Clarifying, picking up some things I wrote on a forum.
If you saw the Nazi salute and thought “he did that because he identifies himself as Nazi”, then you’d be wrong. I don’t think he subscribes to the ideology.
“Reducing” it to fascism would be an oversimplification because that’s not the intent. But one part of the intent was to anticipate that it would be interpreted that way, and exploit it. The true intention was for that salute to be a BAIT.
The problem with Nazi is that they aren’t a secret society with secret gesture to signal each other, but that they are proudly so. Musk doesn’t need to send some kind of hidden signal, it would have no purpose. If you follow what the narrative is right now you can see it’s all about laughing at those who interpreted the gesture as a Nazi salute. Again, if it WAS a Nazi salute then he wouldn’t need to disguise it. Because Nazis aren’t shy about their intentions.
The reason why I have no doubts about this is because it follows PRECISELY a well known pattern. There’s nothing smart and new about any of this.
This has been going on for months, reposted by Musk himself countless times. All the slogan about “legacy media fake news”, all the Trump Derangement Syndrome. It’s all perfectly codified and reiterated OVER AND OVER. It’s THE playbook.
It has a wikipedia page.
“The term has mainly been used by Trump supporters to discredit criticism of him, as a way of reframing the discussion by suggesting that his opponents are incapable of accurately perceiving the world.”
Incapable of accurately perceiving the world here means that his gesture CLEARLY means “from my heart, I thank you”. If you see in that a Nazi gesture, it’s because YOUR MIND GOT DERANGED, by the also well known Woke Mind Virus.
You see Nazi EVERYWHERE. Because YOU ARE CRAZY.
The “Proud Boys” example is an especially explicit one. Trump says something, it’s immediately picked up as a proof to accuse Trump of openly supporting Nazi, only for Trump side to interpret it in a different way.
It’s pure, well tried, gaslighting.
You have to realize how many times these types of “double” messages have been reposted on X by Musk in the past weeks.
The Nazi gesture is precisely his own way of fabricating THE SAME THING. The same thing HE KNEW would be interpreted in a way by one side, and in another by his own. He precisely planned his own “proud boys” moment.
The point in all this is that if you accuse Elon Musk of being a Nazi, then you accuse him in a way that DOES NO HARM. Because he doesn’t believe himself so and because you’re firing a toy gun he himself pushed into your hand. The whole “gamer” thing is instead something that got out of his hands and actually HURT him. Ironically if you think about it. Ironically if you think how Asmongold himself laughs at the fact of having “feelings” about being or not “good at videogames.” Something so ludicrous you wouldn’t expect this hurting anyone. Yet it hurts Musk, because HE BELIEVES he’s good at games. That’s part of his own INTERNAL identity, that he also projects. As I said, you would be wrong thinking he projects a lie, because he instead projects something he truly believes.
Elon Musk and Trump are similar in this aspect. Back in 2020, before the election, when Trump was asked if he would recognize Biden’s victory if it were to happen, he didn’t say “yes”, or “no.” He said “we shall see.” If he then had won that election, nothing weird would have happened, as if there are two alternative time lines going on in parallel, where you “repurpose” the past as you see fit. After he realizes he lost the election, he picks up the phone to tell his minions go find proofs of voter fraud. This is not to “fabricate” those proofs. This is not to start a lie of manipulation, accusing Democrats of wrongdoings. In his mind the idea of himself losing to a guy like Biden is IMPOSSIBLE. So, in reality, either he wins, or there has to be a fraud if he loses. There’s no third alternative. If he wins, then reality is conformed to his mind shape. Fine. If he loses then it’s immediately PROVEN that Democrats have cheated. He BELIEVES that they cheated because there’s no other rational option on the table (of his mind). When he picks up the phone to tell his minions to go do their job, it’s because he BELIEVES there HAVE TO BE PROOFS of that cheating, since the cheating happened beyond a shadow of a doubt.
The problem with these deranged people isn’t that they are cynical liars, but that THEY BELIEVE THE LIES THEY TELL.
EDIT: There’s a video that explains all this really well and eloquently, but it’s in Italian and I’m not sure the automated subtitles would be enough. He goes by quoting Hannah Arendt on fascism, saying that it becomes irrelevant what’s true or not. In this case the “truth” behind the salute is completely irrelevant because its function is to “measure Musk’s strength.” It was a test of his strength and control over his people. Musks himself says how you should “read” that gesture, therefore the function becomes drawing a line between who supports him and who’s against him. Doing so, he reinforces the identity of his side. His people are called to defend him, so emptying out internal debate and finding unity in opposition to the enemy. The goal is sending the signal, declaring what it means, and then measuring the response as an act of fealty: you are with me now, you are my people.
EDIT2: Considering, up to this point, the weak, sullen reaction from Musk on X, I’m now less certain that it was something deliberate and planned ahead. But I still can’t make a real rational case on how it could not have been.