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So I got into an Elon argument. I said that he's autistic and made an unusual hand gesture to convey the idea he said at the time, which is "my heart goes out to you". I failed to mention Occam's Razor, which is the most obvious to me, and in this case it goes "but wtf would he even gain out of doing a dogwhistle here?" Hitler worshippers aren't worth many votes, even if they did like lip service... I guess you could argue he did it for Moloch and engagement, which seems to be why Trump says all the outrageous things he says.
But I digress. In the incredulous argumentation by the other parties that Elon was obviously a neo-Nazi and this wasn't accidental at all, I was linked five articles that they themselves got from someone else, so for all I know, these are making the rounds in a ton of spaces. I was not satisfied with any of them, but we'll go through 'em, mmkay.
I. Business Insider: Musk Faces Consequences for Calling Antisemitic Tweet 'Actual Truth'.
This was paywalled for me at the time of the actual argument, so I said as such and moved on. Reading it now, I suppose I'm glad it was, since it's more difficult to defend to a normie lib than the others were. If it's paywalled for you, it's about Musk's affirmative reply to this tweet. It's been written about before here, but I think progressives like to apply identity politics to many different groups, but do not appreciate when it's applied to white people.
However, I don't think I agree with its framing, taking such a wide swathe of Jewish groups and then saying that those same Jewish groups are appealing for help from, I dunno, the Muslims? I certainly wouldn't have agreed with it on social media, because it's a Bad Look. I'm not here to say Elon Musk is innocent or anything, in fact, I think he's dumb as hell, at least politically. I just don't think he's a Nazi, neo or otherwise. Certainly some neo-Nazis I know would be happy if he was.
Anyway, I don't think applying group status to white people is a Nazi thing to do, nor is it a Nazi thing to admit that Muslim communities have problems with anti-semitism, nor is it a Nazi thing to say that Jewish groups tend to slam white people because it's safe to do so and because half the time, they don't even mean white people.
II. Futurism: Elon Musk Deletes Nazi Apologist Tweet After Near-Universal Backlash.
Okay, he shared a Tucker Carlson interview. Who gives a shit?
Okay, but he interviewed a Nazi apologist. Okay. I've done that too. I was sent a podcast called Stone Choir telling me about how the Holocaust was faked, and I linked it elsewhere and shared clips of it to mock it. Damn, that's crazy! I've shared Holocaust denial podcasts. Who gives a shit?
Okay, but he called it very interesting and worth watching. Well, in Liberalism World, it is not a requirement to dismiss everything someone says just because they're part of a group that is disliked. Certainly, it is not only neo-Nazis who like dunking on Churchill. Slaughterhouse Five bordered on outright saying Winston Churchill was wrong to bomb Dresden, and it even used the inflated statistic of current-but-not-at-the-time Holocaust denier David Irving. I've also seen numerous articles on Lew Rockwell slamming the guy, though frankly, they're anti-establishment to the point of insanity, and certainly not above conspiracies themselves. But Tucker Carlson wouldn't have done the interview if it wasn't going to be interesting to anyone who wasn't a neo-Nazi.
Furthermore, Elon Musk probably didn't even know he was a neo-Nazi when he shared that podcast and said he liked it. How do I know? Because he deleted it. Why would he delete it if he already knew all the facts when he made the post? Occam's Razor, again! Please! But I don't really know for sure, I guess. Whatever, man.
III. International Business Times: Europeans Rebuke Elon Musk's Proposal For 'MEGA: Make Europe Great Again': 'Stay Away From Europe'.
I actually didn't even see a need to defend this one. He said Make Europe Great Again? Okay? Who gives a shit?
At the time, it felt like the baffling extension of the sentiment on /r/europe lately of "Elon, stop interfering in our elections, we're going to ban X if you don't." To which I call them vile hypocrites! Certainly no one cared if Biden or Harris or whatever establishment liberal institution endorsed whatever establishment liberal institution in Europe. Why is Elon any different? Leave Elon Alone!
Now, I see it was supposed to be a point that he's imperialistic or something, and the article compares saying MEGA to some rhetoric Viktor Orban used once. This is kind of a Trump situation for me, in that I don't really take him seriously. Who the hell would want Europe? Besides, MAGA has been memed to death at this point. And Elon likes memes.
IV. truthout: Elon Musk to Host X Event Promoting Neo-Nazi AfD Party Ahead of German Elections.
I feel like it's worth mentioning at this point that some of these links are pretty questionable and are only being talked about because they're with the right people. This sounds like a left wing tabloid? Have any of you heard of this site? Who the hell uses it? Anyway...
That sounds pretty bad! At least, it does to me. But I know from reading here and elsewhere that the AfD only made the headway that it did because it is basically the only party that doesn't support immigration and that people trust to stop the immigration, and possibly even "Auslander raus!" them. And to me, since that's the only thing I really know that the AfD supports, Elon Musk may have endorsed them based off of that alone. Or he may have wanted to signal boosted them since he saw other right wingers signal boosting them, and didn't look at their signal boost critically at all.
Whatever the case, I haven't actually heard him say what he likes about them, other than say that they're the last hope of Europe -- which they very well could be, if you take immigration as a serious issue (which people do, or the AfD wouldn't be where it is now). Frankly, I don't think Musk actually probably agrees with all their stances, because if they're actually far right, then they probably disagreed with his H1B stance pretty vehemently. You don't get a whole lot of white supremacists or xenophobes or Jew haters say that we need to import more engineers because Americans aren't good enough.
V. NBC News: Before Trump, neo-Nazis pushed false claims about Haitians as part of hate campaign.
You actually have this article to thank for this long wall of text. There was just too much to rage about and talk about with just this article to leave this post unwritten.
Whoa! You mean to tell me that far right wingers were the originators behind the hateful Haitian rumor that Trump mentioned during the debate? Are Trump and other right wingers like Elon and Right Wing Twitter really sanewashing the hateful screeds of skinheads on Gab and Telegram that aren't even visible to normal people?
Oh, they didn't. Actually these are just some crazy assholes online who probably just fed into a preexisting narrative. Good God, man, I thought we were onto something interesting.
This is actually fucking incredible coming from NBC News. Tying Trump's talking about this to this random far right group that talked about the same thing is one of the most tenuous connections I've seen in a news article. It's a very "Trump drank water, so did Nazis" news article. This may even have gotten modded on The Motte. "Ah," says NBC News Commenter Amadan, "it appears you're trying to tie the actions of a reprehensible group to some mostly unrelated group in order to make statements about the mostly unrelated group. Stop it! You're better than this! Drop the knife! Drop the knife!"
At the time, someone pulled this quote from the article, only copy pasting the bolded part:
I didn't even know who that was referring to, but I could tell that it was a horrible quotation. Why are "making sure" and "are all repatriated" in quotes, but "Haitian immigrants" is not? Because "Haitian immigrants" not being in quotes tells me that that was substituted into the original, and I really don't trust these journalists to make determinations on what the original author was saying. Maybe they could have linked the original email? It gets my hackles up, because the original could have been talking about asylum seekers in general, which is very much not a neo-Nazi thing to say. But it turns out I didn't even need to make sense of it, because Elon Musk is probably like me and has never even heard of Blood Tribe.
To cap it all off, making racist, baseless remarks about foreigners is far from being exclusive to Nazis. Dude, take any country on the fuckin' planet. That's how widespread it is. It goes higher than the ADL ever knew. Nazis have gone global.
I really thought NBC News was onto something here, but they blew it. But it's okay, because I'm better than NBC News. Where they failed to make the point, I will try to make the point that I wanted them to make non-frivolously.
I liked the Inverse Florida article about Hamas loving tumblr people for making the very excellent point that a lot of center left rhetoric is just sanewashed from insane left wing people. I am somewhat afraid that the center right may be similar, and their rhetoric is just sanewashed from insane right wing people. But I don't have any evidence. So I guess I'm actually not that much better than NBC News. Then again, at least I'm asking the question instead of just suggesting it.
Do you think that that NBC News article was closer than I give it credit for? And do any of you think that Trump or Elon take cues from people farther right than them? If so, why?
Dunno about any of this but do you think it's possible he was trolling and did a nazi salute deliberately despite not being a nazi? That is what I'm inclined to believe. I doubt he has any feelings about Jews at all tbh – I think he really cares, however, about the reactions of his nearer-at-hand political enemies, and so would be primarily motivated by creating a reaction from them.
I just saw this tweet he made, and yeah, you're right. I actually seriously regret defending him if he's going to turn around after my unwarranted good will for him and use the language of people that I hate, acknowledging that it was intentional. Absolutely disgusting.
I still don't think he's a neo-nazi, for reasons already said. But I hate this shit. He must hate the left so much that he would purposely use rhetoric that pisses them off. Quickest I've ever been wrong, and I hate it when I'm wrong and /r/politics is right.
I don’t understand how a tweet mocking the accusations as ridiculous is proof that the accusations are true?
It's not proof that the accusations are true. It's proof that even if it was accidental at the time, there is not even an attempt to say it was accidental. The mockery is embracing the move. He's not a secret nazi, but I despise the obvious trolling going on here.
I definitely don’t agree - why validate such bizarre slander with a genuine reply?
I’m steadfast in the belief that no one actually holds the opinion that Elon did a nazi salute. I’m confident that everyone who has watched the video is well aware that he was gesturing “my heart goes out to you”.
The continued accusation that “no, it was in fact a nazi salute” is just a performance; it’s said only to try to anger you opponents and motivate your base, and not to try to accord with reality.
To me, that sounds like trolling. So you know, if you’re being trolled you have two responses: “lol” or troll back.
Sadly, I am pretty confident that they do actually believe it. I started this thread after an argument I had with my left leaning friends, and they were incredulous I didn't see it for what they thought it was. "I'm not sure what else you need to see at this point," was something said a couple times.
I can't say I don't understand your perspective. But when you are continually insincere, it makes it difficult to tell which actions were actually supposed to be sincere or not. There was a conversation in one of the non-culture-war threads about his Path of Exile 2 claims, and I think it was @cjet79 was holding the possibility that he was trolling people on purpose in that circumstance as well. In that case, I was pretty confident he wasn't trolling. After the last few days, I still think he wasn't trolling in the case of Path of Exile 2 since he deleted some of the tweets that he made at Asmongold on the subject, and trolls don't tend to do that, but I'm no longer as confident. How am I supposed to stick up for someone that purposely complicates my sticking up for him?
I also share something with the left, in that I really no longer like Hitler-staff-name puns or anything making light of that stuff. My dad is a genuine neo-Nazi in most any respect you can think of, and he loves jokes like that.
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