Some say it was an unambiguous Nazi salute but others are unsure and say focus should be on Musk’s stated support for far-right. There were angry reactions across Europe to Elon Musk’s apparent use of a salute banned for its Nazi links in Germany, where some condemned it as malicious provocation or an outreach of solidarity to far-right groups. Michel Friedman, a prominent German-French publicist and former deputy chair of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, described Musk’s actions – at an event after Donald Trump’s swearing in as US president – as a disgrace and said Musk had shown that a “dangerous point for the entire free world” had been reached. Friedman, who descends from a family of Polish Jews, hardly any of whom survived the Holocaust, told the daily Tagesspiegel he had been shocked when watching the inauguration live on television, adding that as far as he was concerned Musk had unambiguously performed the Nazi “Heil Hitler” salute, despite attempts to downplay it. “I thought to myself, the breaking of taboos is reaching a point that is dangerous for the entire free world. The brutalisation, the dehumanisation, Auschwitz, all of that is Hitler. A mass murderer, a warmonger, a person for whom people were nothing more than numbers – fair game, not worth mentioning,” Friedman said. (…) Lenz Jacobsen, a journalist, wrote in Die Zeit in a piece headlined A Hitler salute is a Hitler salute is a Hitler salute: “Whoever on a political stage, making a political speech in front of a partly far-right audience, elongates his arm diagonally in the air both forcefully and repeatedly, is making a Hitler salute. There’s no such ‘probably’ or ‘similar to’ or ‘controversial’ about it. The gesture speaks for itself.” Miriam Hollstein, the chief reporter for Stern magazine, wrote on X that the salute was a distraction from other controversial issues to do with Musk and had received unnecessary attention. “Sorry, no way was that a Hitler greeting and it was also never intended as one,” she wrote. “Stop the nonsense. There are enough real things about which one can criticise Musk.”
via guardian: ‘The gesture speaks for itself’: Germans respond to Musk’s apparent Nazi salute
