The internet’s been having a field day with Elon Musk‘s dumbfounding gesture on inauguration day, which eerily paralleled a Nazi salute. But the truth of the billionaire’s newfound influence in the White House is scarier than most of us realize, according to one of his close friends of over a decade.
You see, just raising your arm in that position, to undermine the system and get what he wants, but surely, we’re not suggesting that his intentions at the end of the day could be anything other than altruistic, are we?
Now, I don’t think Elon Musk was stupid enough to do what we all thought he did. But that said, there’s this old saying that might contain a lot of wisdom for this increasingly problematic situation unfurling in front of our eyes. It went something like: Call a fig a fig, a spade a spade, and a Nazi salute… a Nazi salute.
You don’t have to find yourself rampaging across Europe and undercutting an entire ethnicity to be called a fascist. The very word becomes arbitrary if it is only used in the context of the most bloodthirsty killer our world has seen yet. Taking away people’s freedom — as the MAGA movement is so hell-bent on doing — mass deportation of immigrants, whose human lives, whose children’s lives, depend on the mercy of this new istration, and many other instances of compelling action or speech to the benefit of ring-wing ideology, could all fall under the umbrella that would’ve once been used to describe fascism to a T.
And whatever he might say in defense of his actions over the past year, Elon Musk — once entrepreneur, inventor, and overall cool tech uncle who wanted to take humanity to Mars — now finds himself deeply entangled with these extremist crowds. But if you ask his friends, it seems that the Tesla CEO’s problematic behavior could’ve been foreseen years ago.
Take Musk’s peer Philip Low, who recently published a damning letter on his Facebook page explaining that while Elon is certainly “not a Nazi,” he could be of a much, much worse breed.
“I have known Elon Musk at a deep level for 14 years, well before he was a household name,” Philip begins. “We used to text frequently. He would come to my birthday party and invite me to his parties.”
He continued by adding:
“Elon is not a Nazi, per se. 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. He used to think he worked on the most important problems. When I met him, he did not presume to be a technical person — he would be the first to say that he lacked the expertise to understand certain data. That happened later. Now, he acts as if he has all the solutions.
“He only wants to control, dominate, and use you — don’t let him and cut him and his businesses out of your and your loved ones’ lives entirely. he is a total miserable self-loathing poser, and unless you are too, he will be much more afraid of you than you should ever be of him.”
Philip further says that everything Elon does is “about acquiring and consolidating power.” He also explains why Elon knew exactly what he was doing with that Nazi salute, which you can read in full in the letter itself, but the gist is that he wanted to reclaim some “power” he felt slipping away on the eve of Donald Trump’s victory. There are apparently certain neo-Nazi elements in the MAGA movement, under the influence of Steve Bannon, who would push Elon away from Trump. The president ignoring Elon’s recommendation for Treasury Secretary might have gotten under his skin, not to mention the billionaire also didn’t like the fact that he was forced to visit Israel and Auschwitz after questioning Israel’s methods in the 2023–2024 Gaza Strip conflict, and nothing could open that can of worms quite like throwing this insulting gesture in the face of Trump’s allies in the Middle East.
As Bernie Sanders said a while ago getting into pissing contests with gaming streamers.
Published: Jan 27, 2025 02:25 pm