After the Hitler salute? Nope. No. Absolutely not. I want absolutely nothing to do with anything new that man ever comes up with again. Which hurts, given how much I've loved watching SpaceX launched, and how much I've loved watching Tesla get cooler and cooler.
I find it very sad that purchasing a car from a publicly traded company with tens of thousands of employees is somehow interpreted as supporting the politics of the CEO of said company. Life shouldn't be politicised that much
I disagree. Right now, I wouldn't criticise anyone who buys a Chinese EV. But I would put stickers of Musk doing his nazi salute on Teslas I find in the streets.
> Life shouldn't be politicised that much
That's what one says about political topics that don't impact them. Go tell Ukrainians that they should buy Russian products because "life shouldn't be politicised that much".
I know people who were so upset about the other side (in that case, Republican voters) that they said that they (the other side) should be deported from the US. I think this level of mania is too much and it is the real life manifestation of what people do on the Internet. I recommend that you put a sticker on the car when the owner is there, and look them in the eye.
> Go tell Ukrainians that they should buy Russian products because "life shouldn't be politicised that much".
I am likely much-much closer to this problem than you think (personally and physically), and I absolutely think that what's happening in Ukraine and what is happening in the US right now is incomparable.
You know, Ukrainians and Russians still live and work closely in many parts of the world because they can differentiate between Putin and the person who's in front of them. You're not beating Elon with your stickers, just screwing up a day of a random human person who has bought a car they liked.
Where I live, if someone buys a Tesla now, they deserve a sticker. I said a sticker, not to be beaten in the street.
It's the best parts of Tesla mixed with the best qualities of Korean manufacturing.
Volkswagen's ID5s are also very good since last year. Many of the software woes seems to be fixed.
Musk is the one politicizing it that much, we're just responding to it. If he shut up and stopped his nonsense, it would quiet back down.
I almost never judge a work by it's creator, but sometimes the creator really goes out of their way to make me ignore that principle. Musk, Kanye, and a handful of others.
I'm sure there were also good people in IG Farben who just wanted to get through their day during WW2, right?
Nobody would bat an eye if some random shmuck on the Tesla manufacturing floor held some silly ideas, but arguing that the extremely public facing CEO of a company gets a pass because he's just one of many at a large firm is a wrong take, I'm sorry.
The CEO is the company. If the janitor posts a silly youtube video doing a sieg heil, the janitor is in trouble. If the CEO of the company does a nazi salute, the company is in trouble.
All that said I still see China as less of a direct threat right now.
I just don't know how bad the Uyghur was/is considering the propaganda that both sides would push, with China not letting independant investigators or reporters do anything in and the whole US manufacturing consent media and US government propaganda. Then them calling it a genocide while Palestine is not.
The re-education camps were for a small part of the Uyghur populace that were involved in terrorism against other Uyghurs and Chinese.
But this is the reality, parts of your money go to the CEO salary, and if the sales are good the CEO will get a giant bonus that he can use to buy a president/dictator and convince them to do super insane shit.
There was a news yesterday where twitter AI system prompt had a filter for Trump and Elon, they were caught and they reversed it, IMO that topic should have been a bigger thread here
https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/23/grok-3-appears-to-have-bri...
your money supports this hypocrite that is a free speech absolutists and then silences critics.
The whole point behind any salute is clear communication and intent. It wouldn't make sense to back-pedal a nazi salute.
Americans fought the Nazis and lost 400k young men. If you honestly think a leading American businessman or politician would align with Hitler ideology and try to pump up the crowd using a nazi salute, I would suggest taking a vacation because your judgement is seriously impaired.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.timesnownews.com/world/us/u...
There is a long string of veiled and plausably deniable nazi references from Musk now.
No the intention wasn't to make a crystal clear nazi salute. The intention was to make a veiled salute, gradually testing the waters and reducing society's defenses. Same as the long string of similar things on X.
And if YOU got half the worlds press to talk about your arm -- would you not issue some clarification or apology where you explicitly rejected nazism?
The motivation isn't to unequivocally support nazists as you assume.
It is to slowly rehabilitate the symbols and remove society's immune system. This year, it is seen by many Musk fans as just about for LOLs and joking around.
But already Bannon did the salute properly and now he is "only the 2nd one". See how Musk cleared the way for Bannon's more explicit salute?
In 2-3 years, people will as a consequence have less knee jerk reactions against the real nazi groups. In 4 years, Trump can openly use the symbol if he so wishes, as it now represents a new movement and not the "old", and so on.
Conspiracy alert. Amusing how you'll settle for a half-baked nazi salute in order to hold your argument.
What would be the end game? Self-sabotage every gain they made winning the election? Real nazi salutes are like fingers down a blackboard for the majority of people. They also look different to what he did, and are delivered not with elated gratitude, but with authoritative posture.
Giggling "let's go to Mars" super-nerds are not toying with actual Nazism. His choice of hand motion was clumsy, that's the crime.
> would you not issue some clarification or apology where you explicitly rejected nazism?
Not if I thought those making accusations were "woke morons." Why would Musk play your game of needing to apologise for something he never intended?
Straight from the cancel culture playbook: "He may not be racist, but has anyone actually heard him reject racism?"
Corner someone with accusations until they're forced to make a statement. It's an attempt to legitimise the complaint. Musk is not playing by those rules. As much as that might irritate you, surely you can respect someone for, dare I say it, following his heart.
It can of course be read as "trolling the ones who think he is a nazi".
Problem is that kind of double-signalling and layers of irony is so widespread in white supremacist circles on the internet.
Musk's X/Twitter history has been steadily going in a direction, he wasn't a "going to Mars nerd", he was a "going to Mars nerd whose Twitter history showed someone clearly falling down a political rabbit hole" (and BTW working for someone who pardoned people who assaulted police officers as long as they did it for him -- an act that has nothing to do with left vs right politics or what people vote for, but is easily associated with authoritanism)
Curious what you think of Bannon's hand gesture...
Is it? I wouldn't know. I don't participate in white supremacist circles. Very few do, which is why it's joked about so easily. It's a damn shame though to hear "layers of irony" is blacklisted!
I had to google the 14 flags thing. Ridiculous! At worst it's inverted trolling; shitposting by a calculated provocateur - a term Grok coined about Musk.
Falling down conspiracy rabbit holes to construct allegations about hidden meanings of rants on X, is to fuel the fire Musk is toasting his marshmallows by.
So according to you is he smart or stupid ?
When humans communicate with arms flapping in celebration and excitement, clumsy arm movements are not a safety issue or significant in any way.
I suppose you could always manufacture outrage about arm movements, then campaign and argue that others should adopt that outrage?
Last but not least, he back-pedaled because he’s a fucking idiot full of drugs.