Summary

Elon Musk escalated controversy over accusations that his salute at a Trump rally resembled a “Sieg heil” by posting Nazi-related jokes on X, referencing figures like Rudolf Hess and Joseph Goebbels.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) initially defended Musk, urging “a bit of grace” and “benefit of the doubt,” but later condemned his Holocaust-related jokes as offensive.

Conservative Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also defended Musk.

Critics highlighted Musk’s history of promoting far-right conspiracy theories and enabling neo-Nazi content on X, raising concerns about increasing offensive rhetoric on the platform.

  • glowing_hans@sopuli.xyz
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    5 hours ago

    can we acknowledge how insane these things are in combination:

    • the worlds richest man
    • buys a large social media platform X, where most political conversations take place
    • supports a presidential candidate with millions of dollars
    • candidate gets elected
    • starts doing a Hitler salute
    • starts posting Nazi Names in a joking/meme manner

    This is Keyne West story all over again, but with more money and more power & influence.

  • Feathercrown@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    Non-Nazi response to someone asking why you did a Nazi salute: “What? I would never do that!”

    Nazi response to someone asking why you did a Nazi salute: “Haha it was just a prank bro”

  • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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    5 hours ago

    The problem with Nazi jokes is that Nazis don’t think they are funny, and nobody else thinks they are jokes.

  • sapient [they/them]@infosec.pub
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    6 hours ago

    Never let the nazis gaslight you or certain american media channels try to pan away and deemphasise what he did in their footage. If anyone tries to claim this was not a nazi salute, just point them to this few-seconds-long comparison video, maybe download with yt-dlp (cw: nazis doing nazi stuff like chanting) nya.

    Also I’m autistic and nazi salutes are not stimming or simple social difference or whatever.

    Stims are usually repetitive and/or simple motions or behaviours or similar (e.g. I stim by jumping up and down or repeating phrases or spinning my arms in circles, sometimes from happiness and sometimes as a way to regulate emotions), and not a complex deliberate action. That salute was a deliberate and non-repetitive action. I could see the bit at the start where he walks around and moves his arms up and down repeatedly being a stim, but the other stuff? And specifically the nazi salute? No.

    Plus autistic people are not on the whole less capable of understanding ethics^1 or empathising (though we may have trouble reading non-autistic social cues or emotional states and thought processes, but if we understand what someone is feeling we experience empathy, though of course there are variations on that just like with non-autistic people, if you want to know more just look up the double empathy problem :p). He knows what he was doing.

    I’m sick of people (usually bad faith actors of course but still) blaming this shit on autisticness and autistic people. Its like people think that being autistic just means being a dick and not caring about other people (of course, there are plenty of dickish autistic people just like there are of any other group of people nya). And its especially disgusting given that Nazis attempted to genocide us.

    I do understand that not everyone understands autism very well but come on… its such bullshit <.<

    1: some studies suggest autistic people are actually more likely to follow their own sense of ethics even without social pressure when it would benefit them to break it, though these kinds of tests are done in very limited circumstances and I’ve not really looked at them in that much detail

  • TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org
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    10 hours ago

    His supporters have argued alternately that Musk’s autism affects how he behaves in public, and that the salute was nothing much out of the ordinary.

    I’m on the spectrum. People, stop using neurodivergence as an excuse for someone being a shitty person. People like us can still tell good from evil even if we don’t fully understand common social behaviors. The golden rule is easy enough to understand.

    • blakenong@lemmings.world
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      9 hours ago

      I’ve never seen an autistic person just give a Nazi salute accidentally. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a person do it accidentally, especially twice, and—twice with other Nazis in the room.

      That asshole did everything except click his heals.

  • someguy3@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    “Bet you did Nazi that coming”

    We did. We did see it coming.

    Any bets on when Trumpers start doing it at rallies? I give it a month max.

  • ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org
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    12 hours ago

    The ADL lost all credibility forever, and the right to open their trap about anything, when they failed to condemn Musk’s Nazi salute in the strongest possible terms.

    It’s not great when gentiles don’t distance themselves clearly from the South African Nazi. But when jews don’t either - especially jews who purport to defend against defamation of all things - it’s extremely clear that those people are either totally corrupt or extremely wimpy.

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      19 minutes ago

      The ADL lost all credibility forever, and the right to open their trap about anything, when they failed to condemn Musk’s Nazi salute in the strongest possible terms.

      Someone hasn’t been paying attention to what they’ve been saying every time someone criticized the atrocities of Israeli governments for the past 75 years…

      The reason why they bent over backwards to defend him at first is the same reason why they called him “a friend to Jews”: because of his positive relations with their favorite fascist apartheid regime.

    • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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      8 hours ago

      Honestly, if you still gave them any credibility you haven’t been paying attention. They have long held the opinion that antizionism is antisemitic.

    • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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      10 hours ago

      People said they were just an Israel lobbyist group and I just shrugged my shoulders. But after defending genocide and Musk, it’s clear the last thing they actually care about is “defamation”…

      • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
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        8 hours ago

        I mean I have to wonder how it took you so long to come to that conclusion, but better late than never I guess.

    • Sergio@slrpnk.net
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      11 hours ago

      It’s part of their name now. “The ADL, which defended Musk’s nazi salute…”

  • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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    12 hours ago

    It’s not a Salute Controversy

    It’s not a hand gesture

    It’s a NAZI SALUTE and if you can’t / won’t / don’t admit it or challenge it then you are enabling the problem and allow creeping Nazism and far right ideology into the public consciousness.

  • Doorbook@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    So the group that kept saying if you say “free palestanian” or “israel is bad” you are a nazi and antisemitic, suddenly had no issue with nazi marks by Musk?

    if elon musk doesn’t get sued for hate crime, while student protesting genocide do, then you know who is your enemies,

    • Ech@lemm.ee
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      10 hours ago

      This is flirting a bit too close to the antisemitic dog whistle.

      • noticks@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        legitimate question:

        how does criticizing the actions of the government of Israel constitute antisemitism?

        • Ech@lemm.ee
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          7 hours ago

          “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” A neo-nazi saying that is falsely attributed to Voltaire to try and legitimize it.

          • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
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            3 hours ago

            I mean it is true, though… Well not completely but a good 80% of the way there. The reason the establishment will go after you for criticizing Israel (if they can, anyway) is because they’re getting Israeli lobby and MIC money. I’m not sure what the dog whistle here is supposed to be. The “Jews control the world” thing? Obviously that’s not true but Israel does exert a lot of control over US politics.

  • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    11 hours ago

    Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

    -Jean-Paul Sartre

    Fuck this quote has basically had nonstop use for ten years now. It’s the same fucking bullshit every time. It’s all “jokes” right up until it’s not.

  • don@lemm.ee
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    11 hours ago

    And Huffington Post still too busy being fucking jellospined little bitches to actually say that the fuckwit did indeed throw the Nazi salute. Twice. Call it what it is, you Nazi sympathizer fucking cheesedick shitmouth cowards.