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Explainer
Did Elon
Musk give a Nazi or Roman salute, and what’s the difference?
Historians
say Musk clearly made Nazi salute – but supporter claims he was inspired by
Roman greeting adopted by Benito Mussolini
Ashifa
Kassam
Tue 21 Jan
2025 19.14 GMT
The
back-to-back gestures were swift and enthusiastic, and they elicited huge
cheers from the crowd. After Elon Musk ignited controversy with two
fascist-style salutes during Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, critics
accused him of giving the Nazi salute.
Some of
Musk’s supporters rushed to defend him, claiming that he had instead been
giving the Roman salute. “The Roman empire is back, starting with the Roman
salute,” Andrea Stroppa, a Rome-based adviser to Musk, wrote on in a post that
he later deleted.
We delve
into what is meant by the Roman salute, whether it’s different from the Nazi
salute, and how this distinction has been seemingly promoted by the far right
in recent years.
What was the
reaction to Musk’s gesture?
Stroppalater
posted that the gesture was “simply Elon, who has autism, expressing his
feelings by saying ‘I want to give my heart to you’.”
Others also
weighed in. The Anti-Defamation League said on social media that Musk’s gesture
had not been a Nazi salute. Instead, it said Musk had “made an awkward gesture
in a moment of enthusiasm,” in a post that added: “All sides should give one
another a bit of grace.”
A number of
historians countered that view. “It was a Nazi salute and a very belligerent
one too,” Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history and Italian studies at New
York University, wrote on social media.
Claire
Aubin, who researches nazism in the US, echoed Ben-Ghiat’s sentiment. “My
professional opinion is that you’re all right, you should believe your eyes,”
she wrote online.
Many argued
that Musk’s increasing outspokenness over his own political views
contextualised the gestures. After spending about $200m (£160m) to help secure
Trump’s return to the White House, Musk has used his influence to back
far-right and anti-establishment parties across Europe.
Most
recently he has vigorously campaigned for Alternative für Deutschland, whose
leader in the eastern state of Thuringia, Björn Höcke, has twice been convicted
of using the Nazi slogan “Everything for Germany” at political events. A former
history teacher, Höcke has called for an “about-face” in Germany’s culture of
Holocaust remembrance and atonement.
As reaction
to his gesture dominated headlines on Tuesday, Musk weighed in with his own
response, writing: “Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is
Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.”
What is the Roman salute?
Fascist
ideology in the 1920s claimed that the Roman salute – which involves placing a
hand over one’s heart and then raising it upwards in a straight-armed,
palm-down salute – originated in ancient Rome.
But a 2009
book by the classics professor Martin M Winkler that delved into the Roman
salute found no evidence of this. “Not a single Roman work of art – sculpture,
coinage, or painting– displays a salute of the kind that is found in Fascism,
Nazism, and related ideologies,” he wrote. “It is also unknown to Roman
literature and is never mentioned by ancient historians of either republican or
imperial Rome.”
Instead
Winkler argued that what came to be known as the Roman salute was invented in
the 19th century to be used in melodramas set in the Roman empire. The gesture
eventually made its way into films set in the same period, leading the myth to
endure, he said.
Is there a
difference between the Nazi salute and Roman salute?
After the
salute was adopted by Italy’s fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, and his party,
the Nazis in Germany copied the idea, adopting a similar gesture with a
slightly lower extended hand. By 1933 it had become the German greeting, the
author Torbjörn Lundmark wrote in his 2010 book, Tales of Hi and Bye.
It soon went
on to become one of the most potent symbols of Nazi ideology in 1930s Germany.
“Five-year-olds were taught how to thrust the arm in the air… and people were
refused service in shops unless they did the salute,” Lundmark wrote.
Both the
Roman and Nazi salutes are considered hate symbols by the Reporting Radicalism
initiative, which is managed by the US-based NGO Freedom House and reports on
extremist groups and individuals in Ukraine. It considers them to be similar
but separate symbols.
It also
notes that there is little ambiguity about the meaning of the Nazi salute and
those similar to it. The US abandoned a gesture known as the Bellamy salute,
which was introduced in the 1890s to unite the country after the civil war, in
1942 because of its resemblance to the fascist and Nazi salutes.
After
Trump’s inauguration, the former Guardian reporter Alec Luhn noted that several
variations of the salute exist. “Slavic neo-Nazis do a similar salute, to the
point that the phrase ‘from the heart to the sun’ often serves as a stand-in
for actually doing the salute,” he wrote.
The gesture
is banned in a handful of countries, including Germany. In Italy, in contrast,
the country’s top court ruled last year that performing the fascist salute was
not a crime, unless it endangered public order or risked reviving the banned
fascist party. The ruling, sparked by an incident in Milan, came days after
video emerged of hundreds of men giving the salute during an annual gathering
in Rome.
Why are some
seeking to differentiate the Roman and Nazi salute?
It appears
as though efforts to rebrand the Nazi salute stretch back years. After members
of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement held a small rally in the US state
of Georgia, a Huffingon Post reporter asked its former leader, Jeff Schoep,
about the Nazi salutes performed by some of those who had been on stage
alongside him.
“It’s a
Roman salute,” he said in an exchange caught on video. The reporter insisted:
“You know that’s not what that means. You know what people think that means,”
leading Schoep threatened to have the him removed from the park for being
“disrespectful”.
As debate
swirled online as to the meaning of Musk’s gesture on Monday, Rolling Stone
reported that some on the far right had drawn their own conclusions and were
celebrating the moment on social media.
The leader
the neo-Nazi Blood Tribe, Christopher Pohlhaus wrote: “I don’t care if this was
a mistake. I’m going to enjoy the tears over it.” The founder of the far-right
social media platform Gab, Andrew Torba, echoed his sentiment. “Incredible
things are happening already,” he wrote.
The
Australia-based neo-Nazi Thomas Sewell also shared the video of Musk,
describing it as a “Donald Trump White Power moment”.
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