Why won’t the ‘Nazi’ slur die?
Elon Musk’s weird hand gestures were obviously not a fascist salute. Grow up.

Want to read spiked ad-free? Become a spiked supporter.
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.
Elon Musk gave two back to back Nazi salutes at the Trump inauguration parade pic.twitter.com/0ImFnvk6hI
— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) January 20, 2025
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.
Of course, many of Trump and Musk’s most ardent critics are not remotely reasonable. They say we should discount what Trump and Musk say out loud and should look out for ‘dog whistles’ instead – that is, coded messages not intended for the masses, but for a specific audience of racists and fascists.
Former BBC journalist Gabriel Gatehouse seems to think Trump and Musk’s ambition to colonise Mars is itself a kind of dog whistle. Speaking on Newsnight last night, Gatehouse claimed that Trump’s inauguration speech, in which he talked of America pursuing ‘our manifest destiny into the stars’, betrayed a hidden fascist agenda. ‘For people on the fringes of the white-supremacist movement, [the reference to “manifest destiny”] was a nod and wink’, he said.
This is not a serious analysis of the new US administration. It is a cynical and desperate attempt to delegitimise Trump and Musk, and to associate populism with the worst crimes in history. Clearly, if Trump’s election is anything to go by, the American public isn’t buying into this hysteria for a second.
Fraser Myers is deputy editor at spiked and host of the spiked podcast. Follow him on X: @FraserMyers.
Picture by: Getty.
Comments
Want to join the conversation?
Only spiked supporters and patrons, who donate regularly to us, can comment on our articles.