The world's richest man is strong supporter of right-wing politics, & made gestures today at a rally for Donald Trump's second inauguration that's caused controversy
“This is a man with Aspergers exuberantly throwing his heart to the crowd,” the journalist said, calling Musk “a friend to the Jews.”
Also, Asperger's is no longer a medical term and there is no indication that Elon has ever actually been evaluated. Autism is not an excuse to throw a Nazi salute, for fuck's sake!
Autist here, while I can be awkward and accidentally do or say offensive things not meaning them...
A full on fucking Hitler salute isn't even something we can do on accident.
Closest I've gotten was while getting excited in public shouting "WHITE POWER!"
Context: I was playing a Power Rangers game on my phone, and got Tommy Oliver's White Ranger, my voice went out before I could say "Ranger"... I am very bad at controlling the volume of my voice. Seriously, sometimes I'll say something and it sounds like I'm whispering, but I"m yelling and vice versa. I have no idea what's up with that, people often have to tell me if I'm yelling or not.
Did you turn around and say the same thing to the people behind you? The first one I could maybe say he did a fucked up dab. When he did it again…. I’m speechless.
as a matter of fact, Hans Asperger's work during the national socialist years in Vienna can actually be described as dialectic. a rough summary would be that while participating in the evaluation and killing of children he developed his dissertation in order to get some of the kids out of the T4 program. that dissertation later became the base for the diagnosis that was named after him and found its way into popular culture.
I actually did speculate on neurodiversity yesterday (as a neurodiverse person myself) and I can tell you it was because of shock over the whole thing. I'm not going to speculate.
Elon I had well figured for a Nazi, certainly paints a message doing that at the POTUS podium, but CNN just calling it . . . odd? What the fuck is that non response about? I can only imagine that if they managed to open up labor camps CNN would call it 'slightly concerning'. Now more than ever we're on our own, the big club has give up all pretense of being unbiased and unmasked themselves for who they always wanted to be.
As social media exploded with condemnation of what some were calling a “Sieg Heil,” with some others applauding the world’s richest man’s gesture, there was also some speculation that Musk’s movement was more like that of an Imperial Roman general in the Gladiator mode.
Do people think the Nazis invented their salute? They took it from the Romans. To say it was actually a Roman salute is to also say it was a Nazi salute because they are basically one and the same.
They didn't, the association with Rome comes from this painting. The author didn't have anything to believe it was historically correct.
It is correct though that Italian fascists had a hard on on everything that was classical Rome-adjacent and they picked the salute from a French painting like a bunch of noobs.
Interesting, so instead of them stealing the actual Roman salute, they stole what they thought the Roman salute was. Sure the Italian fascists used it too, but the Nazis compared what they wanted, a 1000 year Reich, to what Rome had created when they had a massive empire that lasted 500 years for the western empire and almost 1500 for the Eastern years if they include the West and almost 1000 by itself. So they didnt just take it from the Italian Fascists just cause, they did it because they thought it was Roman as well, and associated it with their desire to replicate the Romans.
Thanks for the info!
Edited the years for the Roman empire after being called out for being wrong.
There's sone subtle differences but fascism is modeled after the Roman Republic with intense nationalism thrown in. The salute the Romans did was the fascist salute.
That, and I can't believe the ADL, of all people, was equivocating on it.
Oh, wait, I can, because the ADL has long since stopped giving a shit about antisemitism and has instead started accusing anyone who protests against a genocide of being Nazis.
Here's the thing, in a normal, functioning society if someone gets caught doing a gesture that is interpreted by some people as being a Nazi salute, that person apologizes.
Even if in their heart of hearts they really didn't mean to do a Nazi salute, they still apologize. They're not necessarily apologizing for Seig Heil, they're apologizing for how the gesture was received and interpreted. In a normal world, in a non fucked country, it's very important to clarify "I'm not a Nazi, I hate Nazis, I would never do that, and I'm very sorry that what I did hurt and scared people." In some countries, merely doing that gesture is grounds for arrest, but someone might avoid arrest if they made it clear it was an accident.
Whether or not it truly was 100% a Nazi salute matters less than the aftermath. No consequences, no apologies, no denials. The US is so fucked now that there are no consequences for credibly behaving like a Nazi in public. He won't be fired or censured by the boards of his companies. Trump and the rest of the GOP will continue to eagerly have him around.
The US is now a place where for about half the population (including a lot of non-white people) being a Nazi is not a dealbreaker.
Not just in public, the richest man in the world, during the inauguration of the President of the United States that he just spent a shit load of money getting elected.
in a normal, functioning society if someone gets caught doing a gesture that is interpreted by some people as being a Nazi salute
But it isn't. All media has clearly told us within minutes that we did not actually saw what we saw with our own eyes and it's just error in judgement on our side to have mistaken his "odd looking gesture" for a nazi salute.
Journalist in the middle of a highway road as a truck driven by elon musk barrels down towards them at blistering speed: IT IS UNCLEAR WHAT MUSKS MOTIVES AR-
Historically there's no way out of this. We're going to have to push through a very sad, very deadly phase in American history and see what happens on the other side.