Musk responds after backlash over gesture at Trump rally

Elon Musk has caused outrage for a one-armed gesture he made during a speech celebrating Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Musk thanked the crowd for “making it happen,” before placing his right hand over his heart and then raising the same arm in the air in front of him. He then turned and repeated the action for those sitting behind him.

Many on X, the social platform he owns, have compared the gesture to a Nazi salute.

In response, Musk posted on X: “Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is so tired.”

Musk, the world’s richest man and a close ally of President Trump, was speaking at the Capital One Arena in Washington DC when he made the gesture.

“My heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured,” he said, after performing the second one-armed salute.

There was an immediate reaction on social media.

Claire Aubin, a historian specializing in Nazism in the United States, said Musk’s gesture was a “sieg heil,” or Nazi salute.

“My professional opinion is that you are fine, you should believe what you see,” he posted on X, referring to those who believed the gesture was an overt reference to the Nazis.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University, said: “Here is a historian of fascism. It was a Nazi salute and also very belligerent.”

Italian media reported that Andrea Stroppa, a close confidant of Musk who has connected him to far-right Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, posted the clip of Musk with the caption: “The Roman Empire is back from the Roman salute “.

The Roman salute was widely used in Italy by Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Party, before later being adopted by Adolf Hitler in Germany.

Stroppa later deleted his post, Italian media said. He later posted that “that gesture, which some mistook for a Nazi salute, is simply Elon, who has autism, expressing his feelings by saying, ‘I want to give you my heart,'” he said.

“That’s exactly what he said over the microphone. ELON DOESN’T LIKE EXTREMISTS!”

The gesture comes as Musk’s politics have shifted increasingly to the right. He has recently made statements in support of the German far-right party AfD and the British anti-immigration party Reform UK.

But some have defended him, including the Anti-Defamation League, an organization founded to combat anti-Semitism.

“It looks like Elon Musk made an awkward gesture in a moment of excitement, not a Nazi salute,” the group posted on X.

Musk has become one of Trump’s closest allies and has been chosen to co-lead what the president has called the Department of Government Efficiency.