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Comment by jofzar | Hacker News Reader

Does the internet move so fast that people have forgotten his Roman salute at the trump rally?

That proves he’s an edgy, drugged out jerk. Raising your hand in a certain way is not sufficient to be a nazi..

The guy spends most of his time signal-boosting deeply racist, antisemitic, white supremacist stuff on X. He's obsessed with stuff like "replacement theory" and constantly insists white people must make as many babies as possible to maintain their cultural superiority and avoid being outnumbered by other races. You don't have to believe me. Go check for yourself.

I do. You’re certainly right. I just don’t like reducing the entire political compass to “marxist/smth.” and “nazis”. That both devalues these words and and leaves out any nuance.

Guys like Trump or Putin are not nazis (yet). They do resemble Mussolini on various and often quite deep levels. So fascist would probably be the more correct term.

As for Musk I’m not sure. Drugs and whatever mental issues he’s suffering from likely are distorting the real picture (which might also be even darker).

My philosophy is "if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck". Is there a chance that it's not a duck? Sure. Does it matter? Not unless you're a duck scientist. Ultimately I find that there is very little to gain from thinking hard about whether they are just Nazi boosters/sympathizers or actual Neo-nazis, because in practical terms it makes virtually no difference.

I do see your point about how avoiding thinking hard leads to seeing virtually no difference between various somewhat nuanced topics.

Oversimplifying everything, reducing complexity into simple catchphrases and extreme cognitive dissonance is what the “other” side is all about. Adopting their overall approach seems somewhat counterproductive longterm…

I recognize the nuance, I just don't think there's anything to gain from trying to understand whether Elon is a Neo-nazi or a more generic white supremacist because, practically speaking, doing so adds no value to my personal or professional life. On the other hand, if my job was to write a book about Elon, I would be compelled to dive much deeper into it.

There is if you want to understand why 20-40% of the population across a multitude of countries support people like him.

You can brand them all nazis and shut off the entire conversation. That might be the “morally righteous” thing to do (not sarcasm). What’s that point of that though? You still have to live with them in the same country and vote in same elections.

There is something to gain, because when you call him a neo-Nazi and he obviously isn't, then nobody will engage with your arguments because you're very obviously wrong.

If you say he seems to be racist and supports lots of far-right groups that are overtly racist... then people can't just ignore you.

But in what way does Elon act like a nazi? Sure he's right wing on some topics, and he speaks out against racism against white people. Something controversial in this woke world, but therefore also important for a certain group that's feeling oppressed by the extreme left. But that doesn't make him a nazi.

You can disagree with his points, but you can't logically say from it that he's a nazi or sexist or racist or whatever. If you prejudge someone like that, you're being very ironic, because you're doing the same thing you're accusing someone of.

It's extremely disrespectful to call the people from minority and diminishing cultures racist or white supremacist for protecting their own culture. Birth rate / demographic / cultural shifts are real problems. Elon has never talked about "white people" or their superiority. These issues have nothing to do with skin color. Same issues are faced by many asian countries as well.

It’s called suicidal empathy.

>> Elon has never talked about "white people" or their superiority

I would encourage you to try to avoid making such easily falsifiable claims, and put at least some token effort into your arguments. I was able to find the below with less than five minutes of searching.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-musk-prods-adl-says-kill...

Said tweet: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1686037774510497792

He also endorsed an X post claiming "Jewish communities have been pushing [...] hatred against whites," calling it "the actual truth." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-antisemitic-comments-...

He has also repeatedly advanced a version of replacement rhetoric (e.g. claiming Democrats import immigrants to change power via the census), which is essentially a repackaging of the Great Replacement idea, i.e. a racist conspiracy centered on replacing white populations with those from other races and ethnicities. You can, for example, read the transcript of his interview with Don Lemon.

So yes, Elon does in fact frequently talk about white people. Even when not explicitly mentioning them, he means them. For example when he says people should have more babies, he specifically means white people: https://newrepublic.com/article/181098/elon-musks-weird-obse...

>> Same issues are faced by many asian countries as well.

I find your comparison of this issue to issues faced by various Asian countries to be pretty odd, as it does not stand up to critical scrutiny. Asian countries' demographic crises are about internal low fertility and rapid aging, not about being "replaced" by outsiders. Indeed, the arithmetic makes the comparison impossible: Japan, China, South Korea all have extremely tiny foreign populations. Therefore, pointing to Japan/Korea/China's low birth rates to sanitize "replacement" talk is a bad-faith pivot.

Demographic change can be caused by just a low birth rate, which is more of an economic issue, but it can also be combined with immigration, which may result in changing culture, i.e. "replacement". This issue is currently mostly faced by people who are white Europeans, but these people also represent many different local cultures. Not to mention that Japan and South Korea have also been increasing their immigration, although it has been quite low so far.

All kinds of people have equal right to defend their own culture. It doesn't mean that they're supremacist or racist, even if they think that their culture is better than some other culture. It's only supremacist if it aims to destroy, repress or subject other people, by advocating discrimination and violence.

Thus, "make more white babies" is not supremacist or racist. As isn't calling out violence against white people in South Africa.

I don't see how you conclude that Elon is so focussed on white people. From the articles you posted, it seems more about culture rather than skin color.

The only times he seems to talk about "white" people is when these people are being prejudged for their skin color.

It’s amazing how far people are willing to go to ignore the evidence right in front of their eyes.

There’s a candidate with a literal Nazi symbol tattooed on his chest and not one democrat condemned him or demanded he drop out. Guess his party affiliation.

So let’s just be clear that nobody is playing this fake outrage game anymore.

NOOOO! Having a nazi death head tattooed on your body is because he didn’t known what it was! How dare you

citation needed

Multiple people can be nazi shitheads.

Why is he licking Israel boot is he's a neo nazi ?

It's almost as if being a piece of shit doesn't immediately make you a nazi, we should move on from ww2 era lingo, new things need new terms. When everyone is a fascist and a nazi no one is, and it weakens the original terms to the point of them being meaningless

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionist_antisemitism

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