So was it a Hitler salute or wasn’t it?
Speaking at President Trump’s inauguration event this week, Elon Musk slapped his right hand across his chest before shooting his hand diagonally upwards, palm down. He did it twice.
It looked a lot like the salute used in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. But almost immediately, an impressive number of different interpretations began to circulate.
Some commentators have called it the “Roman salute”. Others described it as a “heartfelt” expression of joy or dismissed it as just clumsy.
The website of the Anti-Defamation League, which campaigns against anti-Semitism, defines the Nazi salute as “raising an outstretched right hand with the palm down” and ranks it as “the most common white signed hand signal in the world”.
But after the stiff greeting of Mr. Musk, the anti-defamation league called it “an awkward gesture in a moment of excitement, not a Nazi salute.”
Andrea Stroppa, known as the emissary of Mr. Musk in Italy, posted on social media platform X: “The Roman Empire is back, starting with the Roman salute.” He later deleted the post, saying people were interpreting “the whole thing as a reference to Nazi-Frankism.”
Mr. Musk, who owns X, posted in response to criticism: “Everyone is Hitler” attack is so tired “.
The straight arm salute meant very different things in different places and during different periods of history. But at a time when the far right is again on the rise, the interpretation of this gesture being performed deliberately and publicly has been simple – especially in Germany, where the history of the salute remains strongest.
“You don’t need to make this complicated”
In Germany, gestures like the one made by Mr. Musk is illegal, along with other symbols and slogans from the Nazi era. (On Wednesday night, anti-Musk protesters displayed an image showing his greeting and the words “Heil Tesla” on the facade of his company’s German factory.)
For the German institution, the situation was very clear.
“A Hitler salute is a Hitler salute is a Hitler salute,” the prominent German weekly Die Zeit wrote in a editorial.
“There is no reason to make this unnecessarily complicated,” the editorial said. “Anyone on a political stage giving a political speech in front of a partly right-wing extremist audience”, – presenting at the opening were several far-right politicians from Germany, Italy, France and Britain – “Whoever raises his right hand A swinging manner and at an angle several times he does the Hitler salute.”
“Anyone who now believes that they should discover the older” Roman salute “as an alleged Musk reference is, above all, demonstrating their willingness to interpret it in a benign way,” he concluded.
The “Roman Salute” is indeed trending on social media—along with images of actors boldly in grainy movies set in ancient Rome, raising their right hand along with Mr. Growing Musk.
But was there a Roman greeting in ancient times? No: There is no evidence that the greeting was ever used in ancient Rome.
The actual history of the salute is little known—and much shorter: it was used in popular 19th-century theater productions and early 20th-century films, which inspired its use by fascists in Italy and Germany. And it was actually performed for decades by American school kids for completely different reasons.
From silent films to European fascists
“The Roman salute is a modern invention,” said Martin Winkler, professor of classics at George Mason University in Virginia and author of “The Roman Salute: Cinema, History, Ideology.”
“There is absolutely no evidence from surviving Roman art and paintings that the ancient Romans ever used this gesture,” he added.
The Salute first became popular in stage productions and Silent Cinema when films began using the gesture for dramatic costumes found in ancient Rome, Greece and Egypt.
“It’s just a visual gesture that was heavily developed in the era of Silent Cinema when many films were set in antiquity,” said Mr. Winkler. “Why? Because, in the absence of sound, dramatic gestures and what we would now consider overconsumption were almost ubiquitous. Greeting gestures were no exception.”
Salute had a real revolution in 1919. Gabriele D’Annunzio, a soldier and Italian poet-turned-nationalist (who had worked on “Cabiria,” an Italian silent film in ancient times) invaded Fiume, a coastal town that it is now part of Croatia.
He ruled Fiume for 15 months as a kind of mini-Caesar, summoning his Legionnaires and addressing them from his balcony. And he adopted a ceremony that included a straight salute called “Il Saluto Romano,” or the Roman salute.
“This Roman salute resembled a knife: extend your hand, angled upwards with your fingers together, as if it were a knife symbolically thrusting into the enemy’s throat,” said Mr. Winkler. “It’s a very militarized, politicized kind of gesture.”
The Roman salute was soon adopted by Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, who came to power in 1922. Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party adopted it in 1926, calling it the German salute.
In particular, there was an American salute that preceded both.
American flag salute
To modern eyes, it would be jarring to see a group of students giving the stiff armed salute to the American flag. But the gesture has been commonplace for decades.
In 1892-during the execution of the world of Chicago that marked the 400th anniversary of Columbus arriving in America-Francis Bellamy, the son of a Baptist minister from Upstate New York school children to this day.
Along with his boss, James Upton, Bellamy also came up with a salute to accompany the recital of the pledge: stand up, hand on heart, then extend right arm to salute the stars and stripes. It became known as the Bellamy Salute.
The pledge itself was part of an Americanization program for immigrant children. But in 1942, when the United States was fighting the Nazis in World War II, the extended arm gesture was abandoned. “It looked very close to the Nazi salute,” Winkler said.
Whatever Elon Musk was trying to invoke on Monday, his salute looked pretty close to a Nazi salute, even if it wasn’t identical. First he put his hand on his chest, which is not part of the Nazi salute, and could be closer to what those American school kids did before 1942.
But the promise of the Salute Salute fell through in a way that left no room for misinterpretation: the gesture had become inextricably linked with the Nazis.
“The common American perception was, ‘These are our enemies, and we don’t want to be like them,'” Winkler said.
Mr. Musk is now inflating far-right parties in various European countries. His audience in Washington on Approval Day included Tino Chrupalla, co-owner of Germany’s Alternative for Germany party. Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister of Italy, whose party comes from the post-fascist movement. Nigel Farage of Britain’s Reform Party. and France’s Eric Zemmour, who is to the right of even the seafaring Le Pen of the French National Rally.
“What is happening now is predictable,” Die Zeit said in its editorial. “Neo-Nazis and radicals can interpret the outstretched right hand as a gesture of fraternization and empowerment.”
Emma Bubola In Rome contributed report. Sound produced by Parin Behrooz.
