Opinion | The Musk salute was a test, America failed

Photo Courtesy of the British Broadcasting Corporation

On Jan. 20 every four years, one could be forgiven for assuming that the largest headline in the United States will always be the inauguration of the president. But it seems America was in for a shock, as while President Donald Trump was sworn into office for his second term, the world’s richest man stood before an audience in D.C.’s Capital One Arena and performed a rigid salute universally associated with Nazism. And he did it twice.

Before anything, let’s get one thing out of the way. This was a Nazi salute, pure and simple. It was not an awkward gesture or a way of thanking people, and it was not a byproduct of autism. 

There is no such thing as a “Roman salute.” The gesture has always been a fascist one, first being widely popularized by Benito Mussolini’s fascist movement in Italy, a movement that would serve as a progenitor of Germany’s Nazi party.

Before Jan. 20, no one ever referred to a rigid chest thump and outstretching of the right arm as anything but a Nazi salute. Every joke, every re-enactment and every performance was always rightly called what it was. But Elon Musk got a free pass for one reason and one reason alone: he is Trump’s newest right-hand man.

You might deem this event old news and even question why I’m writing about it. There are two reasons: the first being that, last I checked, Nazi ideals were supposed to be old news in general, but that doesn’t seem to be the case today. The second is that Musk’s salute, while already disqualifying enough on its own, is just the most visible symptom of the larger — and more dangerous — stakes of this administration.

For all intents and purposes, the Trump administration IS the Musk administration. Musk played an invaluable role in putting Trump in office, bankrolling his campaign to the tune of nearly $300 million. And now that he’s in office, Trump has signed executive order after executive order in blatant violation of Congress, the courts, and often the Constitution itself. Meanwhile, Musk has been given unprecedented access to the inner workings of the government, and he has used that access to gut innumerable federal agencies critical to the American population and our allies abroad.

For years, we have been warned about the authoritarian tendencies of Trump by both his political opposition and a plethora of figures outcast from his party and previous administration. We have been subject to his chronic controversies with race for decades, and we have watched helplessly as an obscenely wealthy class of elites wrests control of one of the world’s oldest democracies away from the people. 

Considering how fragmented our media landscape has become, one could be forgiven for not catching every story. I’m hesitant to extend that benefit of the doubt too far, but if post-election search trends are any indication, America’s population has not been well-informed on the slow decline of our country.

But Jan. 20 was the one day where everyone was watching the same event, and where everyone saw Musk’s public display. And the fact that so many of our fellow citizens were eager not only to make excuses, but even celebrate the gesture for what it was should have us sounding alarms about where we are.

And now, in the past month, Musk and Trump have jointly gutted health agencies in the middle of several disease resurgences, made social security inaccessible to many of those who depend on it, drawn the ire of our closest allies while sucking up to the world’s deadliest dictators and, as of late, put the personal data of millions of Americans at risk. And all this while Congress stands idle under Trump’s thumb.

To me, the biggest threat isn’t that Trump and Musk have fundamentally shaken the checks and balances key to keeping our nation democratic, or that the vast majority of the American population may wake up without the welfare programs they need to live, or that they have done everything in their power to drive our international good will into a ditch right as a new Cold War is kicking off.

It’s that the base that has sustained them for a decade still refuses to read the tea leaves. And if a Nazi salute doesn’t convince them, I don’t know what will.