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by exodust 484 days ago
> a veiled salute....reducing society's defenses

Conspiracy alert. Amusing how you'll settle for a half-baked nazi salute in order to hold your argument.

What would be the end game? Self-sabotage every gain they made winning the election? Real nazi salutes are like fingers down a blackboard for the majority of people. They also look different to what he did, and are delivered not with elated gratitude, but with authoritative posture.

Giggling "let's go to Mars" super-nerds are not toying with actual Nazism. His choice of hand motion was clumsy, that's the crime.

> would you not issue some clarification or apology where you explicitly rejected nazism?

Not if I thought those making accusations were "woke morons." Why would Musk play your game of needing to apologise for something he never intended?

Straight from the cancel culture playbook: "He may not be racist, but has anyone actually heard him reject racism?"

Corner someone with accusations until they're forced to make a statement. It's an attempt to legitimise the complaint. Musk is not playing by those rules. As much as that might irritate you, surely you can respect someone for, dare I say it, following his heart.

4 comments

With this interpretation at least I hope you agree the 14 US flags were intentional?

It can of course be read as "trolling the ones who think he is a nazi".

Problem is that kind of double-signalling and layers of irony is so widespread in white supremacist circles on the internet.

Musk's X/Twitter history has been steadily going in a direction, he wasn't a "going to Mars nerd", he was a "going to Mars nerd whose Twitter history showed someone clearly falling down a political rabbit hole" (and BTW working for someone who pardoned people who assaulted police officers as long as they did it for him -- an act that has nothing to do with left vs right politics or what people vote for, but is easily associated with authoritanism)

Curious what you think of Bannon's hand gesture...

> layers of irony is so widespread in white supremacist circles on the internet

Is it? I wouldn't know. I don't participate in white supremacist circles. Very few do, which is why it's joked about so easily. It's a damn shame though to hear "layers of irony" is blacklisted!

I had to google the 14 flags thing. Ridiculous! At worst it's inverted trolling; shitposting by a calculated provocateur - a term Grok coined about Musk.

Falling down conspiracy rabbit holes to construct allegations about hidden meanings of rants on X, is to fuel the fire Musk is toasting his marshmallows by.

> His choice of hand motion was clumsy

So according to you is he smart or stupid ?

The only time "clumsy" carries any weight or consequence, is when operating machinery or doing physical tasks. If he was driving a bus then did his arm gesture causing an accident, we could call him stupid.

When humans communicate with arms flapping in celebration and excitement, clumsy arm movements are not a safety issue or significant in any way.

I suppose you could always manufacture outrage about arm movements, then campaign and argue that others should adopt that outrage?

Gonna keep that frog boiling huh.
Whether you or I see a conspiracy or not the nazis out there have got the message. The support for the AFd, for which their leader thanked him publicly, has just accentuated it.
The suggestion Musk was trying to "signal the nazis out there" is absurd. It's on the level of "Hitler liked dogs. Who else has aligned with Hitler's like-ideology?"