sue the org when it (accurately) pointed out that Musk had turned twitter into an antisemitic sewer.

The ADL knuckled under in that case in part because of the lawsuit threats, but largely because it is in thrall to right-wing donors who are more concerned with suppressing criticism of Israel than they are with fighting fascism in the US. Musk’s association with the right, and especially with the rabidly pro Zionist Trump administration, makes criticism of him difficult for the ADL at a moment when the org is busy insisting its only enemies are on the left.

And now, in defending Musk, the ADL is knuckling under again. In theory, the ADL was set up to fight fascism; in theory it supports Zionism because it sees Zionism as a strong, virile repudiation of fascist slurs about weak, sycophantic Jews. And yet, Musk, by delivering a Nazi salute, has made the ADL crawl and beg for his favor. They’re so terrified that the big bad billionaire will step on them that they rush to kiss Nazi boot.

Nazism is about who has power and who should rule

There are lots of definitions of fascism, and lots of discussions of the particular characteristics of Nazism. But I think at bottom the core belief of fascism is the belief that certain people—the volk, the Aryans, the white men—have the right to deference and power. Everyone else—women, Jews, Black people, queer people—have no rights and no standing.

Not all Nazis were eager to exterminate Jewish people. Some were what Claudia Koonz calls “Yes, but” Nazis, who agreed with Hitler only to a point. But the point they agreed with Hitler on was that German Aryans should rule, and that others—notably Jews—should not have a leading place in…well, anything.

Even in the extremely unlikely event that Musk did not mean the Nazi salute as a Nazi salute, his belligerent dismissals of criticism—his sneering rejection of the idea that Jewish people might have reason to demur when confronted with what sure looks like a Nazi salute—gives the game away.

Nazi salutes and Nazi imagery are used by Nazis to show might, and as a tool of intimidation. They are meant to signal to Jewish people, to leftists, to queer people and Black people, that Nazis dominate the public square, and that ultimately only Nazis and their allies belong in the public square.

A Nazi salute tells Jews and other marginalized people that they exist only on sufferance. It says their protests will be ignored, and that it is only a matter of time until they are silenced, one way or the other. That’s what Musk conveyed with his salute. And he’s busy making it clear that he knew exactly what he meant.