Elon Musk responds to backlash over gesture at Donald Trump’s rally

Elon Musk has ignored the uproar over a one-armed gesture he made during a speech at Donald Trump’s inauguration.

At Monday’s event, Musk thanked the audience for “making it happen,” before placing his right hand over his heart and then thrusting the same arm into the air directly in front of him. Then he turned around and repeated the command to the person sitting behind him.

Some on his social media platform, X, likened the gesture to a Nazi salute, although others disagreed.

In response, the head of SpaceX and Tesla posted on X: “Honestly, 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 Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., when he made the gesture.

“My heart is with you. Thanks to you, the future of civilization has been ensured,” the 53-year-old said after giving a second one-armed salute.

There was immediate backlash on social media and disagreement over Musk’s intentions.

“Fascism historian here. It was a Nazi salute and a very aggressive salute as well,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University.

But the Anti-Defamation League, an organization founded to combat anti-Semitism, disagreed.

“It appears that Elon Musk made an embarrassing gesture in a moment of excitement, not a Nazi salute,” she posted on X.

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

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

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

“That’s exactly what he said on the microphone. Elon hates extremists!”

This gesture comes as Musk’s politics shift increasingly to the right. He has recently made statements in support of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany party and Britain’s anti-immigration Reform Party.

During an appearance in Davos at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was asked about the comparison to the Nazi salute, which is banned in Germany.

“We have freedom of expression in Europe and Germany,” he said.

“…What we do not accept is that this is support for the positions of the extreme right. This is what I would like to repeat again.”

Musk became one of Trump’s closest allies and was appointed to co-lead what the president called the Government Efficiency Administration.