80 years after Auschwitz, Elon Musk promotes fascism

80 years after Auschwitz, Elon Musk promotes fascism


Brian J. Griffith writes:

Similar to many 20th-century European fascists, Musk has expressed strong anxiety regarding what he perceives to be White demographic “decline” in the West, a disdain for labor unions and left-wing politics in general, and has even dabbled in promoting, however loosely, Holocaust denialism. To Musk, much like far-right thinkers 100 years ago, Trump represents a Strongman approach to “restorative” politics, at a time when, from Musk’s perspective, society, culture, and economics are increasingly disjointed and “in decline.” Put plainly, like the followers of Mussolini and Hitler in interwar Europe, Musk views Trump and his far-right MAGA movement as a means of “draining the swamp” of “deep state” politics and, by way of association, economics and pursuing a program of “national rebirth.” After all, Trump’s slogan is to “Make America Great Again.”

During the past five or so years, Musk has cultivated relationships with a variety of far-right politicians and organizations, including Trump and his MAGA movement, Georgia Meloni and her allegedly “post-fascist” Brothers of Italy party, and Tommy Robinson of the anti-immigration Reform UK party, to name just a few. In December 2024, Musk announced his support for the fascistic German party, Alternative for Germany (or AfD), writing: “Only the AfD can save Germany.” Endorsing anti-Muslim immigration bans in Germany and harboring Nazi Party apologists among its leadership, the AfD, to put Musk’s endorsement into ideological perspective, is widely viewed as “too extreme” by many of Europe’s other far-right parties, including Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party in France. When one considers these affiliations between Musk and far-right parties in the U.S. and Europe, the intended meaning of his gesture in Washington D.C. comes into view.

However, one does not need to appeal to scholarly analysis or even to political associations to recognize the significance of Musk’s one-armed salute. Indeed, all one has to do is consider the way in which Musk’s gesture was interpreted by card-carrying neo-fascists and neo-Nazis across the Western world. As Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the Global Project against Hate and Extremism, has rightly explained, among far-right extremists “There is no question … that Musk was making a Nazi salute.”

One user on the neo-Nazi forum Stormfront, for instance, posted a screenshot of Musk’s Roman salute along with the caption, “Heil Hitler,” while a chapter of the neo-fascist street militia, the Proud Boys, shared a video clip of Musk’s fascist salute along with the similarly-worded comment, “Hail Trump!” [Continue reading…]

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