We need to come up with a word for modern press hysteria which is obsessed with chasing the ghost of Hitler, probably to obscure its declining popularity.
Today was another perfect example of a disinformation frenzy where billionaire entrepreneur, Elon Musk – the man who paid $44 billion to save free speech, started a space program, and pioneered an electric vehicle revolution – was labelled a ‘fascist’ and accused of giving a Nazi salute.
That is a real thing that happened.
No serious person could passingly suggest Elon Musk is a Nazi (or an Italian fascist), so why are there a dozen frantic articles in left-wing publications mulling the topic over with varying degrees of faux concern? Is this their 2025 version of that meme where Democrat voters with purple hair stood around and screamed at the sky?
The Guardian, (no surprise), ran the headline: Elon Musk appears to make back-to-back fascist salutes at inauguration rally.
Wired ran, Neo-Nazis Love the Nazi-Like Salutes Elon Musk Made at Trump’s Inauguration in which they quoted a lot of unstable-sounding people who were ‘in tears’, latching onto the action as some sort of validation for their fantasies.
It should not have to be said, but evidently we need to, using the delusional ramblings of fringe-dwellers to stick a ‘fascist’ label on Musk makes about as much sense as declaring all vegans are Nazis because Hitler subscribed to the ideology.
It is madness. Can we please stop being such a bloody dumb society? The press are just … empty straw-clutchers desperate for outrage. You look like fools.
It is high time their peers turned around and ridiculed them for such fabricated nonsense. This is out of control. You are not a free press, you are a tyre that flew off the Biden Presidency during the election crash, and are now bouncing dangerously down the freeway. When you are replaced by the free market competition on X, you will deserve it and no amount of Big Brother censorship from small-minded politicians is going to save you.
Elon Musk was doing a verbal victory lap, calling Trump’s election ‘a fork in the road for human civilisation’.
Right before his salute, Musk said: ‘And I just want to say thank you, thank you for making it happen. Thank you.’ Then he thumped his hand over his heart, and thrust it out toward the crowd to salute them, not a long-dead National Socialist whose worst nightmare, surely, would be a global platform for free speech.
It is not clear how this could be interpreted as a Nazi salute, unless we are going to designate all hand-pointing from this point onward as the Sieg Heil.
We have to be grown-ups and understand that the manner in which a salute is done is irrelevant, it is what you are saluting that matters. If you are not saluting Hitler’s rancid ghost, you are not performing a Nazi salute. End of story.