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Comment by Diti | Hacker News Reader

> We can see his actions and who he funds.

I’m out of the loop here. Has Musk done anything related to nazi symbols (besides that weird gesture that some people say is a nazi salute), or funded Nazi organizations?

EDIT: Why the downvotes?

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He's supporting the AFD in Germany among others. For a 5 min overview see here: https://youtu.be/NjWl_RNDMSA

AFD is indeed a far-right party and the optics of Musk supporting it are to put it mildly bizarre, but it is also one of the largest political parties in Germany, not a "Nazi organization". They advocate halting immigration, not genocide.

Sure, I just wanted to share some info on far-right/neo-nazi related people and orgs that Musk is linked to, as parent didn't seem to be aware.

Thank you for the links (you, and the person who replied to you)!

The AfD goes beyond just opposing immigration and they struggle to shake their Nazi links. Talks of deporting immigrants, getting into minimising SS culpability for Nazi crimes, use of Nazi slogans, links to convicted Nazis and banned Nazi parties.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx88nwy934go

https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/dangerous-liais...

https://www.politico.eu/article/hidden-nazi-heritage-germany...

So they are not really nazi and calling musk one is like 6 degrees of separation..?

As a Jew there’s no difference to me between those who knowingly repeat Nazi slogans (i.e AfD) and “real” Nazis. It’s very easy to not be a Nazi, it’s unnecessary to make excuses for those who know what they are doing.

Germans (i.e. ethnic German citizens), should be held to a higher standard, because they are educated on this, there’s no excuse.

IDK, but hating on certain group (i.e. AfD) sounds you are somewhat of a nazi yourself then.

AfD are huge Israel supporters (they anti-muslim tho) - https://www.timesofisrael.com/loathed-by-jews-germanys-far-r...

Israel supporter and antisemite aren't mutually exclusive[0]. In the past it was to get the Jews out of Europe (be it to Madagascar or Palestine), now it's because they hate Muslims more than Jews and see Israeli society as a template for a similar far-right Christian society.

Obviously most AfD supporters are not everyday antisemites, but they are casting their votes for antisemites. I don't care to split hairs. Germans know better and do not get to plead ignorance.

Musk could perhaps have been given the benefit of the doubt, he doesn't seem to understand European politics so it's possible he could have confused AfD as being the German equivalent of Reform UK or RN (neither of which want to be associated with AfD) ...that is until he made that salute.

[0] nor are anti-Zionist and Jew mutually exclusive for that matter. Before WWII the creation of Israel was the subject of debate within the Jewish community. The Holocaust and happenings in the Soviet Union obviously shifted that debate firmly in one direction. In some sense the Palestinians are victims of the European far-right and far-left by proxy, though I am not shifting blame.

After doing the "weird gesture", rather than apologising for doing something that many people interpreted as a nazi gesture, he made a load of crappy puns about it involving the names of various high-ranking nazi leaders

Maybe he shouldn't be apologizing for every unhinged accusation he gets?

Maybe the accusers should apologize?

Maybe they will come crawling on their knees in few months time to do so?

I don't know, but what I do like is that wokeism is slowly curing so he may have been onto something.

You don't need to apologise for every accusation you get. You should probably address a widespread belief that you are making very offensive gestures, clarify what you meant and apologise for the confusion. Also could you define "wokeism" for me? Everyone seems to be using a different definition so its hard to know what people actually mean when they say it

He did address the claims by ridiculing them.

Question is why media decided to continue spinning the same narrative despite looking like idiots? Is it clicks, political agenda or journalistic integrity? It's not hard to see...

Do you attribute the curing of wokeism (whatever that is) to Musk making Nazi salute? I’m missing a key part of what is going on.

PG wrote a good article on wokeism recently https://paulgraham.com/woke.html

Maybe I should call it neo-woke when left is turning to violence and being more fascist than actual nazis? https://www.timesofisrael.com/loathed-by-jews-germanys-far-r...

I think the downvotes might be from your repeating the "weird gesture" phrase that is currently being used to sane-wash what actually happened. Anyone who doesn't think what Musk did was a Nazi salute, I encourage you to go into work, do it in front of your manager, and see what happens.

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