The head of a prominent US Jewish civil rights body said Elon Musk’s repeated fascist-style salute during Donald Trump’s inauguration could act as a spur for violent extremists.
“The salute itself should be enough to warrant condemnation and attention,” said Amy Spitalnick, adding that so should “the ways extremists see an action like this and take it as license for their own violent extremism”.
Spitalnick is chief executive of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, a progressive non-profit founded in the 1940s and headquartered in New York City. On Monday, she watched with the rest of the world as Musk, the world’s richest person and a key Trump ally, spoke in Washington at the new president’s inaugural rally – and gave two fascist-style salutes.
Musk and his followers have sought to brush off the affair, but to Spitalnick, “there was nothing ambiguous” about the salutes, no matter how many attempts are made to describe them as “Roman” or anything else.
“There’s a long history here,” she said. “The fact that Nazi salutes are now a regular part of our political discourse is how I got involved with all of this. Before JCPA, I led the non-profit [Integrity First for America] that brought a lawsuit over [the far-right march in 2017 in] Charlottesville and against [the activist] Richard Spencer and a variety of other defendants who are clear neo-Nazi extremists.
“You know: ‘Gave the Roman salute’ is just the euphemistic way of saying ‘Nazi salute’.”
To Spitalnick, “most people today don’t have a full understanding of what the term ‘fascist’ even means, and so naming it for what it is – the Nazi salute – feels important right now.”
It’s also important, she says, not to dismiss the fallout as just another online spat, an attempt to distract opponents with outrageous behavior. Not only has Musk expressed support for Alternative für Deutschland, a German far-right party widely accused of Nazi-esque views, but he chose to throw out his right arm on day one of an administration that has thrown out executive orders advancing draconian policies on immigration, equality and more.
Musk’s salute found a warm welcome on far-right sites – much as when in November 2023 he endorsed a post on his own platform, X, that said Jewish people promote “hatred against whites” and support immigration by “hordes of minorities”. After condemnation from advertisers and the Biden White House, Musk apologized: saying it “might be literally the worst and dumbest post I’ve ever done”, he visited Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp in Poland, in a show of contrition.
To Spitalnick, that apology rang hollow: “There was some engagement with Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu [of Israel] and others that was used as attempted cover for not just his own embrace of antisemitism and extremism but the ways in which he’s let it run rampant on X, and given the ways in which it’s normalized, not just on social media but in our politics more broadly, we can’t excuse that. We can’t give it cover in any way.”
This time, Musk has not apologized. On Thursday, he continued a run of joking posts about his behavior at Trump’s parade with a series of Nazi-themed puns, including: “Some people will Goebbels anything down!”
Nor have all pressure groups condemned Musk’s salutes. The Anti-Defamation League, which fights antisemitism and which Musk previously threatened to sue, said merely that he “made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute”.
The JCPA “fundamentally disagrees”, Spitalnick said, “and we work closely with the ADL on a variety of fronts. They do critical work. And in this case, to me, there was no question what the intent, and even more importantly the impact, of this action was.
“It was at a presidential event, and [Musk] is someone who has a presidential appointment, an office in the executive building. He is not a random third party. He is a senior member of the Trump administration who gave a Nazi salute from the presidential podium. And there’s no world in which that doesn’t lead to more hate and extremism that will make Jews and so many other communities less safe.”
Musk is working for a president who reportedly praised and admired Hitler; whose own vice-president once called him “America’s Hitler”; and whose opponent in last year’s election, Kamala Harris, called “a fascist” and an admirer of dictators.
Spitalnick acknowledges that after an election featuring a flood of such invective, which Trump won regardless, the public may decide Musk’s apparent fondness for fascist-style salutes is not worthy of serious attention.
But she has fought the far right before – and won. The Charlottesville lawsuit was brought by nine plaintiffs who alleged physical harm and emotional distress arising from the Unite the Right rally, a pro-Trump protest in Virginia in August 2017. In November 2021, a jury awarded the plaintiffs $24m, later substantially reduced.
In the second Trump administration, Spitalnick says, the courts will again provide an arena for progressives to fight back.
She “worked in the New York attorney general’s office during the first Trump administration, and over and over again, our office and a number of other state AGs won cases against his administration, not just on constitutional grounds and administrative procedural grounds but on a variety of other grounds. The law is the law, and we have to fight like hell to protect the law and protect our justice system and our broader democratic norms.”
Amid outcry over Musk’s salutes, Spitalnick says, those who oppose the billionaire and his boss should remember “that when people feel like it’s just been a barrage of bad over the last few days, the response is just beginning”.
