Elon Musk’s Weird Salute
He’s an asshole.
Trump advisor and SpaceX, Neuralink, Boring Company, Twitter, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk made what appeared (to every American possessing a good, working brain) to be an awkward Nazi salute at an Inaugural rally on Monday. Some speculate he was “holed out” on ketamine at the time.
Since then, the social and news medias have decided to spend two days debating, like that damned blue-and-gold dress, what other gesture it could have been or what he might have meant.
Could it have been a Roman salute instead? No. There is no evidence of how a Roman salute should look.
Could it have been an involuntary movement, a product of his disability? If that were true, he should probably save everyone some headache by saying so. He has not given that excuse, and I will not besides medicalize a spasmodic Sieg Heil from an “edgelord.”
I spent much of my youth slathered and soaked in the same Internet sauce as Mr. Musk. I know precisely what foolishness was loose in his head and heart. The richest man in the world wanted to perform something close enough to the Nazi salute that critics would be upset about it. Then, he could unconvincingly deny it and irritate them again. “Trolling,” they call it online. In that, Mr. Musk has succeeded. Americans paying attention to his nonsense are quite annoyed.
He had better hope that he is invaluable to his pet dictator, because it would be typical of a tyrant to have an ally disposed for being so embarrassing.
While Mr. Musk flirts with overt fascism, traditional neo-Nazis are cheering him. This will provide him few advantages; just as President Donald Trump is humiliated by Mr. Musk, so too will the Tesla CEO be undermined by the same ugly nationalists he courts. They have already thrown his friend Vivek Ramaswamy overboard, and Steve Bannon is now telling them that Mr. Musk is a “truly evil person,” a flip-flopper, and an oligarch.
Mr. Musk’s actions speak plainly his profound moral failure. Tesla, Space, Starlink, Neuralink, Twitter employees, those good among you ought to resign your posts in protest until this troublesome leader finds his way to the doors of those respective organizations. Our nation has given Mr. Musk much, and he mocks it—spits on it!—by raising the specter of the evil regime who systematically exterminated six million Jews for some shock humor. Well, America was shocked, even trolled, but I am not laughing.
To be clear: I am saying that Elon Musk is no Frylock, but has already become the Master Shake of the second Trump administration. Someone who makes inappropriate jokes, drags others into his drama, fails to entertain, and makes life measurably worse for anyone else. There is no better topical analogy for this cretin. It would be cleaner and easier to presume Mr. Musk is an out-and-out white supremacist now—and he might be!—but I the gaslighting, outrage, and agitation were the point.
Democrats, how should we respond to this provocation? By treating it with the same seriousness with which it was delivered. Declare Mr. Musk is annoying, that he is deliberately annoying people for attention, and shake your head in pity, as you might any other lame Internet antagonist. He cannot abide the public’s lack of adoration, and depriving him of a weeklong flame war in favor of mild emasculation disincentivizes him from trying such a stunt again.