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‘The
gesture speaks for itself’: Germans respond to Musk’s apparent Nazi salute
Some say it
was an unambiguous Nazi salute but others are unsure and say focus should be on
Musk’s stated support for far-right
Kate
Connolly in Berlin
Tue 21 Jan
2025 19.06 GMT
There were angry reactions across Europe to Elon Musk’s apparent use of a
salute banned for its Nazi links in Germany, where some condemned it as
malicious provocation or an outreach of solidarity to far-right groups.
Michel
Friedman, a prominent German-French publicist and former deputy chair of the
Central Council of Jews in Germany, described Musk’s actions – at an event
after Donald Trump’s swearing in as US president – as a disgrace and said Musk
had shown that a “dangerous point for the entire free world” had been reached.
Friedman,
who descends from a family of Polish Jews, hardly any of whom survived the
Holocaust, told the daily Tagesspiegel he had been shocked when watching the
inauguration live on television, adding that as far as he was concerned Musk
had unambiguously performed the Nazi “Heil Hitler” salute, despite attempts to
downplay it.
“I thought
to myself, the breaking of taboos is reaching a point that is dangerous for the
entire free world. The brutalisation, the dehumanisation, Auschwitz, all of
that is Hitler. A mass murderer, a warmonger, a person for whom people were
nothing more than numbers – fair game, not worth mentioning,” Friedman said.
Charlotte
Knobloch, the president of the Jewish community in Munich and Upper Bavaria,
described the gesture as “highly irritating”. But she said it was not as
significant as Musk’s recent attempts to meddle in German politics, where he
has endorsed the far-right Alternative für Deutschland ahead of next month’s
federal election.
“Far more
worrying are Elon Musk’s political positions, his offensive interference in the
German parliamentary election campaign and his support for a party whose
anti-democratic aims should be under no illusions,” she said in a statement.
Musk made
the gesture as a speaker on stage before Trump’s arrival in Washington’s
Capital One arena on Monday. He heartily thanked Trump supporters before
holding his right hand on his heart and stretching it in a sharp and quick
upwards movement. Then he turned around and repeated the gesture in the other
direction, saying: “My heart goes out to you.”
The
billionaire tech entrepreneur, who is leading Trump’s department of government
efficiency, later responded to criticisms of his behaviour on X, tweeting:
“Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is soo
tired.”
Olaf Scholz,
the German chancellor, said he considered Musk’s support for the extreme right
unacceptable as he was asked how he thought Europe should respond to the tech
billionaire, particularly in the light of his AfD endorsement. The co-leader of
the AfD, Tino Chrupalla, was among the members of Europe’s far-right political
class to be in Washington for Trump’s inauguration.
“We have
freedom of speech in Europe, and everyone can say what he wants, even if he is
a billionaire,” Scholz said. “What we do not accept is if this is supporting
extreme right positions and this is what I would like to repeat again.”
Scholz also
called for “cool heads” in response to the Trump administration.
Musk
responded on X, writing above a post about the chancellor’s remarks: “Shame on
Oaf Schitz!”
A Berlin
judge, Kai-Uwe Herbst, told the Berliner Zeitung that a deliberate diagonal
right arm thrust in the air is sufficient evidence on which to bring a charge
against someone under German law.
But he added
it would also be necessary to prove malicious intent, and that the individual
concerned knew that this was a Hitler salute.
Herbst, who
has dealt with myriad cases of people using the Nazi salute, said: “Sometimes
these are drunken football hooligans, sometimes pro-Palestinian demonstrators
who wish to provoke.” Mostly, he said, the cases he saw were with the intention
to provoke rather than to spread Nazi ideology.
Benedict
Mick, an expert in criminal law, said to determine whether the salute was meant
as a neo-Nazi gesture “would depend on the overall context”.
The US
Anti-Defamation League said 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.”
Others in
Germany urged caution as commentators argued about whether the gesture and its
similarity to a Nazi salute was deliberate or not.
Lenz
Jacobsen, a journalist, wrote in Die Zeit in a piece headlined A Hitler salute
is a Hitler salute is a Hitler salute: “Whoever on a political stage, making a
political speech in front of a partly far-right audience, elongates his arm
diagonally in the air both forcefully and repeatedly, is making a Hitler
salute. There’s no such ‘probably’ or ‘similar to’ or ‘controversial’ about it.
The gesture speaks for itself.”
Miriam
Hollstein, the chief reporter for Stern magazine, wrote on X that the salute
was a distraction from other controversial issues to do with Musk and had
received unnecessary attention. “Sorry, no way was that a Hitler greeting and
it was also never intended as one,” she wrote. “Stop the nonsense. There are
enough real things about which one can criticise Musk.”
Friedman
appealed to Musk to show political responsibility. “Was the hand movement an
expression of his political identity?” he asked.
Almost all
of Friedman’s family died in the Nazi Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp,
the 80th anniversary liberation of which is on Sunday. Only Friedman’s parents
and his grandmother were saved, thanks to the Sudeten German entrepreneur Oskar
Schindler.
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