[tzs]

> 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.