Publicist Michel Friedman has described the gesture of tech mogul and Tesla CEO Elon Musk at the inauguration of Donald Trump as a “shame”. “The taboos reach a point that is dangerous for the entire free world” Friedman told the “Tagesspiegel” (Wednesday’s edition). “The brutalization, dehumanization, Auschwitz – all that is Hitler. A mass murderer, a war driver, a person for whom people were nothing but a number – fair game, not worth a word.”
Friedman appealed to Musk to show political responsibility. “Was the hand gesture an expression of this political identity?” he asked. “That would not be so surprising. Elon Musk posts and allows countless anti-Semitic tweets to be posted.”
Elon Musk had acquired Twitter in October 2022 for $44 billion and renamed it X. Michel Friedman sees the US democracy as being in danger due to Donald Trump. “And not just that.”
Trump supporter Musk was one of the speakers on the stage before the arrival of US President Donald Trump in the Washington Capital One Arena. He thanked the supporters of the right-wing Republican. Then he held his right hand to his heart and stretched it out to the right and up. After that, he turned around and repeated the gesture to another part of the audience. In right-wing extremist circles, the gesture was celebrated as the Roman Greeting or the Hitler Greeting.
Musk later made fun of those who saw the gesture as the “Roman Greeting” of Benito Mussolini’s followers or the Hitler Greeting on X. “The ‘Everyone is Hitler’ attack is soooo tired” Musk wrote.