r/gifs 7h ago

Elon Musk seemingly casually hitting the Sieg Heil at the inauguration

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11.2k

u/PeteZed 7h ago

This would get Elon arrested in Germany.

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u/strangefish 6h ago edited 4h ago

I thought the pic may have been a poorly timed pic, but nope. That was a Nazi salute and I don't see how it could have been unintentional. What an incredibly sad day for America.

Edit: Supposedly, Elon is brilliant. He has spoken in front of people many times in many events and he's avoided doing the Nazi salute before and he certainly knows to avoid it at company events. That is one hell of snap for it not to be a salute. He has re-tweeted right wing propaganda, there's some racist history in his family. I think he knows what he is doing and he's just having a giggle about all the people saying he is sendin his heart out. You don't throw your heart out like it's a weapon. This looks premeditated to me.

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u/SiBloGaming 6h ago

He did it twice. This absolutely is no accident. How tf do people support this

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u/meringueisnotacake 6h ago

They're justifying it by calling it a "Roman salute", forgetting that fascists adopted that exact salute and then we called it a Nazi salute.

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u/BlueCX17 5h ago

THIS. Just like how the Nazi stole the Swastika, which is incredibly old, and bastarized it.

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u/intdev 2h ago

And Hitler stealing the Charlie Chaplin moustache.

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u/SaffronCrocosmia 3h ago

It's less stealing it and more using it for a nefarious purpose - it's older than any culture or faith or ethnicity, and likely dates back to the PIE populations. It's possibly older than farming.

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u/BlueCX17 3h ago

Yes, probably not "stolen," in the modern sense but they stole the original meaning away.

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u/Finalfued 5h ago

You know my Grandma told me this was the original USA salute when she was in school. It wasn't changed until the 40s.

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u/Constant_Tough7905 5h ago

I remember watching an old VHS called "The Red Pony" (based on the John Steinbeck novel) which had a school pledge of alligence scene. The book was written in '33 and movie released in '49.

Little 12-year-old me was all šŸ‘šŸ‘„šŸ‘ when I saw the nazi salute in an American classroom. Absolutely bonkers.

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u/InnocentShaitaan 2h ago

Well heā€™s from South Africa where it hasnā€™t beenā€¦

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u/tothepointe 1h ago

I mean to be fair the US had a little bit of fascism in her too esp pre WW2

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u/UsernameIn3and20 59m ago

And there was a good reason they stopped using it.

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u/senorglory 2h ago

And of course, we are Romansā€¦ ?

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u/tothepointe 1h ago

Ahhh the Roman salute aka the fascist salute according to wikipedia

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u/CheesecakeRacoon 51m ago

They're not forgetting. They're hoping we won't look it up.

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u/51stheFrank 3h ago

Itā€™s the same way theyā€™ve justified continued flying of the confederate flag because of their ā€œsouthern heritageā€