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Here’s what Musk did, twice, next to Getty Images videos of other fascist and Nazi salutes.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/1i7w4nz/comparison_of...
Now, if you’re intellectually honest, you will go find the videos of the false equivalencies you’re posting, look at them, and admit those examples you posted are nothing like Musk’s, or Nazis.
You're shifting the discussion from salute to conviction.
> Here is a collage of images
And now we know you're acting in bad faith.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1Zwiv8erk0
it is what it is
But it's all nonsense, even if it were exactly the same physical gesture. There's no intellectual or political connection. No sane watcher of events believes that Musk has any connection to the issues of the 1930s-40s Nazi party. It's just not there in his history or very very public persona.
There are eminently sane things to criticize Musk for. There are great points to make. But this sort of thing is crackpot and poisons anyone else trying to make rational critique.
Well there’s also the pressing of the fingers together, the angling of the arm upwards from horizontal, the straightening of the elbow, the straightening of the wrist, etc.
>in the absence of an ideological component
Do you understand the concept of a symbol? You see, sometimes humans link abstract ideas to particular visual phenomena that impact the retina, like letters, colors, gestures even. Sometimes, even, humans deploy symbols in strategic and surreptitious ways that allow them to maintain plausible deniability in the face of a public that still isn’t entirely on board with the deployment of said symbols, rather than explicitly announcing the intent behind their deployment before and after the fact. You aren’t an alien, so stop playing dumb.
> Sticking one's arm out is not a "Nazi salute" in the absence of an ideological component.
Right, so if someone does it to troll or upset people, but isn't a Nazi, it's no longer a Nazi salute? That's just extreme mental gymnastics.
edit: and that you insist on a "ideological component" is another reason I doubt you have any knowledge about historical Nazism. People followed and rationalized Hitler for all sorts of reasons. It's just movement, in-group vs. everyone else, with lies and violence getting more and more sanctified. All the words, and who happens to be enemy or ally, were interchangeable. Adolf Hitler was mocking "Germanic clamoring" behind closed doors, while he thought in "Aryan terms" and all that.
How many books did you read about Germany in the 1930s and 1940s? Zero? Do you think you can just wing this from first principles and Cliff's notes?
What?
So showing someone the middle finger straight in the face without also verbally expressing it (aka. showing their ideological component, to be as vague as you were), is not a bad thing at all, but an entirely neutral finger gesture, too?
Also: how can someone honestly compare the static images provided with Musk's salute. Apart from comparing static images being nonsensical when it's about a salute; even the referenced images are chosen so badly, that they look nothing like a Nazi salute. Like, you need to be aware of you mental gymnastics.