Open letter to any Shtetl-Optimized readers who know Elon
Did Elon Musk make a Nazi salute? Well, not exactly. As far as I can tell, the truth is that he recklessly and repeatedly made a hand gesture that the world’s millions of Nazi sympathizers eagerly misinterpreted as a Nazi salute. He then (the worse part) declined to clarify or apologize in any way, opting instead for laugh emojis.
I hasten to add: just like with Trump’s Charlottesville dogwhistles, I find it ludicrous to imagine that Elon has any secret desire to reopen the gas chambers or whatever—and not only because of Elon’s many pro-Zionist and philosemitic actions, statements, and connections. That isn’t the issue, so don’t pretend I think it is.
Crucially, though, “not being a literal Nazi” isn’t fully exculpatory. I don’t want the overlords of the planet treating these matters as jokes. I want them to feel the crushing weight of history, exactly like I would feel it in their shoes.
Regardless of my distaste for everything that happened to reach this point, Elon is now in a unique position to nudge Trump in the direction of liberality and enlightenment on various issues. And while I doubt Elon finds time to read Shtetl-Optimized between his CEOing, DOGEing, tweeting, and video game speedruns, I know for certain that there are multiple readers of this blog to whom Elon has listened in the past—and those people are now in a unique position too!
A public “clarification” from Elon—not an apology, not an admission of guilt, but just an acknowledgment that he knows why sleeping dragons like Nazism shouldn’t be poked for shits and giggles, that he’ll try to be careful in the future—would be a non-negligible positive update for me about the future of the world.
I understand exactly why he doesn’t want to do it: because he doesn’t want to grant any legitimacy to what he sees as the biased narrative of a legacy media that despises him. But granting some legitimacy to that narrative is precisely what I, a classically liberal Jewish scientist who bears the battle scars of attempted woke cancellation, am asking him to do. I’m asking him to acknowledge that he’s now by any measure one of the most powerful people on the planet, that with great power comes great responsibility, and that fascism is a well-known failure mode for powerful rightists, just like Communism is a well-known failure mode for leftists. I’m asking for reassurance that he takes that failure mode seriously, just like he correctly takes human extinction and catastrophic AI risk seriously.
Anyway, I figured it was worth a try, given how much I really believe might hinge on how Elon chooses to handle this. I don’t want to be kicking myself, for the rest of my life, that I had a chance to intervene in the critical moment and didn’t.
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Comment #1 January 21st, 2025 at 2:53 pm
Which aspects of Elon’s behavior over the past five years suggest there’s even the slightest chance of him pushing Trump towards liberality and enlightenment? As far as I can tell, the man is a deranged egomaniac in the midst of a prolonged and public nervous breakdown, whose current project is to permanently institutionalize American oligarchy.
Comment #2 January 21st, 2025 at 3:15 pm
I doubt very much that anyone can “nudge Trump in the direction of liberality and enlightenment.” It is just not something he’s interested in. People like Musk have influence over Trump by adopting his goals and helping him achieve them. Trump sees Musk not as a source of good ideas but someone that can help him implement his own “good ideas”. As soon as people who enter Trump’s inner circle try to change Trump, they get dropped and are cast out from Trump’s world.
Comment #3 January 21st, 2025 at 3:42 pm
Musk declared recently that the far-right totalitarian German party AfD was the only hope for Germany.
I really don’t see how you can give this guy an ounce of credibility. He has no respect for democracy, only for those who share his suprematist views. He’s a fascist.
Did you even have a look at his twitter timeline recently?
Comment #4 January 21st, 2025 at 4:00 pm
I said that Musk was in a unique position to nudge Trump in the direction of liberality—not (alas) that he actually wants to, outside perhaps of a few specific issues like high-skilled immigration.
Look, I personally know at least 8 or 9 people who Musk also knows and who I know to be decent and thoughtful, and almost certainly there are others who read this blog. Those people now have an opportunity and maybe a moral obligation to try to prevent Musk from fully descending to the Dark Side. If they succeed, then regardless of what you think of Musk as a person, in utilitarian terms that will be one of the highest-value interventions in the history of the world. If they fail, then at least we’ll all have clarity, and every decent person in Musk’s orbit can decide what to do accordingly.
Comment #5 January 21st, 2025 at 4:02 pm
You’re assuming a binary scenario. Either Elon, in a fervent display of Nazism, deliberately gave the salute, or Elon, in an oblivious moment of ridiculousness, gave the salute by accident.
Elon Musk has been deep in the alt-right, including support for the Afd in Germany. He is surely familiar with Nazi symbolism and giving the salute twice in succession he was surely aware of its meaning.
I think it most likely that Musk gave the salute deliberately, either as a troll, of he spent a bit too much time reading all the fascist chatter recently, and for a moment his brain wanted to play fascist.
I kinda think the latter, he’s been dipping his toes in circles where the gesture would be somewhat normalized, and he’s flat out celebrated that he’s now an oligarch so he’s not afraid of controversy.
I think for a moment he did want to show support for fascism, thought better of it (he seems to back out of the second salute a bit), then thought of the heart line as an excuse.
He’s not anti-Semitic, nor is he quite Fascist, but the alt-right is close to Fascist and I think Elon has started thinking that there’s something to it.
Comment #6 January 21st, 2025 at 4:13 pm
aaron #5: No, I wasn’t at all assuming a sharp dichotomy. Your hypotheses are plausible.
Comment #7 January 21st, 2025 at 4:29 pm
At the core, my model with Musk is that the original FSD proposal turned Tesla into a meme stock and caused its valuation to rise several times more than it should have. I think this put Musk in an uncomfortable position where he either acknowledged the unreasonable hype (and caused the stock to plummet), or tried to maintain it with yet more misdirection and hype.
I think maintaining the hype put him in a position where he necessarily shut out critics, and that basically left him with the alt-right as his main believers and turned him into his current incarnation.
I think that’s the underlying challenge. A sane moderate Musk has to deal with the fact that he’s sitting on a giant bubble. Extremist Musk can do things like preach to the crowd and buy his way into the White House where he may be able to do something to justify the stock price.
Perhaps my mental model is completely wrong, but I feel like there’s a connection between Elon Musk, the extreme hype man, and Elon Musk, the extremist throwing in with election deniers and far right extremists.
Comment #8 January 21st, 2025 at 4:40 pm
Schrödinger Sieg Heil?
You won’t know til the oven door opens …
Comment #9 January 21st, 2025 at 5:29 pm
I don’t know Elon. Scott I think you’ve got this mostly correct. I believe Musk was trolling his the left, knowingly using Nazi imagery, for which he should be ashamed (alas, I don’t think he is capable of feeling shame).
My one quibble is that I suspect vastly more people on the left interpreted his expression as a Nazi salute than on the right, and indeed this is what he was counting upon. He even had a response to critics locked and loaded: you people see Hitler everywhere – get a life! From what I can tell, some on the far right saw it as a secret message – “I am with you” – but others seemed to view it as a happy accident.
Jeffrey Goldberg, a prominant never Trumper, and Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the ADL, have publicly expressed their views that this was not a Nazi salute. They note that in context, Musk was saluting the crowd. He patted his heart, said “My heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured,” and then performed the salute, biting his lip in a contorted scowl which I imagine he must have practiced. Ben Shapiro, who went with Musk to visit Auschwitz and presumably spent some time talking with him, accused Musk’s breathless detractors of being “f***ing morons.” While anyone who doubts the sincerity of Goldberg, Greenblatt, and Shapiro in criticizing antisemitism must think himself more Catholic than the pope, I think the all missed the fact that Musk did not do this by accident (and Shapiro willfully so, I’d guess). There’s really no question about the symbolism here:
https://x.com/esjesjesj/status/1881716580876497257
Scott is correct that the appropriate thing to do would be for Musk to apologize, but both he and especially Trump consider apologizing to be an act of weakness, so that will never happen.
Comment #10 January 21st, 2025 at 5:59 pm
Scott:
You’ve argued here before that the puritanical left-wingers in the woke movement are scolds who don’t understand humor. Unfortunately, you’re falling into the same tendency here. Why isn’t Elon allowed to joke about this? Why should we scold anyone for jokes, just because some people might find them offensive? The concept that Musk actually made a Nazi salute is so absurd and so disconnected from reality that the only reasonable response is to mock it and make fun of it. Wokes compare everyone (including you!) to Nazis and it’s time we mock them for the absurdity of their accusations.
I find this whole thing (Musk “Nazi salute” incident) really similar to the plot of the first season of “The Chair.”
Aaron:
Are you serious? The AfD is a mainstream right-wing party and one of the biggest in the Bundestag. They’re polling the hughest or the second highest right now among German parties for the upcoming elections. If you read their platform there is nothing even approaching anything that could be construed as “Nazism.” If Elon Musk is a “Nazi” for supporting AfF so is ~25% of the German electorate. We’re all sick of people like you calling any political parties you don’t like “Nazi.”
Comment #11 January 21st, 2025 at 6:08 pm
In times like these, one can either laugh or cry.
If you’d rather laugh, Mel Brooks has you covered: https://youtu.be/bcy582OB9qk?si=kiQS1_eLQWsOt9-Q
Comment #12 January 21st, 2025 at 6:42 pm
Kyle #10: Here’s what I see as the difference. When the “woke scolds” came after me ten years ago, I lost sleep, I answered hundreds of people’s questions, I took a month of my life to explain that no, I don’t actually think all women should be my sex slaves. I did everything I could to extend empathy to anyone who was willing to extend empathy for me. In some cases like Arthur Chu and Amanda Marcotte, that offer was refused, but in countless other cases it was accepted.
And look, I’m not asking Elon to do any of that. Hell, I’m not even asking him to apologize! I’m asking him to do the absolute bare-ass minimum: to acknowledge that if he’d been making a Heil salute, as it looked in the photos, then that would’ve been legit terrible. To write a sentence or two to assuage millions of people’s historically rooted fears, and not end those sentences with a laugh emoji. That’s it, and yet that’s what he hasn’t done.
Comment #13 January 21st, 2025 at 6:52 pm
Scott, this is what I don’t understand. You’ve told us here, time and again, that you’ve been far **too** apologetic to the wokes and the “sneerclubbers.” You’ve told us that you’re too open to other people’s criticisms of you, too sensitive to it, too willing to abase yourself for others’ approval. You’ve said a big goal in your life is to be able to tell other people just to fuck off. Well, wouldn’t you have felt better if you just laughed at these sneerclubbers and feminists and told them to fuck off? And isn’t Elon Musk telling his own insincere or hysterical woke critics to fuck off, like, the natural endpoint of your journey to become more assertive and confident in yourself?
Comment #14 January 21st, 2025 at 7:02 pm
Kyle #13: There’s an optimal level of willingness to engage with people’s criticisms of you. I’m probably too far to one side, but Elon is now way, way, way too far to the other.
Comment #15 January 21st, 2025 at 7:03 pm
Why should he engage with criticisms that are bad-faith, insincere, or absurd? I mean, don’t you no longer engage AT ALL with such criticisms, following your new blog comment policies?
Comment #16 January 21st, 2025 at 7:20 pm
Kyle #15: I went from spending, like, 50% of my life answering people’s criticisms of me to spending 5-10% of it on that. Meanwhile I’m asking the (second?) most powerful man in the world to go from 0% to 0.001%.
Comment #17 January 21st, 2025 at 7:29 pm
How do you know it’s <0.001%? What makes you confident to say that?
He runs a number of very large businesses, and is working with Trump’s very ideologically diverse cabinet (containing everyone from populist right-wingers to traditional Republicans to even former progressives like Tulsi Gabbard and RFK). I’m sure he deals with criticism and feedback and intellectual disagreement every single day.
The thing is, though, he just doesn’t give annoying, insincere wokes who call everything “sexist” and “racist” and want to ban speech and shame people etc etc the time of day. Most Americans are sick of this woke behavior, the shaming, the cancellations, calling everything Nazi and racist and toxic, and it’s refreshing—very refreshing—to see Elon not give a shit about it.
Comment #18 January 21st, 2025 at 7:54 pm
Scott #12: What do you think about Nathan Cofnas’ theory of wokism and how to defeat it?
Comment #19 January 21st, 2025 at 8:10 pm
Scott, if a non-Nazi sympathizer does something that “the world’s millions of Nazi sympathizers eagerly misinterpreted as a Nazi salute.”, in what universe would that individual not immediately clarify? The one where he thinks its fun not to?
I’m surprised at your willingness to believe that he believes this story is “the biased narrative of a legacy media that despises him” and not the narrative of the Nazis whom he clearly excites.
Comment #20 January 21st, 2025 at 8:39 pm
Kyle #17: You can see my long responses to people who’ve disagreed with me, twenty years’ worth of them, right here on this blog. On Musk’s Twitter feed, by contrast, you mostly have memes and LOL emojis. This is the reason why I’ve refused to tweet since 2006: while there are individuals who use it well, the platform was epistemically broken even long before Musk bought it.
The incipient Trump cabinet is “intellectually diverse” in the sense that it includes an antivax crackpot (RFK), a Putin- and Assad-loving traitor (Gabbard), an alcoholic sexual abuser (Hegseth), and a parade of other bottom-feeders. Rubio is just about the only one with any knowledge or any qualities of any kind that I can respect.
A decade ago, Musk could answer the wokesters trying to cancel him by saying, “look, I’m doing more to fight climate change than almost anyone on earth. I may be unorthodox, but I’m fundamentally on the side of good.” Now, however, he’s gone over almost entirely to the Dark Side. He’s thrown in his lot with the nativists, the insurrectionists, the election-deniers, the conspiracy theorists, a bunch of the lowest-rung and least intellectually defensible figures America has to offer. And his only defense is that he thinks the left is even worse. The left is trying to suck, I’ll grant him that, but it has a long way to go before it plumbs these particular depths.
Comment #21 January 21st, 2025 at 8:48 pm
Sometimes I like to fantasize that what Musk is doing is a brilliant bold risk-taking and incredibly deceptive ruse to get people in Wyoming, Oklahoma, Kentucky, etc. to buy EVs (in particular Teslas) to save the planet since people in Massachusetts, California, New York, etc. will buy them regardless. But then I realize how silly that idea is …
Comment #22 January 21st, 2025 at 8:52 pm
Dear Scott,
I realize that you are trying to bend over backward to find common ground in the interest of moving the needle of our politics, and I respect that. But I would find the claim that there was any “misinterpretation” here as beyond absurd if it was coming from an edgy 12-year-old at a high school spirit rally, let alone a 53-year-old celebrity billionaire who has abundantly demonstrated both an obsession with how the public sees him and a deep interest in the far-right corners of the internet. I don’t know or care what is going on in the depths of Elon, but there is just no world where he isn’t aware of exactly what he is doing.
Comment #23 January 21st, 2025 at 9:14 pm
Unlike Musk, I care enormously and in a visceral way about answering people’s criticisms of me—to the extent that it’s hard for me to empathize with or even understand the people who don’t care at all.
But when half of my commenters are certain that I’m a woke leftist scold, joining a witch-hunt to persecute Musk for an invented crime, and the other half are certain that I’m a dangerously gullible fool, who doesn’t understand (or pretends not to understand) that Musk’s “Heil” was obviously fully intentional — well then, there’s absolutely nothing I can say to puncture both sets of dueling certainties. The best I can do is to try to approach the Pareto frontier of not-being-hated.
Comment #24 January 21st, 2025 at 10:09 pm
One more time for those in back:
Elon Musk isn’t a Nazi. He’s not against “international Jewry” or anything of the kind. What he’s against, fundamentally, are any rules or norms governing what he’s allowed to say or do.
There is nothing I don’t understand about this or that needs to be explained to me. I do understand it.
My disagreement is precisely that, while I agree that some rules and norms are stupid and pointless, I think others are upheld for really good reasons. As an example, I don’t want to find out what happens after we fully remove the norm against recreating the imagery of the Third Reich (other than for certain very specific reasons, like movies), as a subset of MAGA has been trying hard to do for a decade. So, if Musk does want to find out what happens, that puts him on the opposite side of that issue from me. At least Musk supports the continued existence of the State of Israel, which you could see as the Jewish people’s insurance policy against precisely the eventuality that the post-WWII Nazism taboo would someday collapse.
Comment #25 January 21st, 2025 at 11:11 pm
@Kyle #17
Well, I can agree with some of your complaint — neotoddlerism demonstrates an unproductive impatience toward the hard work of lawful change (Yes, “guns are bad,” but yelling that at the top of your lungs does not do one thing to change a constitutional amendment or a Supreme Court interpretation).
And, I cannot say much about feminism which has evolved across generations. For some women, I will always be a male chauvinist pig.
But, on the racism issue, there is certainly a history — it is called the Southern Strategy.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/
‘You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”’
Yes, The Nation is described as having left bias,
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-nation/
but, it is also described as providing factual reporting.
I had been born in 1960. So, I grew up watching the Vietnam war and the race riots on television. Strom Thurmond of the Dixiecrat party was still around, and, I remember the reporting on the attempted assasination of Presidential candidate George Wallace.
So nonsense about “fake news” gets about as far with me as do claims about Neil Armstrong never stepping on the moon.
I have no doubt that, today, many good people have sincere consternation over the morality of abortion. But, I was around in the 1970’s for all of the anti-Catholic jokes told by Protestants about Catholic families. Their religious leaders at the time cared more about how the Civil Rights Act would affect their IRS 501(c)(3) exemptions. They had not yet “decided” whether or not abortion was sinful,
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/10/abortion-history-right-white-evangelical-1970s-00031480
“When the Roe decision was handed down, W. A. Criswell, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas and sometime president of the Southern Baptist Convention, issued a statement praising the ruling. “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person,” Criswell declared, “and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.”
Again, I was living and aware of the politics around me.
Worse yet, my father’s family had been Southern Methodist. One story about my paternal grandfather, whom I never met, had been how he had missed becoming a Mason because of one black ball. But, I wonder about all of the white balls in that vote. That nomination would have been in Arkansas during the 1920’s. It makes me wonder about facts not in my possession. All of my paternal cousins had been huge fans of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich. They used the word “nigger” quite liberally.
If you are a “Trumper,” then your association with racist politics is grounded in documentable history even if you, yourself, are not.
If you wish to cancel history, stop complaining about cancel culture on the left.
Comment #26 January 22nd, 2025 at 12:02 am
I heard that defending yourself on the Internet doesn’t work. It brings more attention to the conflict and more people will latch on to the attention-grabbing attack. To win you have to either let the attack fall into obscurity or make a more attention grabbing counterattack.
Comment #27 January 22nd, 2025 at 12:18 am
He doesn’t want to antagonize his supporters on the far right, hence no clarification. Same mistake that democrats made a decade ago by not wanting to antagonize the far left. It’s a slippery slope.
Comment #28 January 22nd, 2025 at 2:08 am
It’s all trolling and child games until they start shooting people on the left and right. Doing this while the world already witnesses the rise of fascists who literally shoot people in masses is not a trolling, it’s a political, moral, and existential position of that being. “What he’s against, fundamentally, are any rules or norms governing what he’s allowed to say or do.” ??? How is it not a definition of evil?
It’s perfectly logical for those fascists like Musk to support Israel while it is acting in a bad faith (such as denying a two-state solution with Palestine). Do you know why? I left it as a puzzle.
Comment #29 January 22nd, 2025 at 2:11 am
Kyle #10: yes, the AfD is getting 25% or more of the German electors.
And yes, they are “mainstream right-wing”. Sadly, those 25% either forgot about the one lesson, our country should have taken from 1930s, or they ignore it on purpose. I personally stand up for the “never again” Germany should have learnt, thus I need to stand up against everybody playing down AfD, sorry for the side thread here.
“If you read their platform there is nothing even approaching anything that could be construed as “Nazism.””
this is just wrong: The AfD has a history as economic inspired anti-Euro party. During the last years, they got rid of all those economic-people and moved to the far-right. They are at least toying around, perhaps even on purpose copying old ideas from the German nazi party NSDAP (which, in 1932, won “only” 33% at elections). The latest example is their distribution of “Abschiebtickets” (“deportation ticket”) for people with a non-German background, which of course only accidently are an identical 21th century adaption of the “Freifahrkarte nach Jerusalem”, the NSDAP issued in the 1930s…
Besides, by court decision, it is allowed to call one of their leading figures (Höcke) a fascist. Moreover, at least some parts of AfD are (again by court decision) “gesichert rechtsextremistisch” (definitely right-wing extremist).
Your conclusion “If Elon Musk is a “Nazi” for supporting AfF so is ~25% of the German electorate.” is thus perhaps not far from true. Sad, but true.
Comment #30 January 22nd, 2025 at 2:17 am
I have been so far a diligent and silent reader of your blog, Scott. However, it pains me that my first message’s got to be on this memo.
It is a nazi salute (hand on the heart, then throw the extended hand with a closed thumb). He did it twice!
Does it mean Elon is a nazi? No… maybe? But it harshes a vibe already harshed. It’s a flag raised. A sign said. It’s not because the current target of choice is not the Jewish diaspora in the US that it makes this action any less reprehensible. That you defend Elon out of political expediency because of past perceived helpfulness towards Israel is a moral failing.
At the moment, Trump and acolytes and sycophants are building a rhetoric of invading armies to discuss illegal immigration at the border. The King in Orange already invoked the use of the army. How long till the order to shoot at said invaders is given? They come first for the Mexicans, then who…?
Lev 18:5
Comment #31 January 22nd, 2025 at 3:17 am
Musk already clarified, by posting videos of leftists accidentally doing the same gesture.
Including some who attack him: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1881924748717982070
Comment #32 January 22nd, 2025 at 3:32 am
Did Technocracy or Social Credit in Canada ever use fascist salutes? (Elon’s maternal grandfather was involved with both.)
Or maybe he’s just getting in touch with his inner M. Bison
Comment #33 January 22nd, 2025 at 4:30 am
I found your most recent reply clarifying. I appears our disagreement is precisely this—-I think someone who does not object to gaining the public, vocal endorsement of Nazis is by definition a Nazi sympathizer.
Comment #34 January 22nd, 2025 at 6:28 am
Kyle #10:
The AfD is a mainstream right wing party here in Germany, yes. But they are right wing extremists, facists and – yes – nazis.
In three of our 16 counties (Thüringen, Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt), the AfD and their youth organizations are classified as “proven right extremist” by the Bundesamt für Verfassungschutz (Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution). I can already hear your rebuttal coming that of course the government will do everything in their power to discredit the AfD. However, the process to be classified as “proven right extremist” is no joke and the classification is not given lightly.
The AfD employs over 100 staff members that have proven ties to the right-wing totalitarian scene, nazi scene and “Reichsbürger” (right wing scene that seeks to violently overthrow the government). Top politicians of the AfD like Björn Höcke and Maximilian Krah have repeatedly shown their nazi agendas, for example by deliberately using nazi terminology and parols. Björn Höcke has publicly stated that “a big problem is that Hitler is considered to be the absolute evil”.
Important AfD members have taken part in secret meetings discussiong racist “remigration” agendas.
Spreading hate, fake news and false information is one of the key tactics of the AfD. The AfD consistently attacks the free press.
The list goes on and on and on…
The AfD is a right wing facist, racist nazi party. If you want to believe it or not. And yes, they are getting high poll numbers. So yes, unfortunatley it is true, ~25% of the German elactorate right now acticely support a nazi party.
Comment #35 January 22nd, 2025 at 6:29 am
Alessandro Strumia #31: That’s not a “clarification,” it’s just more laughing at his enemies.
Yes, most people have at some point in their life extended their arm in a straight line. If neo-Nazis around the world believed that Obama or Kamala Harris were making Nazi salutes to them, if they rejoiced at it, and if Obama or Kamala Harris then refused to clarify … then there could be a sensible comparison.
Comment #36 January 22nd, 2025 at 6:33 am
I loved how a friend of mine put it this morning. She said: whatever Musk’s own views, he’s not concerned that he might be mistaken for having horrible ones, which is bad enough.
Comment #37 January 22nd, 2025 at 6:43 am
To me the basic thing is this: if I accidentally made a comment or gesture that’s interpreted as “Nazi”, I would distance myself from that. “I’ve seen the footage of myself and I understand it can be misinterpreted. Let me be clear: the Nazi-salut and what it represents are despicable and I do not want to be associated with it in any way.”
It’s easy and basic decency.
Instead, Musk jokes and jeers. He does not take the matter seriously and instead seems to make it into some kind of gaslighting exercise: “you are the crazy ones”.
As Daniel Arovas above states, there’s really no question about the symbolism here:
https://x.com/esjesjesj/status/1881716580876497257
I’m not sure what Musk is trying to do here (I am sure he’s NOT an antisemite and definitely not an actual Nazi). It may be a bad joke on his part, or stirring up controversy, or a bet he made (“I bet I can get away with doing the salute twice”) or whatever. But it’s bad. Just horribly despicable.
Comment #38 January 22nd, 2025 at 7:10 am
Alright, I’ll close this thread soon.
I tried to walk a fine line here: encouraging all my readers in Elon’s orbit to encourage him to disclaim Nazi support, because I believed that was both possible and necessary—that he isn’t a Nazi, and probably just needed a little push from the people around him to do the morally obligatory thing, and denounce the neo-Nazis who were rejoicing in his gesture.
It’s now clear that my attempt to intervene in history was a total and complete failure. Instead, I’m just getting a one-two punch, with half of commenters condemning my moral failure for calling Elon a Nazi (even though I explicitly didn’t), and the other half condemning my moral failure for not calling him a Nazi. The world is a horrible place.
Comment #39 January 22nd, 2025 at 8:03 am
triceratops #1:
Support for free speech and general support for science. Like all people, he isn’t perfect on either of these when he’s motivated to discount them.
aaron #5:
Yes, you’ve seen him jump around with odd, spastic movements, particularly on stage when hyped up.
Hannah Arendt #19:
I’d love to see evidence that there currently exist “millions of Nazi sympathizers”, and that this isn’t just another example of cynically expanding the definition of “Nazi” to tarnish people you don’t like.
Comment #40 January 22nd, 2025 at 9:20 am
To everyone who thinks there are “similar videos” to the Musk salute, find a side-to-side video that looks anything like this:
https://packaged-media.redd.it/anz1e5xdfeee1/pb/m2-res_720p.mp4?m=DASHPlaylist.mpd&v=1&e=1737561600&s=211d40f3d080a17ec8c2fc5479b7618f8dc5b507#t=3.306667
It’s mind-boggling that anyone can look at the AOC video (linked by Strumia above) and think it’s somehow a counterexample to the Musk one. Also, in case people haven’t seen those:
– Check Musk’s reply here https://x.com/breakingbaht/status/1724892505647296620. Check what the linked post is in response to.
– See his post here https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1869986946031988780
Combined with the salute, it’s perfectly reasonable to find those things at minimum quite concerning if not worse. This is *not* like anything top democrat figures did. Find evidence of some top democratic figure (e.g., Pelosi, Biden, Harris, etc.) doing anything of the sort *and* aligning with sentiments about ‘Stalin being right’ (or whatever other extreme statement). Then you will have something worth talking about.
Comment #41 January 22nd, 2025 at 9:28 am
Scott, I find it rather disappointing that you reduce the issue of Musk being a fascist to that of him being a literal Nazi. It’s true, he’s clearly not an anti-semite. However, Nazism is just as horrendous if you replace Jews with any other minority. Hating Muslims or blacks or Mexicans is what is fashionable nowadays, and that’s what he does.
Comment #42 January 22nd, 2025 at 9:30 am
Dear Scott,
Musk is not the main concern for me. Nor do I care whether he’s a card-carrying Nazi in the literal sense. He’s just another person whose mass of wealth has brought him under the sway of that grabitational singularity we know as Felon 47, and perhaps by nothing more insidious than the lure of “being in the room where it happens”.
What concerns me is the dynamics of fascism being played out in our times.
A driving force in that dynamics is the exploitation of scapegoat populations to misdirect and manipulate the general public into focusing on anything but the real problems in society and instead act out the sociopathic agendas of fascist demagogues.
To be continued …
Comment #43 January 22nd, 2025 at 9:42 am
Mateus Araújo #41: I don’t think Elon “hates” Muslims, blacks, or Mexicans as a class either. Again, though, I think he (like Trump) is unconcerned about being mistaken for someone who does hate them, which is bad enough.
In any case I completely agree that fascism and other evil ideologies are equally bad when directed not against Jews but against Tutsis, Uyghurs, “kulaks,” or any other hated minority. But then there’s the curious historical fact, which David Deutsch has repeatedly called attention to, that virtually any sufficiently evil ideology does eventually turn against Jews (Deutsch calls this “The Pattern”).
Comment #44 January 22nd, 2025 at 9:59 am
> and video game speedruns
These are mostly fake. For example during the inauguration while he did the blatant Nazi salute, twice, once while facingnthe crowd and then after the reaction turned around and did it facing Trump, it was obviously intentional, don’t downplay this, his character was logged into path of exile doing a dungeon.
Comment #45 January 22nd, 2025 at 11:27 am
Did Hillary, Obama, Warren, and Harris do “Nazi salute”? If you want Musk to explain himself, why won’t you demand the same from the four prominent Democrat politicians who used exactly the same gesture?
https://www.techarp.com/politics/clinton-obama-warren-harris-nazi-salute/
Comment #46 January 22nd, 2025 at 11:38 am
Scott #43: Please, this is just wilful ignorance. There’s no lack of blatant hatred coming from Trump. Most recently his disgusting lie “they are eating the dogs, they are eating the cats, they are eating the pets of the people that live there”. It’s obviously a rehashing of the blood libel, and the fact that it is directed at blacks instead of Jews doesn’t make it any less unacceptable. Musk inciting riots in the UK and supporting the AfD in Germany leaves no room for doubt either.
I think Deutsch’s observation is spot on. And it makes it suicidal, not merely immoral, for Jews to ride this particular tiger.
Comment #47 January 22nd, 2025 at 12:28 pm
In Bayesian terms, maybe many of us have long held priors that Elon Musk may be erratic, but he’s not a Nazi, or even a Fascist. Then we get new evidence, like the repeated Nazi salute. “Well, not exactly,” Scott says. Actually, exactly. That gesture has *some* intentional purpose, it is clearly a call in solidarity with bad people. Sometimes the likelihood term is so powerful that we should seriously readjust our priors for the next move. Fascist is as Fascist does.
Comment #48 January 22nd, 2025 at 12:46 pm
Michael P #45: I already answered that (#35)—did you not see, or not care?
The difference is, when Obama, Warren, etc happened to raise their arms straight, there weren’t neo-Nazis all over the world who rejoiced that they were being dogwhistled to (why not? good exercise for the reader 🙂 ). And crucially, if there had been, Obama, Warren, etc would’ve obviously rushed to reject and denounce the neo-Nazis’ support, because whatever their other faults, Obama and Warren aren’t morally stunted in this specific way.
Comment #49 January 22nd, 2025 at 12:52 pm
Mateus Araújo #46: Certainly on Trump’s part there seem to be all the hatreds you mention. And certainly on Elon’s part, there’s hatred for leftists, the woke, and anyone who he regards as lazy or stupid. On the other hand, I’ve seen no evidence that (e.g.) at SpaceX or Tesla, he wants to hire anyone other than the smartest, most fanatically devoted engineers, without regard to where they were born or what they look like. (That’s why he declared his willingness to “go to war” to preserve H1B visas.)
I agree that it’s self-defeating for Jews to cast their lot with Trumpism or any other right-wing populist movement. That’s one of many reasons why I haven’t.
Comment #50 January 22nd, 2025 at 1:04 pm
Not unexpected, I knew that would be the one “news” that would bait Scott out of his hibernation, but wow, just wow…
Let’s fall for yet one more piece of Musk trolling the world, which has been carefully crafted to distract from what really matters – team Trump’s policies on climate change, free speech, world order, respect of the laws, poor immigrants and refugees, the middle class…
Comment #51 January 22nd, 2025 at 1:12 pm
Ironic how, until now, it was such an easy slam-dunk for the ADL (not to be confused with the AfD) to recognize/condemn/cancel over “anti-semitism”.
But apparently once it’s about the richest man in the world rather than woke students on campuses, for some obscure reason things get way more subtle and complex. Who would have thought? /sarcasm
Comment #52 January 22nd, 2025 at 1:37 pm
You can’t blame Musk for trying to be more and more like one of his top heroes and models, von Braun…
Comment #53 January 22nd, 2025 at 1:42 pm
fred #51: I thought the ADL’s statement was narrowly correct, but failed to do justice to the entirety of what we’ve learned about Musk, especially from his refusal to clarify himself or disclaim neo-Nazi support afterwards.
That said, the ADL are far from the only ones who don’t want to make an enemy of the President of United States unless they absolutely need to. I’m grateful to have no such constraints.
Comment #54 January 22nd, 2025 at 1:45 pm
Michael P #45
That side-by-side “salute” video of Musk and those Neo-nazis that you linked is simply astonishing. :_D
Comment #55 January 22nd, 2025 at 3:54 pm
I’m not sure what Elon could have done with that gesture to make it more like a Nazi salute. There’s a reason why most of the comparisons to other politicians making a gesture that is some point straight-arm, palms down are still frames, not videos, and the ones that are videos look quite different. I’m also not sure what he could have done to make it seem more intentional.
It’s the concept of “refuge in audacity”, a sort of trolling where you use the outlandish nature of the thing you did to gaslight people about it. It equivocates between, say, “it’s crazy that Elon Musk gave a Nazi salute” and “it’s crazy you think that Elon Musk gave a Nazi salute”.
I think Musk’s gesture also was favorably received by those who would be happy to see such a thing either as a troll _or_ in earnest. Which was also part of the troll, and also part of the point.
Comment #56 January 22nd, 2025 at 4:13 pm
Fred #54 agreed.
#45 dispelled any doubt I had left that he threw actual Nazi salutes.
And Aaron #5 tells it best.
Comment #57 January 22nd, 2025 at 5:14 pm
1. Musk in the last 24 hours retweeted an Orban speech in which Orban declared war on “liberal democracy.”
2. I just came across this post by Sam Harris on Musk’s (d)evolution.
https://samharris.substack.com/p/the-trouble-with-elon
(sorry if it’s been posted here before). I disagree with Harris on a lot of things, but this reads as spot on.
3. Re anti-semitism in the academy, I find Harvard’s new approach to be very disappointing, cowardly, and likely counterproductive. It’s a good example of the real phenomenon of TDS, which is when people and institutions shed deeply-held, longstanding values (in Harvard’s case, a robust commitment to academic freedom) out of fear or a desire for power or whatever. Curious for your thoughts on this, Scott:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/21/us/harvard-antisemitism-definition-discipline.html
Comment #58 January 22nd, 2025 at 5:52 pm
> […] complete failure. Instead, I’m just getting a one-two punch […]
When this came up in a discussion, I linked to your post here and called it an injection of sanity, which people seemed to agree with. It’s easy to get caught up in speculation about Musk’s intentions. Your point — that if you’re handed an opportunity to repudiate naziism, you should take it — elegantly sidesteps all that.
So I think the one-two punch you’re talking about is… I won’t necessarily say trolls (probably that too; I haven’t read through all the comments) but people kinda willfully misinterpreting you and you should discount and ignore them. I mean, after clarifying that you’re neither accusing Musk of being a Nazi nor siding with him, which you’ve done.
(At least keep in mind the selection bias of commenters. It’s harder for the sane, moderate majority to overcome the activation energy to post a comment.)
Comment #59 January 22nd, 2025 at 6:23 pm
If it helps, I’ve also linked to this post, calling it unusually reasonable.
Comment #60 January 22nd, 2025 at 7:20 pm
Scott, #48,
Sorry, didn’t notice your #35.
I have to object though to the assertion that somehow Democrat leaders are further from the essence of Neo-Nazis than Republican leaders. This is not at all what I’ve seen recently.
How would do you define Neo-Nazis (or Fascists) in general terms?
Treating people differently, depending on race? That’s mainstream Democrats, that’s official DEI policies.
Outright segregation? Some uni campuses have “safe spaces”; UCSD has 14 student services officies for various backgrounds.
Antisemitism, popular and institutionalized? That’s leftist Democrats and 90% Democrat uni humanities departments; that’s “from the river to the sea” on numerous campuses, that’s infamous pro-Hamas letters letter right after October 7, that’s Harvard’s denial that calling for genocide of Jews may be not against their policies, etc.
Censorship of politically inconvenient facts? Mainstream Democrats bullied social media to censor so many things, ranging from the source of COVID to Hunter Biden’s laptop, etc. Recall recent admissions by Mark Zuckerberg.
Persecution of diverse views? “Cancellations” by leftist Democrats.
Bullying companies into compliance with the ruling party ideology? Democrats again.
You said: “Obama, Warren, etc would’ve obviously rushed to reject and denounce the neo-Nazis’ support, because whatever their other faults, Obama and Warren aren’t morally stunted in this specific way.”
However, this is not what we saw during anti-semitic riots at numerous universities and beyond. Some Democrat politicians rejected that, but some, such as Ilhan Omar, contributed.
Also for many years now Democrats are promoting openly racists DEI policies, with the declared objective of treating people of different backgrounds differently. Have you seen the LA Fire Department diversity ad? The assumption that you want to be saved from the fire by a person who looks like you?
It would seem that many Democrat politicians, namely those who wouldn’t openly and vociferously reject DEI or anti-zionism or widespread censorship on behest of the state, are “morally stunted” too.
Comment #61 January 22nd, 2025 at 7:27 pm
If just because you’re “merely” doing a Nazi salute and don’t care about that doesn’t mean you’re a Nazi, then just because the whole world is calling you a Nazi also shouldn’t mean you’re a Nazi. So what’s the issue then?
Comment #62 January 22nd, 2025 at 7:53 pm
Daniel Reeves #58 and Vladimir #59: Thanks so much!! That cheered me up a lot.
Comment #63 January 22nd, 2025 at 7:59 pm
Michael P #60: Your comment reads like something generated by a right-wing chatbot! I explained that unlike say Obama, who explicitly repudiated Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright, neither Trump or Musk ever repudiate their most extreme supporters … and that’s the problem. But rather than respond to my specific point, you just pivoted to a bunch of unrelated grievances against wokesters, DEI, etc, some of which I share but almost none of which are relevant.
Comment #64 January 22nd, 2025 at 10:58 pm
I am a massive fan of the man’s companies, and have been to more Starship launches than many of his employees 😉 that said, I was really disappointed when I saw the video of the “gesture” at the inauguration. After watching it several times, trying to keep an open mind, I’m unfortunately absolutely convinced it was in fact intentional, though, like you I’m also convinced the man is not a literal Nazi. Everything about the gesture was spot on in mimicking a genuine Nazi salute. Yes, I know what he said when he did it, but I really feel that was preplaned and timed to go with the salute for the explicit purpose of being able to argue the action away as “I was gesturing extending my heartfelt thanks.” No, it wouldn’t have looked like that, I can’t envision someone expressing that in this exact way. So why do it? I think we can look to his posts on X as well as the posts of his immediate family in the last few days. It’s a massive troll of the left, and honestly, I think even more so of the US media. Both sides of the US media constantly take things out of context, bend the truth, report half truths, etc quite frequently with a negative light on many topics including Elon’s companies. Take Starship flight 7 vs New Glenn just last week. Each company lost half its vehicle, but I would argue the articles written about SpaceX’s launch were far more negative on average vs those written about Blue Origin’s. My point is, given Elon and his family’s constant posts showing Obama, Clinton, AOC and everyone else with their right arm extended upwards, calling them out for doing the same thing, when they know fully well these are just screenshots lacking the reality of a video showing them making the same hand motions Elon did, this is a massive troll of the media basically doing the same thing to them that the media does to everyone else on a daily basis, further amplifying the lack of trust the public has in our media. Just my thoughts on the topic. I understand the frustration with the media. But this is obviously disappointing and I wish he would address It as many have pointed out above.
Comment #65 January 22nd, 2025 at 11:17 pm
Elon is not stupid. I think he knew his “heartfelt gesture” would get the exact response it’s currently getting, and he seems to be loving every minute of it. I hate the media, but I also don’t agree with throwing around Sieg Heils.
Comment #66 January 23rd, 2025 at 12:11 am
Scott, I insist that Musk already clarified in the correct way. The point is that the people around Trump have been horribly attacked by nasty political activists. They are the brave good people who resisted until winning with better ideas that used to be unsayable. They know that following old rules of apologies is a loosing strategy, now that formerly trustable media become total political liars.
So, I suggest telling Musk something different. Tell him that various interesting physics experiments that were too expensive are now realistic with SpaceX. For example just bring He4 to space. Or a detector with a magnetic field closer to the sun.
Comment #67 January 23rd, 2025 at 12:26 am
A very reasonable response, but I think it’s quite unlikely that Musk will actually do this, unless he can figure out some way to clarify without seeming like he’s giving in somehow. Dominance contests with the media make people act in very problematic ways.
Comment #68 January 23rd, 2025 at 12:36 am
Alessandro Strumia #66: Again, not asking for an apology. How hard could it possibly be for him to say “hey, if you’re some neo-Nazi who was thrilled because you mistakenly thought I was dogwhistling to you, that sucks and you suck”?
That would definitely make difference to me! Am I a “nasty political liar”?
Incidentally, is Musk even interested in fundamental questions in physics, math, or CS? I genuinely have no idea. If he isn’t, it’s not a moral failing, but we’d need to strike those from the list of conversation topics. Obviously if he wants to discuss the applications (or not) of quantum computing to his businesses he can ask…
Comment #69 January 23rd, 2025 at 2:50 am
I find it plausible, if a little bit unlikely, that Musk did what he did without realizing that it really looks a lot like making Nazi salutes on stage at the inauguration rally of the US president. But I agree with you that if this wasn’t intentional, he should explain himself – and I would add that his refusal to do so is telling.
I’d get it if this was an example of the media unfairly harassing someone – which, unfortunately, is a thing that happens – but it isn’t, really. There’s no denying that, intentionally or not, Musk basically did Nazi salutes. If it was just that, the whole heart thing might give him a pass, but he’s boosted foreign right-wing parties and he’s influential not just because of his wealth but because of his (upcoming) position in government. If he’s actually not a Nazi, he should acknowledge that he made a mishap and explain himself, plain and simple.
Comment #70 January 23rd, 2025 at 6:12 am
Incidentally, Scott, could you add a share button for BlueSky? A lot of folks I know are leaving X and FB for that, or at least trying it out. TIA …
Comment #71 January 23rd, 2025 at 6:49 am
Jon Awbrey #70: Sure, if anyone who knows WordPress can tell me how.
Comment #72 January 23rd, 2025 at 8:11 am
Scott (or anyone else), related to the last graf of #68: have you heard or read or seen anything directly communicated by Elon Musk that contained what you would consider a nontrivial, interesting, deep idea? Genuine question. I’m a mathematician and you’re a theoretical computer scientist. We know what these kinds of ideas look and feel like. And the feeling of reading or seeing something emanating directly from a human being which is truly extraordinary isn’t confined to things in math or science of course. Musk is lauded for being a genius. I think that he must have certain talents related to business (Trump also has certain talents, mostly related to attention capture), but I can’t remember ever hearing/reading anything from him of any intellectual depth.
Comment #73 January 23rd, 2025 at 8:40 am
Daniel Reeves #58
Well said! That is the point, first and foremost. I concur with you and Vladimir #59
Comment #74 January 23rd, 2025 at 8:53 am
First time hard disagree, Scott. Occam’s razor. He might not look like one, but he supports the modern Nazis across the West. Today, that’s good enough.
Comment #75 January 23rd, 2025 at 9:12 am
Scott, for what it’s worth I think your position is totally valid and perfectly clear. As others have pointed out, the sensible majority don’t tend to leave comments.
Something I’ve been thinking about: If I was in a meeting at work and made the exact same gesture Musk did, even unintentionally, I would for sure get in some hot water with HR. An apology would be the bare minimum consequence. Why is Musk held to a different standard?
The gesture looked like a Nazi salute, many interpreted it as a Nazi salute, and therefore, regardless of original intent, it’s your responsibility to convince them that it was not a Nazi salute!
Comment #76 January 23rd, 2025 at 9:34 am
John #72:
have you heard or read or seen anything directly communicated by Elon Musk that contained what you would consider a nontrivial, interesting, deep idea? Genuine question.
It seems clear that Musk’s superpower is not having original ideas (I also can’t name any, though maybe someone else can?). Rather, it’s sleeping on the factory floor, screaming at subordinates, and doing anything else it takes until a large engineering organization actually accomplishes something that the rest of the world couldn’t. This latter talent can of course be world-changing (think of Steve Jobs), indeed more world-changing than the talent of having good ideas unless the ideas are literally at the level of Einstein’s (and possibly even then). But it doesn’t make me personally eager to spend time with the achiever!
I do know a world-leading physicist who had dinner with Musk. His striking report to me: “I was bored.”
Comment #77 January 23rd, 2025 at 9:41 am
Don’t you guys see that for the last 4 years, Trumpistan has been coasting on the claim that they were unfairly characterized as Nazis/Fascists/Authoritarians by the Biden clan?
And now that Biden and the Dems are out of the picture, THEY NEED TO KEEP THIS NARRATIVE GOING. Just observe that Trump, who’s now president, is still shitting all over Biden, even more so than before… they know that winning the election was the easy bit, filling the campaign promises and keeping things in check is the difficult part, so they’re all acting as if the campaign is still going on.
Don’t fall for those distractions and focus on what really matters – i.e. the fact that one of the biggest recipient of government funding has now an office in the White House. The real scandal is that the US is now an open corrupt oligarchy that needs to keep the middle class distracted from this with bullshit/manufactured cultural identity politics “issues” (trans, Nazis,… it’s all identity politics trolling).
Comment #78 January 23rd, 2025 at 9:52 am
I am sorry that you don’t perceive this post to be a success, Scott.
For what it is worth, your writing on this incident articulated the actual issue with what Elon did better than I was able to on my own, so thank you for that. I have a few Elon mutuals and am sending them a text to read this post.
Comment #79 January 23rd, 2025 at 9:57 am
Musk is a brilliant con-man because part of the con is backed up by actual engineering, so he gets a huge pass (while other similar con-CEOs are now rotting in jail, like Elizabeth Holmes).
E.g the promise that SpaceX was gonna cut the cost of pound-to-orbit by orders and orders of magnitude (e.g. spaceship soon replacing airliners, heh) was total and utter bullshit… but they came up with StarLink, which is so successful that it justifies the (still) high price of getting things in orbit and insures the survival of SpaceX (getting them billions and billions in tax payer money to fund a return to the Moon and trips to Mars that are totally impractical).
When it comes to Tesla, it’s a series of broken promises to investors (self-driving, etc), but it all boils down to keeping the stock price order of magnitude higher than it should be, and supporting Trump was a winning move (even though Trump hates EVs…).
Comment #80 January 23rd, 2025 at 11:49 am
Scott #76:
And how many top achievements in the world were done without those ridiculous things? I’d like to see the statistics. Until then, I regard those fairy tails as a propaganda of the harassment of the subordinates and workers who simply do their job and don’t try to be attention egomaniacs.
His superpower is the ability to vividly lie without any pangs of conscience about what he and his companies can achieve. This made his companies a great attractor of the speculative capital. I guess everyone agrees that Tesla stock is overpriced regarding the revenue it can generate. He also showed himself as a great market manipulator with cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin or doge, where he used his publicity to influence their price. The recent Trump and Melania cryptocurrency story shows that their coven will do anything to drain as much blood from people as they can.
Comment #81 January 23rd, 2025 at 12:01 pm
Hi Dr. Aaronson,
Just asking since you mention Gabbard as a “traitor”, I feel maybe that word shouldn’t be used to describe her (especially since she is a former veteran), since treason only applies to countries the U.S. is at war with (wapost article: https://archive.is/cIy0C), and meeting with Assad (or another U.S. adversary) shouldn’t be seen as wrong, but rather as engagement and diplomacy (Nancy Pelosi did it against the wishes of the state department in 2007, as well. Gabbard has also called Assad a brutal dictator, too)?
Thank you!
Comment #82 January 23rd, 2025 at 12:02 pm
Dear Scott,
I just want to second #75 and say that your posts very often succintly formulate the scattered thoughts and feelings I have, and remind me that there are other people sharing the same values, being ready to stand for them.
I am sorry if this comment is rather uninformative, but since it seems that indeed mostly the people who disagree with you leave comments here (on both sides of the political spectrum), I wanted to slightly alleviate this harmful “survivor’s” bias and thank you for everything you do!
Comment #83 January 23rd, 2025 at 12:18 pm
triceratops #75, Tu #78, Aleksei Malyshev #82: Thanks so much. That cheers me up.
Comment #84 January 23rd, 2025 at 12:48 pm
@fred #79,
“E.g the promise that SpaceX was gonna cut the cost of pound-to-orbit by orders and orders of magnitude (e.g. spaceship soon replacing airliners, heh) was total and utter bullshit…”
The Starship replacing airliners hasn’t happened and might not for simple political reasons (countries are understandably going to not want something that looks like a ballistic missile launch happening regularly). But cost for even just Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy has drastically reduced cost to orbit. This estimates a factor of 20 https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20200001093 in 2018, and Falcon has had more long-term reusability since then. Part of why SpaceX is charging still pretty high costs is that no one can yet match them on price, so they get to eat much of the launch market and still make a big profit while still being cheaper than anyone else. That’s likely going to change as other reusables come in to play (Blue Origin’s New Glenn and Rocketlab’s Electron being the two most likely contenders).
As for the claim about Starink, it isn’t obviously the case. If SpaceX had to throw away a booster with every Starlink launch, the cost would be much higher and their satellite launch rate would be much lower. But with reuse of the first stage, their internal launch cost goes down by a lot. Indeed, one way of looking at this is that their launch capacity is so high that they made Starlink in part because they have functionally free capacity and the satellite industry was not scaling up quickly enough to match it.
Comment #85 January 23rd, 2025 at 12:50 pm
Anonymous #81: In place of “traitor,” then, would you accept turncoat, quisling, or backstabber, with the same epithet applying to Trump? Is it true or false that Gabbard and Trump have both sought to bring the US into closer alignment with the interests and values of the world’s mass-murdering dictators, including Putin and (until recently, and in Gabbard’s case) Assad?
Comment #86 January 23rd, 2025 at 12:58 pm
[…] The Blog of Scott Aaronson If you take nothing else from this blog: quantum computers won't solve hard problems instantly by just trying all solutions in parallel. « Open letter to any Shtetl-Optimized readers who know Elon […]
Comment #87 January 23rd, 2025 at 1:03 pm
As long as Zuck and Altman don’t also start throwing Seig Heils around, it’s all good! /s
Comment #88 January 23rd, 2025 at 1:47 pm
Scott #38: Fully in agreement with #75.
I wonder if a thumbs-up button and counter (surely wordpress has some straight forward plugin available?) would be good for your mental health, insofar as it would make it terribly clear that the noisy trolls are terribly outnumbered by those who appreciate your attention to nuance and detail.
Comment #89 January 23rd, 2025 at 4:15 pm
I’ve gone back and forth in my head on this, a lot. I don’t have a plausible hypothesis for why Musk made the gesture – surely it’s possible he didn’t intend anything by it, but it’s also something most people *do* know to avoid.
I think you get at the heart of the matter by pointing out that it’s *not* the gesture itself, but rather the refusal to clarify it, and indeed the glee to poke fun at anyone getting offended, that is doing the actual damage and is actually “damning”.
And yet… some part of me thinks that there’s something to the idea that Musk is saying something like “look, it’s pretty clear I’m not a Nazi, this is just a witchunt cause you don’t like my politics, I’m not going to give it any credence”. There is something right about that, to an extent. Maybe shifting the Overton window away from getting faux-offended at nonsense (which is what *most* people are doing) is a worthy goal.
For me, it comes down to this – whatever was going through his mind, if he really *is* “a Nazi” or whatever, let’s just wait for him to do something *actually, clearly* bad, and *then* actually discuss it. It’s not worth wasting time and credibility on things that are plausibly nonsense – the good thing about someone who truly believes terrible things is that they eventually will act in a terrible way!
Side note: it is indeed hilarious that you’ve managed to get two groups mad at you from either direction – too gullible on Musk vs. too hard on him and buying into left wing stories. Don’t let it get to you, I’m sure most people are silently enjoying your take!
Comment #90 January 23rd, 2025 at 4:40 pm
Edan Maor #89: Thanks so much!
Those not in MAGA would of course say that the Trump/Musk movement is already doing terrible things, effectively transforming the United States from a constitutional republic into a pay-to-play oligarchy with elements of Christian nationalism. We can all agree that none of the things are Hitler-level terrible, just because that bar is so incomprehensibly low.
some part of me thinks that there’s something to the idea that Musk is saying something like “look, it’s pretty clear I’m not a Nazi, this is just a witchunt cause you don’t like my politics, I’m not going to give it any credence”.
I completely agree with that analysis of what Musk is presumably thinking. Trump thinks the exact same way. I understand it and I don’t like it.
Oftentimes being a good person really does mean “showing weakness,” admitting error, granting minimal good faith and credence to your attackers, non-flippantly answering the questions of people who will hate you no matter what. One can of course go overboard with these things, but the morally obligatory amount of them is more than zero.
Comment #91 January 23rd, 2025 at 5:04 pm
Musk did that deliberately to just make his constant point about free speech, so outrageous that we will forget that his claim of free speech above everything doesn’t apply when the speech is coming from the other side.
And it’s literally been only 3 days of this trigger circus of the new Trump presidency!
That’s the lesson everyone apparently forgot from his first term (I guess covid kind of reset all our memories):
you gotta learn to pick your fights if you want your sanity to endure.
Comment #92 January 24th, 2025 at 9:03 am
From
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/adl-elon-musk-nazi-jokes-1235244824/
“But Musk made little attempt to allay concerns that he had thrown a “Sieg Heil” at a lectern bearing the United States presidential seal. Indeed, he seemed to enjoy the controversy, and continued to stoke it on Thursday with a series of Nazi-related puns. “Don’t say Hess to Nazi accusations!” he wrote in a post on X that also included the line “Some people will Goebbels anything down!” as well as the baffling non-sequitur “His pronouns would’ve been He/Himmler!” (X CEO Linda Yaccarino responded to all this with a laugh-crying emoji.)”
Comment #93 January 24th, 2025 at 10:08 am
Thank you Scott for the well thought through post in the age of insanity.
Comment #94 January 24th, 2025 at 11:41 am
@Dr. Aaronson #90
You are not alone in your befuddlement over interpretations of Musk’s actions. Jerry Coyne posted a response, today, to a similar dichotomy among most of his regular readers. Like you, he thinks a charitable interpretation should apply.
As for Musk’s subsequent actions, it is easy enough to find sites comparing CEO’s to psychopaths. A more nuanced view is being pursued by researchers now considering psychopathy as a spectrum. As they debate and refine models, an early model is triarchic psychopathy. It proposes axes along Boldness, Meanness, and Disinhibition.
https://arc.psych.wisc.edu/self-report/triarchic-psychopathy-measure-tripm/
They even have online tests:
https://psychopathyis.org/screening/tripm/
For some reason I think you and Mr. Musk would have very, very different scores.
“Oftentimes being a good person really does mean… “
Comment #95 January 24th, 2025 at 11:54 am
More Geek Than Noble Roman
🤓
Muskolini ≠ Spartacus
(Please excuse my Awkward Jesture … but I know everyone here can take a joke.)
Comment #96 January 24th, 2025 at 12:42 pm
mls
“As for Musk’s subsequent actions, it is easy enough to find sites comparing CEO’s to psychopaths. ”
Interesting how it’s not about condemning Musk for his own actions but disculpate him by attributing his behavior to some larger group he belongs to… CEOs, South Africa whites raised in the apartheid, people “on the spectrum”, etc.
We could just as well cut the bullshit and admit noone is responsible for their actions because noone chose the wiring of their brain (even if i could control the wiring of my brain, my choice would be based on the prior wiring), or the wiring of the world outside their brain… the only reason nature has evolved “blaming” and “shaming” is because it’s one way to rewire faulty brains from the outside… but clearly that strategy doesn’t work with Trump or Musk.
Comment #97 January 24th, 2025 at 1:37 pm
Michael P # #45, please read your own link. That source shows that the photos were frames captured from back-and-forth hand-waves, and gives the original videos as proof. It was a debunking of your premise, not a support.
Comment #98 January 24th, 2025 at 2:52 pm
@fred #96
lol.
One may certainly hold an opinion about Musk for the constellation of his acts without interpreting every act in the context of one’s general opinion.
Personally, I would confiscate his assets as “fruit of the crime” for visa violations before revoking his citizenship and kicking him out of the country penniless. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. With a little guts and an expensive lawyer an illegal immigrant can repair their status individually. I actually bothered to look it up.
Comment #99 January 24th, 2025 at 4:23 pm
Unfortunately I’ve come to the conclusion that Musk was definitely deliberately making the Nazi salute.
I based this on:
a) His followup Tweets full of Nazi puns
b) The fact that he has made a “heart goes out” gesture in the past, and it looks nothing like his Nazi salute.
c) The fact his expression just before and during the salute looked like a mixture of anger and determination. Far more in line with someone planning to do something outrageous than ‘putting out their heart’.
His exact motive is still a question, but it’s definitely a Nazi salute.
As for the others defending him by pointing to things like his Auschwitz visit, remember the only reason he went to Auschwitz was to handle blow back for literally endorsing an anti-Semitic tweet!!
Comment #100 January 24th, 2025 at 8:14 pm
“Regardless of my distaste for everything that happened to reach this point, Elon is now in a unique position to nudge Trump in the direction of liberality and enlightenment on various issues.”
“Enlightenment”, insofar as it pertains to “STEM”, will find in Musk a staunch defender I trust (and in, say, Putin and Peter the Great too for that matter). But insofar as that aspect of “Enlightenment” is included which encapsulates, say, “the rule of law” — all bets are off.
Comment #101 January 24th, 2025 at 11:42 pm
Scott 63,
You say Trump never repudiates his supporters. But he repeatedly disavowed David Duke, only for history to record that he refused to. First, you should get this right. Second, the failure of the press to get this right is pretty bad incentives for anyone to disavow anything. I don’t know what conclusion to draw from this, but I think it’s important context.
Comment #102 January 25th, 2025 at 6:31 am
Scott:
“I tried to nudge the arc of history back onto the narrow path of reasoned dialogue, walking the mile-high tightrope between shrill, unsupported accusation and naïve moral blindness. For my trouble, I was condemned about equally by leftists for my right-wing sympathies and by rightists for my left-wing ones.”
Scott, don’t you understand that this got nothing to do with you?
We all just keep falling again and again for the same cheap con: Trump and Musk always say and do such things in order to SHARPLY DIVIDE THE COUNTRY AND PIT EACH HALF AGAINST THE OTHER, ON PURPOSE.
In physics terms, any middle ground position is never stable, by design.
Comment #103 January 25th, 2025 at 10:12 am
Douglas,
Trump initially avoided repudiating Duke by pretending to have never heard of him. After the media wouldn’t let it go he “disavowed” David Duke in the same half-hearted way a child is forced to apologize. Any white supremacist watching would come away with the conclusion that he was disavowing for the media, but he didn’t really mean it.
Just watch the video put together by a Trump supporter!
All of those current “disavowals” were a “I said the words, now move on” statement. The only sincere disavowal was from 17 years prior!
That previous disavowal both shows that he knew exactly who David Duke was, but also what a real disavowal from Trump looked like.
Comment #104 January 25th, 2025 at 10:30 am
I’m sorry you have so many nasty people on this thread, Scott.
I thought your point was clear and balanced. The idealogues on either side are obviously missing your point about Elon. They don’t have the capacity for nuance.
But—at least you don’t have the crazed neo-nazi trolls showing up this time 😊
Comment #105 January 25th, 2025 at 1:12 pm
I’ve read this whole thread, but the nature of the incident is still unclear to me. Scott, could you please clarify exactly what you think happened? Possibilities include:
These are just a few explanations. I’m sure there are more. But please be specific about exactly what you think transpired.
Oh, and in totally unrelated news, the J6er with the “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt was given a full and unconditional pardon: https://www.thejc.com/news/usa/trump-pardons-far-right-proud-boys-antisemitism-january-6-s0smrpij. Sorry to derail this thread with such an unrelated topic.
Comment #106 January 25th, 2025 at 1:26 pm
Nick Drozd #105: I’d say it was some combination of your second, third, and fourth options, with possibly not even Musk himself fully knowing what combination. Again, if he’d immediately clarified and disclaimed Nazi support, he’d deserve the benefit of the doubt that it was the second option. As it is, we’re forced to say that regardless of original intent, he obviously enjoys the transgressive, trollish, adolescent thrill of getting away with people thinking he might have Nazi sympathies.
Comment #107 January 25th, 2025 at 3:37 pm
aaron 103:
Yes, as I said, history records that Trump refused to repudiate David Duke. History is full of lies.
His initial response was to disavow Duke at multiple interviews before the one in which he claimed not to know who he was. Not 17 years before, but the day before and the day before that. Maybe those disavowals were low quality, but you have to admit their existence before you can judge that.
Comment #108 January 25th, 2025 at 4:32 pm
Douglas Knight #107 and others: Trump, Musk, and yours truly have all been accused of having horrifying far-right views and horrifying far-right supporters.
The crucial difference is, I didn’t enjoy it! I went to the ends of the earth to clarify exactly what I believe. Trump and Musk, by contrast, clearly relish the ambiguity, making cryptic or trollish comments (“stand back and stand by” / “bet you did nazi that coming”) specifically to inflame things further.
There’s no great mystery about what they’re doing here or why. It serves their purposes, it enrages their enemies while thrilling and amusing their supporters with its winking plausible deniability, but it also further erodes our already-frayed memetic safeguards against the worst horrors of which humans are capable.
Comment #109 January 25th, 2025 at 7:12 pm
I’m very disturbed by this. To all the decent folks on here: steady your hearts, friends. They’re trying to rattle you, drag you into a forest of chaos and lies and confusion, hoping you’d emerge from it stunned and unable to resist their agenda.
Comment #110 January 26th, 2025 at 10:19 am
Scott #106
Those explanations combined say that his gesture both was and was not a Nazi salute. Do you mean that you are unsure of whether it was or was not? Or do you mean that the gesture itself was somehow of mixed Nazi-saluteness (like say, it was partially accidental and partially intentional or something like that)?
Oh, and in totally unrelated news, Musk addressed an AfD rally and said that Germans should focus less on past guilt and take more pride in being German: https://www.thejc.com/news/world/musk-urges-german-far-right-to-move-beyond-past-guilt-in-afd-campaign-appearance-kitp3ong. Sorry to keep sidetracking the thread with news items that have nothing whatsoever to do with the topic.
Comment #111 January 26th, 2025 at 4:01 pm
Nick Drozd #110: Which empirical facts, if you knew them, would let you decide whether his gesture was or wasn’t a Nazi salute? Do you think it will emerge that he texts “Heil Hitler” to his friends? Is it purely a question about his mental state—whether any Nazi-related thoughts crossed his mind during those seconds on the stage?
Ultimately I think it comes down to definition, which is why my fuzzy answers are entirely appropriate and about the best that can be done. Despite the fuzziness, some upper and lower bounds are apparent: on the one hand, he clearly does not harbor an allegiance to Adolf Hitler or a secret desire to recreate the Third Reich. On the other hand, he clearly does have an adolescent, transgressive glee about his left-wing enemies screaming about such things.
Telling Germans not to be wracked with guilt over crimes from before they were born fits the exact same pattern: as a matter of moral philosophy, I actually agree with the statement. But it’s not a thing you’d say to German right-wingers (without simultaneously reiterating the enormity of what crimes we’re talking about) if you had a fully functioning moral compass and weren’t an asshole edgelord.
Comment #112 January 26th, 2025 at 10:13 pm
About Elon’s support for RFK Jr. How’s that compatible with Elon’s being a science guy? RFK Jr particularly doesn’t understand the concept of risk vs benefit in assessing strategies in public health. He only thinks about risks.
RFK Jr believes every conspiracy theory about health floating around. He sincerely believes them! The institution he’s put in charge of is one of the greatest institutions for public health in the world and it is based on science.
Elon’s support for him says plenty about Elon. This is not a guy driven by what’s good for humanity anymore.
Comment #113 January 27th, 2025 at 7:31 am
I don’t find it particularly useful to speculate about a public figure’s “true intentions,” I think it is more important to consider their actions.
Whether it was edgelord shitposting or genuine fascist sentiment or even some insane accident, I consider it a fact that Musk did perform two Nazi salutes. He then declined to make a statement clarifying the intent of this action.
I don’t know what more there is to say than that. I don’t care what is in his heart of hearts. He performed a gesture that riled up extremists on the alt right. To me that makes him functionally a public figure of the extreme alt right.
Comment #114 January 27th, 2025 at 12:04 pm
Scott #111
There are just a few empirical facts required to make a determination, and they are pretty straightforward.
1. Did his physical movements match the physical movements that constitute a Nazi salute? Answer: yes, clearly.
2. Was the gesture performed in what we might call a “quotation context”? For example, was he demonstrating a Nazi salute as part of a history lecture? Or, was he in a stage production of Cabaret? Answer: no.
3. Was it accidental or inadvertant? For example, was he simply unaware of what a Nazi salute looks like, as with the recent snow cone incident? Answer: Given that he is the world’s richest man and has well-known ties to the far right and recently made a very sincere and totally heartfelt visit to Auschwitz, I think it is safe to say that he knows what a Nazi salute looks like. And since he made the gesture repeatedly, it is far-fetched to say that it was an accident.
Based on these empirical facts, I conclude that, yes, he performed a Nazi salute. There seems to be pretty widespread agreement about this, both among Nazis and among non-Nazis. And I have a feeling that you don’t disagree.
As for the meaning of his Nazi salute, that’s up for debate. Was it “just a joke”? Certainly there was some levity and giddiness involved; it was not a somber, serious moment. Was he “just trolling the wokes”? Probably, although the blast radius of that trolling seems to have included a lot more people than just the wokes. Maybe he was just curious and wanted to find out if being a “supporter of Israel” meant that he could perform a Nazi salute onstage at a presidential inauguration and the ADL would look the other way. Who knows? I agree with you that his motives may have not been well thought out or understood even by him. But that has to do with the broader meaning of the Nazi salute that he performed, not whether or not there was a Nazi salute.
Comment #115 January 28th, 2025 at 10:23 am
Admiring the Knight Templars and their ideals can’t turn anyone into an actual Knight Templar because the Order of the Knight Templars is no longer around.
So, given that the actual original Nazi party no longer exists for decades, what does it even mean to call someone a Nazi?
Isn’t the real question whether someone feels part of some *current* movement (who may or may not call themselves neo-Nazis) that promotes all or part of the original Nazi ideology?
And it seems pretty obvious that Musk feels very comfortable flirting with such movements.
Comment #116 January 28th, 2025 at 10:51 am
Responding to my own previous comment here, it occurred to me that since Trump runs a cult, there will be signals of loyalty from his followers. The more outrageous the signal, the greater the loyalty that’s been demonstrated. There’s competition among the cult members for this.
Maybe that’s what the Nazi salute is about. And even his support for RFK Jr, something I can’t imagine a scientifically minded person doing.
http://abandonedfootnotes.blogspot.com/2011/03/simple-model-of-cults-of-personality.html
Comment #117 January 29th, 2025 at 5:00 am
“1. Did his physical movements match the physical movements that constitute a Nazi salute? Answer: yes, clearly.”
Delighted to learn you and Scott deem yourself capable of proving this beyond any reasonable doubt.
Comment #118 January 29th, 2025 at 7:51 pm
For what it’s worth I appreciate what you tried to do here.
Comment #119 January 30th, 2025 at 9:22 am
A Catholic priest, Calvin Robinson, seems to have made a Nazi salute recently as well. This provoked the following statement by the Anglican Catholic Church, which I thought was pretty good. The ADL should’ve come out with something roughly analogous in re Musk’s gesture.
____
At approximately 3:00 pm today (1/29) members of the College of Bishops of the ACC were made aware of a post made on X showing the end of a speech made by Calvin Robinson at the National Pro-Life Summit in Washington, DC. In it, he closed his comments with a gesture that many have interpreted as a pro-Nazi salute.
While we cannot say what was in Mr. Robinson’s heart when he did this, his action appears to have been an attempt to curry favour with certain elements of the American political right by provoking its opposition. Mr. Robinson had been warned that online trolling and other such actions (whether in service of the left or right) are incompatible with a priestly vocation and was told to desist. Clearly, he has not, and as such, his license in this Church has been revoked. He is no longer serving as a priest in the ACC.
Furthermore, we understand that this is not just an administrative matter. The Holocaust was an episode of unspeakable horror, enacted by a regime of evil men. We condemn Nazi ideology and anti-Semitism in all its forms. And we believe that those who mimic the Nazi salute, even as a joke or an attempt to troll their opponents, trivialize the horror of the Holocaust and diminish the sacrifice of those who fought against its perpetrators. Such actions are harmful, divisive, and contrary to the tenets of Christian charity.
Finally, we pray that God will give us grace to lay aside our unhappy divisions, and we commend ourselves to his Almighty protection.
Comment #120 January 30th, 2025 at 6:37 pm
John #119: That’s an excellent statement; couldn’t have written it better.
Comment #121 January 31st, 2025 at 9:21 am
AG # 117
If you believe that Musk’s physical movements did not match the physical movements that constitute a Nazi salute, please explain precisely how they differ. For example, arm angle, hand position, that kind of thing.
If possible, please provide some side-by-side video comparisons showing how his physical movements differed from the physical movements of a Nazi salute. Note that some video comparisons have already been posted in this thread, for example by Daniel Arovas #9.
Again, we are talking about physical movements here, not about what was “in his heart”, not about his political association with the J6er in the “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt, not about whether he is a “friend of Israel”, or anything like that. Just the physical movements. Please explain how his physical movements were not the physical movements that constitute a Nazi salute.
Alternatively, if you believe that the incident is an ineffable mystery, please explain why.
Comment #122 February 2nd, 2025 at 12:20 am
There is a degree of ambiguity to language, and to the extent gestures (or, as you chose to put it, “physical movements”) constitute such, it applies to the latter as well.
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2000/12/21/the-neapolitan-finger/
One way humans are apt to address ambiguity is by putting it in context — and to that extent the address is bound to be a personal one. Personally, I find it utterly inconceivable that Musk is a Nazi or a Nazi sympathizer or a Nazi enabler, notwithstanding my utter befuddlement at some of the more bizarre fragments of his most recent behavior bordering on inexplicable (or, as you chose to put it, “ineffable mystery”).
Comment #123 February 3rd, 2025 at 12:03 am
As to the “meaning” of his (admittedly awkward) gesture as Musk appears to have intended it, I take it to be roughly isomorphic to what he actually said at the moment:
(0) “My heart goes out to you”.
In terms of “physical movement” it consists of two parts:
(1) putting the right hand on one’s heart (referencing “my heart” in (0))
and
(2) extending it forward towards the audience (referencing “goes out to you” in (0)).
It seems to me that the most natural trajectory for the physical movement (2) involves bending the hand slightly upward (while the elbow angle changes from roughly $\frac{\pi}{4}$ to $\pi$) — and Musk indeed did do just that.
In any case, it is only in (2) that there is a certain resemblance to the “physical movement” associated with “Nazi salute”; omitting (0) and (1) from consideration amounts to — in effect — “quoting out of context”.
PS To make it perfectly clear: I am deeply troubled by many a recent action by Musk (as reflected in Comment #100). But this particular gesture is not one such.
Comment #124 February 4th, 2025 at 10:57 pm
5 stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
We are at bargaining it seems.
Be careful with the next stage, depression. Keep in mind: nothing lasts, not even Trump.
Comment #125 February 4th, 2025 at 11:40 pm
Grief, as well as its acceptance, is everlasting — as encapsulated e.g. in Scott’s “Hymn to be recited for the next thousand mornings”
Comment #126 February 6th, 2025 at 12:22 pm
What’s really crazy is that a little over year ago the ADL accused Elon of antisemitism, just because he agreed with a tweet claiming the Jews promote hatred of whites:
https://x.com/JGreenblattADL/status/1725179100061380906
Some of Elon’s nastier critics have pointed out that Elon’s pro-Zionist and philosemitic statements and actions (such as visiting Israel) were only made *after* the ADL criticized him – but that’s hardly a reason to conclude that Elon is being cynical or disingenuous. The thing that woke leftist scolds like the ADL are forgetting is that Elon’s mind works on a higher level that theirs, his ideas are simply too complex – so if Elon says or does something that seems antisemitic to you all it really proves is that your IQ is too low to comprehend him.
Comment #127 February 7th, 2025 at 5:17 am
Anthony Sinclair #126:
1) There’s a difference between agreeing and 100% endorsing with a considerable signal-boost. This is the exact reason why libel laws exist that were found to be valuable, even in countries with so absolute a First Amendment.
2) you seem to have a very confused understanding of how intelligence works (does our host have a high IQ? Does he count as a woke leftist?). But even granting that Musk’s intelligence is so divine that everything he does is a masterstroke in his BB(6)-dimensional chess plan, if said plan involves granting credence to obviously antisemitic tweets and making a public gesture that has Neo-Nazis tripping all over themselves with enthusiasm (without any clarification, instead relishing the controversy), why should we assume that his plan is a good one for everyone?
2’) of course, there’s a historical exception for rockets: I’m surprised no one mentioned https://xkcd.com/984/ .
3) so yes, the tweet is blatantly antisemitic. It is also false: is our host promoting hatred against whites? Do you think his Jewish friends are? Do you think he would keep on calling them friends? If you are a not-antisemite and your gripe is that the ADL has taken up woke political positions, you blame the ADL. Claiming that Jewish communities (implied, as a collective with a unitary direction) have been “pushing dialectical hatred against whites” (what does that even mean?) is literally a lie and aimed at stoking hatred against Jews, and the above points make it a literal anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.
Comment #128 February 11th, 2025 at 8:39 am
There are still many centers of power in this country, it is not a dictatorship yet, and when their interests come under threat, we will see interesting things.
We have had Rubber Barron’s area and we have had Civil War area. It is not going to be easy but this country has more in it than people think.
Trump won by pretty thin vote margins, many good people are angry and Trump is riding on their anger and demagogues typically do. I still count on the out right majority of the people of my country, even majority of those who have voted for Trump.
Trump populist right wing policies are stupid and they will lead to pain to people, whether it is tariffs or dismantling of federal agencies. Stupid populist policies never work.
What enabled Trump to win was DNC going too extreme with bad policies and politicians. They forgot what really matters to ordinary Americans, and no, it is not gender pronouns.
We need to reclaim the common sense center with believable politicians that have an appealing and hopeful message about future for average American.
It will come. So don’t lose hope, just do your small part for creating the future.