The Musk crisis is a salute to American diversity
In ancient Rome, should a member of the public wish to approach an official, they had to raise their weapon hand, the right hand, to show it was empty and they meant no harm. Now, it is called the Roman salute, by and large associated with fascism. Elon Musk’s salute at a rally held after Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, palm held to his chest and right arm extended towards the crowd, palm down resembled the Nazi salute that accompanied the “Heil Hitler!” bark. It drove political interpreters nuts. Was Musk playing Himmler to Trump’s Hitler? Is Musk, the most outré of tycoons, a Fascist? Due to his status as the world’s most powerful billionaire today, and Trump bestie, his gestures reflect on America itself.
The Roman salute was appropriated by Fascists in the 1920s; the term ‘fascism’ comes from the Roman word ‘fasces’, which were bundles of rods with an axe stuck in the middle that symbolised Roman official and religious power. Martin M Winkler’s book The Roman Salute: Cinema, History, Ideology argues that il saluto romano is not Roman at all but was popularised in pre-1935 films which did not show much action. The Italian Fascists, and then the Nazis, seized the salute as their own.
Winkler suggests that the historical truth of the Roman salute in cinema exemplifies “potent fiction” edging out “real history”. Musk is well-known for his battles with history and going where no man has gone before. Electric cars, moon rockets, space colonies, hyperloop, neuralink, Tesla, PayPal and Starlink exemplify one man’s triumph of invention. His salute doesn’t necessarily make the grandstanding magnate the modern Fuhrer of Corporate America.
The Ku Klux Klan salute, which dates back to 1915, resembles the Nazi “Seig Heil!” except that it is the left arm of the Klansmen that goes up. But Musk’s right-arm salute, perhaps the most interpreted and reported on gesture last week, invigorated the ultra-right everywhere. A Nazi meme channel was flooded by emojis of the lightning bolt associated with the brutal Nazi murder machine, the SS.
A popular Irish far-right influencer posted on X: “OK maybe woke really is dead.” It is worth noting that Musk’s formative years were spent in apartheid South Africa, having been born in Pretoria in 1971. He left for America in 1981, nine years before race discrimination ended in 1990. Trump’s disgraced former adviser Steve Bannon referred to Musk asking “Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, white South Africans, we have them making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States?” Seig Heil or not, if Musk is a racist, he is also a pragmatic politician in sheep’s clothing. The truth is that the now divisive gesture is really not to anyone but himself, a private joke he has pulled on America. Musk held no weapon in his saluting hand. Because Musk is his own weapon.
His biographer Walter Isaacson writes that the billionaire craves crisis so much that he will even manufacture one. He sparked a crisis in MAGA by supporting the H-1B visa—a non-immigrant visa that lets American businesses hire foreign workers in jobs that require technical expertise. Trump backed him. Trump appointed Musk to head the DOGE commission that will sack thousands of government employees who are US citizens, and not immigrants. Elon Musk has not just created a crisis. He is the crisis. Maybe Trump hasn’t figured it out yet.
Ravi Shankar
ravi@newindianexpress.com