>Later, during the 1920s and 1930s, Italian fascists and Nazi Germans adopted a salute which was very similar, which they attributed to the so-called Roman salute, a gesture that is wrongly thought to have been used in ancient Rome. This resulted in controversy over the use of the Bellamy salute in the United States. It was officially replaced by the hand-over-heart salute when Congress amended the Flag Code on December 22, 1942.

In other words, when people decided "fuck that, I don't want to look like a Nazi" they did something different.

There is no plausible deniability; it was a nazi salute.

It's worth noting that the Romans never did this. There was a fairly brief period in the 19th century where it was kind of a pop-culture Roman thing (it showed up in plays about Ancient Rome, that sort of thing), and then it was adopted by various nationalist groups, including the Italian fascists, and, ultimately, the Nazis.

Unless you're a theatre fan who's been in a coma for the last 150 years, though, it's a fascist (or Nazi) salute; the use of the 'roman salute' term is (potentially accidental; I think maybe some people do think it was a real thing) sanewashing.