Only Very Online people were really aware of that, though. Once he progressed from insane ranting on Twitter to, well, that salute, it really became obvious to just about everyone.
Yeah but now people think he's turned completely nazi. His nazi salute was probably not a nazi salute, but it doesn't matter. People's perception of him has flipped completely. He spent a lot of his remaining goodwill.
> His nazi salute was probably not a nazi salute, but it doesn't matter.
Exactly. There actually are reasons one might do a gesture that is nearly identical to a Nazi salute without realizing it. For a while I had mixed up the Nazi salute and some alien salutes (or salutes from alternate dimension humans) from Star Trek.
If for some reason I had found myself addressing a crowd of Trek fans I might have done what I thought was a Klingon or Romulan salute and instead done a Nazi salute.
What matters is what happens afterwards. If my attempted Klingon salute was actually a Nazi salute I would immediately apologize and explain what happened as soon as someone told me I'd done a Nazi salute.
Could you elaborate? I'm German and reasonably patriotic, but I don't get why you'd want to down vote parent.
Edit: To elaborate: I can see that Elon is sometimes being put in a worse light than would be appropriate. Same is true for Trump. I cheekily think they kinda deserve it, but having run a company that was in the media a lot, you do get unfair coverage from the best outlets. I bet Elon does too. I don't know if that was supposed to be a salute or not, and I anyhow couldn't think much worse of him than I did before the Twitter drama. But I also think parent is right that Elon's brand is entirely poisoned in some circles now, where previously he could barely do wrong.
> I can see that Elon is sometimes being put in a worse light than would be appropriate. Same is true for Trump.
These guys lie about everyone else and go out of their way to put others into worst light that would be appropriate so much ... that this particular complain rings hollow.
Especially when used in the context where their fans are trying to deny something that is available on camera.
No offense taken. I understand that it offended a lot of Germans but I still don't think it was intended as a nazi salute. He should have apologized - but he's Elon, why would he? He doesn't care if somebody misunderstands him.
He has been agreeing with 14 words-style shit on Twitter for almost a year now. Him doing the Nazi salute on public TV just brought more attention to it.
Musk's fascist salutes looked like fascist salutes because they were fascist salutes. He did it deliberately and he did it twice just to make sure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smQNNo2a9xc