Politics Opinion

So, Elon Musk did a one-armed salute: Here's what's more important

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(Cartoon by Mark David | @MDavidCartoons)

The really fascist stuff on Trump’s inauguration day wasn’t Elon’s right arm — it was the executive orders turning the United States of America into an ultranationalist garrison state, writes Tom Tanuki.

IN DECEMBER, I drove down a Coburg street and passed a man in his 60s standing on the kerb grinning and Hitler saluting at oncoming traffic.

I could immediately see he wasn’t doing it as a sincere Nazi gesture. I’m an educated adult of sound mind and I can read and intuit context. He was making a big show of laughing at his act so we’d all know how funny he was being. 

What he meant was a public mockery of the Victorian Government’s censoriousness in banning the Sieg Heil, which was the topic du jour in December after lots of news involving more charges for Nazi salutes and more National Socialist Network (NSN) stunts.

“Just hailing a bus, heh”, I could hear him remarking in my head, having already read as much in a great many Facebook comment sections. The humour of the boomer.

One of the worst things about Victoria’s Sieg Heil ban is that it makes no real distinction based on any relevant context until a judge makes a finding. But to get to that point, you have to go through months of useless, breathless reportage in the mainstream media. Only neo-Nazis benefit from all the attention that that process generates.

Still, context defines the matter. So it’s worth it to delineate between this man on a Coburg street corner – obviously just an average Sky After Dark boomer neglecting his inner frustrated street performer – and actual fascists.

My chief diagnosis for him was that he was an idiot. It wouldn’t have behooved me to share this anecdote at the time publicly, because, again, the only people who benefit from this kind of public discussion – not one about the substance of fascist politics, but only of "hand gestures" and other associated ephemera alluding to it – are, in my view, a small gaggle of grassroots fascist losers. So, I left it alone.

And yet, here I am now about to lob another article on the mountain of them already published about the richest man in the world doing a straight-armed gesture.

(It’s the same mountain that includes thousands of American books published by libs in the mid-to-late-2010s, with breathless titles that go something like: "10 Signs that Fascism is Looming Again" or "History Repeats: How to Stop Fascists".)

Sorry. I really do think I have something of value to add to localised Australian political discourse on the matter… but it’s still a bit shameful to do this.

To carbon offset the banality, I have made a $10 donation to the Refugee Council of Australia. I consider it my penance. Refugees are in grave danger as a result of this current wave of isolationist pan-Western ultranationalism and we owe their struggle our urgent support. (If you feel the same, please match my donation before you go on reading.)

Now that we’re unburdened of guilt let’s get back to Elon. 

I agree with QAA Podcast host Liv Agar’s assessment:

I also think Musk simply felt powerful in a charged political environment that was constructed chiefly around isolationist white nationalism and anti-immigration sentiments. 

Trump’s politics are really the same old Republican shit under the hood, ultimately, but the aesthetic of the inauguration and its attendant executive orders looming lent a distinctly Nazi-flavoured political will to the moment that possibly stirred Elon’s blood, and, in the moment, he appeared to do with his hands something his forebears might have done.

It seems as though the richest man in the world in the world felt like doing a Nazi-like salute in an appropriate place for it. Simple.

And we know he felt amped up while doing it because of this face — the face of a five-year-old boy bashing two monster trucks together.

Elon Musk (Source: YouTube)

Do not forget that Musk had recently had a major falling out with Nazis and Groypers over the subject of "skilled migration", which made for one of the deepest and most visible fractures in the shaky MAGA alliance we’ve seen in public.

In brief: Elon accidentally revealed to MAGA what his authentic big tech billionaire politics are. Namely, that he would gladly hire everyone in India over a single white American if it saved him a penny.

In return, some of them revealed their authentic politics to him — namely, the white supremacists who hate Indians.

In return, Musk banned a whole host of racist Far-Right Twitter accounts that it seems he’d spent several years courting. So, now they recognise Elon as being equally as censorious as the supposedly liberal-left Twitter predecessors he bought out — or worse, given that he appears to make unilateral snap bans out of spite.

I think the Nazi-like gesture may have been a way of endearing himself to them again. They are stupid and desperate to be pleased with little treats.

Context helps with understanding, just as it did with my roadside Coburg boomer sieg-heiling at traffic. So, no, I don’t necessarily think Elon’s a national socialist. I think he adopts whatever politics suit him at the moment, as a man who is something several orders of magnitude worse than any Nazi: a powerful big-tech billionaire seemingly pandering to Nazis.

Elon denied any significance to his "hand gesture". It’s the stock-standard response to backlash of this kind.

It reminded me of ex-Neighbours actor Damian Richardson, who's set to face court for allegedly doing a Nazi salute after a small fascist gathering last year. After the charges, Richardson insisted on Twitter that he didn't do it, despite there being footage of him doing it. (Not long after, he verbally welcomed national socialists to the event). They all seem to be bad liars.

But now, Richardson will get free airtime and promotion throughout the trial under these stupid laws

Like NSN leader and abject weirdo Jacob Hersant’s trial before his, the process will only work in favour of recruitment for these national socialists. NSN are essentially the only beneficiaries of criminalising these stupid salutes. Nazis in America will no doubt come to benefit from Elon’s "hand gesture" as well.

But to my point: the really fascist stuff on Trump’s inauguration day wasn’t the appearance of Elon’s right arm. It was the executive orders turning the United States of America into an ultranationalist garrison state, placing the lives and livelihoods of asylum seekers in immediate peril. 

It was executive orders criminalising the lives of random trans and non-binary people who are just minding their own fucking business. 

It was destroying not just "DEI" (diversity, equity and inclusion) but equal opportunity, too — opening the door for American businesses and institutions to exclude black people again, just as they did before the civil rights movement. There’s your fascism.

When you create fertile conditions for the liberal Left and the Far-Right to debate over useless ephemera like "secret" hand gestures and symbols and such – even as the substance of the overarching political paradigm extends far to the Right beyond most fascists' wildest dreams – fascists benefit. (Or, worse, big tech billionaires.)

When we craft authoritarian laws to deal with this useless ephemera, we give rise to dickheads sieg-heiling on the roadside, mocking censoriousness while normalising the aesthetics of fascism. When we vote in authoritarian panderers they throw us this same useless ephemera to bicker about, all the while normalising the politics of actual fascism.

We should remember all of that.

But.

At the same time.

It really looks like old mate did a Nazi salute.

I don’t care how many cringe-lib books got written about the "rise of fascism". I don’t care how many people you feel were unfairly or inaccurately labelled a Nazi. Come on.

I believe it is what it looked like. And, why he did it.

Tom Tanuki is a writer, satirist and anti-fascist activist whose weekly videos commenting on the Australian political fringe appear on YouTube. You can follow him on Twitter/X @tom_tanuki.

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