Europe’s left-wingers on Tuesday raced to condemn Elon Musk after the world’s richest man performed a stiff-armed salute at an event to celebrate new United States President Donald Trump.

“My heart goes out to you,” Musk said on stage at Washington’s Capital One Arena, as he thanked Trump’s supporters. He then put his hand to his chest and extended a rigid right arm with his palm down, resembling the salute made infamous by Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Europe’s fascists in the first half of the 20th century.

Musk then repeated the gesture a second time facing the crowd on the opposite side.

The salute immediately generated a viral and divided response, with online critics attacking Musk for the gesture and supporters minimizing its significance.

“I will start by talking about the response, or perhaps the lack of responses of the EU to Trump’s inauguration. It represents a threat to the whole of the European Union,” said French member of the European Parliament Manon Aubry, co-chair of The Left group, at a press conference Tuesday morning. “Let’s start by keeping things simple, I am sure everyone saw the Nazi salute, I select these words carefully, the Nazi salute of Elon Musk.”

In Germany, where Musk’s political backing for the far-right Alternative for Germany has already caused issues ahead of a snap election on Feb. 23, the government hit out over the controversial salute.

“I definitely don’t think highly of Elon Musk as a politician, from what we know so far. But such a gesture, given his already known proximity to right-wing populists in the fascist tradition, must worry every democrat,” said German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach from the center-left Social Democratic Party.

In Italy, popular journalist Roberto Saviano — famous for crusading against the mafia and, latterly, Italy’s right-wing government — rained down invective on the Tesla and SpaceX supremo.

“May you be cursed,” Saviano said. “The end of all this will be violent. His fall will be equal to that of those to whom it historically refers with this gesture. Musk will fall at the hands of those he now incites fueled by the same violence he practices.”

In Spain, a senior government minister quit Musk’s social media platform X in response to the gesture.

Yolanda Díaz, the minister of labor and social economy from the left-wing Sumar party, said: “Last night, the whole planet could see Elon Musk emulating the Nazi salute in the context of Donald Trump’s inauguration. It has been a very harsh image that has made me make a decision that I have been meditating on for several months.”

She then accused Musk of having transformed X into “a propaganda mechanism that uses its algorithm to favor certain ideas over others and, in doing so, influence public opinion.”

“From now on, I will no longer use my account,” she said.

Musk defended himself online, denouncing the attacks as “dirty ticks” from his opponents. “The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired,” he said.

His supporters also defended the gesture, blaming it on the billionaire entrepreneur being “autistic.”

“The Roman Empire is back, starting with the Roman salute,” wrote Andrea Stroppa, a key adviser to Musk in Italy, sharing the video on X.

Stroppa later deleted the post, however, and replaced it with a new one saying: “That gesture, which some mistook for a Nazi salute, is simply Elon, who has autism, expressing his feelings by saying ‘I want to give my heart to you,’ and that is exactly what he communicated into the microphone,” he said, adding: “Elon dislikes extremists!”

Politico

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