A FAMOUS GROUSE

AN interesting cartoon appeared in Private Eye recently: two men are in a pub and the one says to the other, “You know, you can’t just call everyone you disagree with a fascist.”

This seems an entirely reasonable position — save for the fact that the guy saying this is wearing a Nazi uniform, complete with swastika armband and SS officer’s cap.

Appearances can, of course, be deceiving. It may well be that the chap in Nazi gear is not a fascist. He could even be — as my detractors put it — a liberal or, worse still, a woke liberal and there’s an entirely acceptable reason for his get-up. He could, for instance, be an extra in a war movie. Maybe he’s a minor British royal and he’s chosen a Heinrich Himmler costume for a fancy dress party, which is a perfectly innocent lapse in judgment. Who knows?

But first impressions do count; we must trust our eyes, we are told, and believe what we see. Which brings us, alas, once more to Elon Musk.

At the outset, let’s make it clear that Musk is not a Nazi. There has been no Nazi-typical barbarism on his part, no rounding up of the villagers, for example, and then shooting them. Which is what the real Nazis did, and a lot worse besides.

But, it’s fair to say, Musk is nevertheless both troubled and troubling… 

There has been an almighty row, for example, over the two controversial “fascist-style salutes” at Donald Trump’s inauguration rally in Washington on 19 January. Many viewed his one-armed gestures with alarm and displeasure. As Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University, posted on X: “Historian of fascism here. It was a Nazi salute and a very belligerent one too.”

I’m not so sure, but I might have been convinced had there been some goose-stepping and the clicking of boot heels in standing at attention.

But they were definitely salutes of a sort from Musk, and they should be seen for what they were, displays of unabashed glee to the faithful. It may well be that we find the belligerence and triumphalism nauseating, but it’s definitely not a Nazi salute that’s turning our stomachs.

The right-wing backlash to the anti-Musk backlash was soon upon us. Social media was awash with whataboutery and false equivalences along with a deluge of images of Democrat politicians and their celebrity supporters with arms aloft. The point here being, I suppose, that we could all be pegged as Brownshirts by simply signalling the waiter.

There was also much chatter of “Roman salutes”. The Italian tech entrepreneur Andrea Stroppa, a Musk confidant, may have started the ball rolling in this regard when he posted a clip of the SpaceX tycoon with the caption, “Roman Empire is back starting from Roman salute (sic).”

The salute, incidentally, was definitely not Roman, despite what you may have seen in Gladiator II and other sword and sandals sagas. Classical scholars are adamant that there’s no historical record of any such gesture in Ancient Rome. But it was widely used in Italy by Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Party before being adopted by Adolf Hitler in Germany.

It was perhaps for this reason that Stroppa, according to the BBC, later deleted his post — but then added that “that gesture, which some mistook for a Nazi salute, is simply Elon, who has autism, expressing his feelings by saying, ‘I want to give my heart to you.’ That is exactly what he communicated into the microphone. ELON DISLIKES EXTREMISTS!”

Quite why these titans of tech, the so-called “broligarchy”, have to shout in upper case is beyond me. Perhaps it’s a testosterone thing. Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg recently complained, for example, that American corporations have been neutered by “feminine energy” and they need to be man up and celebrate “aggression a bit more”.

We digress. The suggestion that the manner in which Musk expresses his “feelings” could be down to neurodiversity may or may not be of relevance. But there are indications that he could be on the ketamine spectrum; he has admitted taking the drug to deal with his “negative state of mind”. There are now questions as to whether an adjustment in dosage is warranted.

The Anti-Defamation League, meanwhile, also stated that Musk’s gesture was not a Nazi salute but rather an “awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm”. The New York NGO, founded to combat anti-semitism, added in its post on X: “In this moment, all sides should give one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit of the doubt, and take a breath. This is a new beginning. Let’s hope for healing and work toward unity in the months and years ahead.”

Musk has a bit of history with the ADL. In September 2023, he threatened to sue the league after accusing the group of trying to “kill” his social media platform by claiming he and X were antisemitic.

Two months later, he endorsed a tweet that read, “Jewish communties [sic] have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them” with the response: “You have said the actual truth.” In a subsequent reply, he said, “I am deeply offended by ADL’s messaging and any other groups who push de facto anti-white racism or anti-Asian racism or racism of any kind.” After wholesale condemnation from various quarters, including the White House, Musk apologised for his behaviour, saying it “might be literally the worst and dumbest post I’ve ever done”. In January last year, he visited Auschwitz in a further show of contrition.

Fast-forward to this month, and there’s more offence, to put it mildly. On Saturday, Musk addressed a campaign rally of the far-right Alternative for Germany party. Speaking via a video link, he told AfD supporters in Halle, eastern Germany, that “children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their great grandparents…

“There is too much focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that … It’s good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything.”

It frankly beggars belief that these remarks, which echo the AfD’s long-held position that Germany should stop “atoning” for Nazi atrocities, came less than two days before world leaders gathered in Poland on Monday, Holocaust Day, to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, was horrified. On Sunday he said on social media, “The words we heard from the main actors of the AfD rally about ‘Great Germany’ and ‘the need to forget German guilt for Nazi crimes’ sounded all too familiar and ominous. Especially only hours before the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.”

He later added that “the whole world should hear once more those words: NEVER AGAIN! We must not forget the tragic lesson of our past. Evil, violence and contempt cannot triumph anew. Under any circumstances!”

Dani Dayan, chairman of Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre, has also warned against any attempt to bury the legacy of Nazism. In a post on X, Dayan said, “Contrary to [Musk’s] advice, the remembrance and acknowledgement of the dark past of the country and its people should be central in shaping the German society. Failing to do so is an insult to the victims of Nazism and a clear danger to the democratic future of Germany.”

Unfortunately for Germany, its immediate future doesn’t look all that promising. The country is expected to hold a snap election next month, after the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, lost a vote of confidence and his ruling coalition collapsed. The AfD, the first far-right party to win a German state election since the Nazi era, has seen a surge in support in recent months.

Scholz, meanwhile, continues to be the target of Musk’s outbursts.

Commenting on the “awkward gesture” controversy and the billionaire’s support for the AfD, the chancellor told a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, “Everyone is free to express their opinion in Germany and Europe, including billionaires … but we do not accept support for far-right positions. Musk’s response on X? “Shame on Oaf Schitz!”

This is a fascist sort of gag. As in, the world’s richest man thinks it’s hilarious but, really (and forgive me), it’s nazi funny.

Musk has poor form as a comedian, and perhaps shouldn’t give up the day job. His attempted puns to make light of the “salute” row —  “Don’t say Hess to Nazi accusations!”  “Some people will Goebbels anything down!” — are especially puerile.

But one could, I suppose, respond to this tastelessness in a similarly low-witted manner. A baseball reference, perhaps? “Third Reich, and you’re out!” And, while we’re at it, could Teslas not be referred to as swasticars?

More seriously, Dr Philip Low, the NeuroVigil founder, has declared that his former friend of 14 years is certainly not a fascist. In a series of posts on the Threads platform, Low said, “He is something much better, or much worse, depending on how you look at it. Nazis believed that an entire race was above everyone else. Elon believes he is above everyone else.”

Low has offered a number of possible explanations for the “awkward gestures”. One is that Musk was appealing to the more extreme Maga members, the hard-core fanatics under the influence of the malign Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser who has reignited his feud with the Tesla boss.

Another, more worrying suggestion is significant in the light of Monday’s events. Low claimed that Musk was “upset” that he felt compelled to visit Israel and Auschwitz to atone for “agreeing with a Nazi sympathiser online and wanted to reclaim his ‘power’ just like when he told advertisers [pulling out of X] to ‘go fuck yourself’.”

This was just business: Musk is transactional, not ideological. But, Low said, he “enjoys a good thrill and knew exactly what he was doing” with those salutes at the rally.

That may be the case, but it seems extremely childish all the same.

The Bibi connection

While a number of prominent Jewish organisations have condemned Musk’s “Roman salutes” and have called on him to clarify or apologise for the “awkward gestures”, Benjamin Netanyahu has however leapt to the billionaire’s defence.

“Elon Musk is falsely smeared,” the Israeli prime minister wrote on X, adding that the tech mogul “is a great friend of Israel”. According to the Times of Israel, Netanyahu avoided addressing the issue of Musk’s salutes. But the newspaper did add that Musk posted his Holocaust jokes just one hour after Bibi’s comments appeared online.

It’s worth recalling that, in October 2015, historians and politicians were compelled to correct Netanyahu for claiming that the Holocaust arose from a Palestinian suggestion — and not some German plan. In an address to the World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem, the PM had said that Adolf Hitler had only wanted to expel Jews from Europe, but that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, told him: “Burn them.”

The BBC reported that the then German chancellor, Angela Merkel, had been quick to dismiss this and pointed out that Germans were “very clear in our minds” that the Nazis were responsible for the Holocaust. In his statement, the former Palestine Liberation Organisation secretary-general, Saeb Erekat, said, “It is a sad day in history when the leader of the Israeli government hates his neighbour so much that he is willing to absolve the most notorious war criminal in history, Adolf Hitler, of the murder of six million Jews.”

Meanwhile, in the Divided States…

Here at the Slaughtered Lamb (“Finest Ales & Pies”), there is some disappointment that, in renaming the Gulf of Mexico, Donald Trump has not opted for the more evocative “Sea Señor” but instead settled on “Gulf of America”. A golden, or rather, yellowish opportunity has been lost.

There’s still hope for Greenland, though, which could be renamed Orangeland. Private Eye has offered other possible changes to atlases and maps: the Panama Canal could become the Panamar-a-Lago Canal, New Zealand Fake Newzealand, Canada Americanada, and Johannesburg Sleepy Joeburg.

The renaming of the Gulf is but one of the blizzard of executive orders Trump signed on his first day in office. Others include withdrawing from the World Health Organisation and the Paris Climate Agreement, dramatically reshaping of the military, cracking down on those illegal immigrants eating American pets and legally recognising only two sexes — male and female.

This last order, which dismisses gender identity and accuses ideologues of denying “the biological reality of sex” is particularly dodgy, and has already been the subject of much ridicule.

It essentially states that males become male and females become female “at conception.”

Which is quite wrong, as anyone with a basic understanding of biology knows. Nobody is male or female at conception or, as the scientists say, “fertilisation”. According to one academic speaking to NBC News, “Everybody has some combination of X and Y chromosomes, but it’s not until nine to 13 weeks that the differentiation of sex organs begins to develop, which is not always a binary ‘male’ or ‘female’ pathway.”

Lastly, it’s been pointed out that these “day one orders” are meal tickets for American lawyers who routinely challenge their constitutionality with considerable success. They must think it’s Christmas now.