During President Trump’s Inauguration Day victory rally, the wealthiest man on Earth, Elon Musk, made national headlines for making a gesture akin to a Nazi salute. Musk and his defenders maintained plausible deniability — that he was simply giving his heart to the audience. The Anti-Defamation League, an organization that claims to fight antisemitism, downplayed the incident, noting that Musk merely made an “awkward gesture.” Following the event, Musk made Nazi puns about the incident on his personal “X” account.
Thousands of articles will unpack the salute’s meaning, but Musk’s beliefs and actions, by his own words, show he’s the centerpiece of a new tech elite with a proclivity for far-right politics. This also indicates how digital right-wing culture has become emboldened following the conservative capture of social media.
Musk has been a political financier since the 2000s and held anti-labor views as Tesla’s CEO, but his recent political trajectory can be understood from his tweets and interviews. His sentiment toward minority groups has — at least publicly — devolved into a hateful ideology. Musk once touted Tesla’s scores on LGBTQ+ equality in 2018, but “berated” his transgender daughter in 2022. He’s argued that a “woke mind virus” is plaguing the U.S., with these beliefs coinciding with the GOP’s “trans panic” that were a facet of their platform in the 2022 midterms.
The parallels between Musk’s salute and his beliefs continue in his global politics, specifically on immigration. During far-right riots in the United Kingdom last summer, Musk alleged that civil war was “inevitable.” Most recently, he’s given a resounding endorsement of the Alternative for Germany, the German far-right, nativist and Islamophobic political party. Musk went as far as to speak digitally at an AfD rally on Jan. 25, declaring that Germany needed to “move beyond” from “past guilt.”
Musk hitched his wagon to anti-immigration and anti-diversity positions while demonizing the end of Western civilization. He’s utilized the same talking points of the Great Replacement Theory, or the idea that white people will be replaced by droves of non-white immigrants and decreased white birth rates. His positions from immigrants to transgender people are based upon his belief in existential threat to “the West.”
These politics have been embedded into Musk’s domain, the online realm. This can be seen through people like Chaya Raichik, aka “Libs of TikTok,” an account that has exploded in popularity since Musk’s take-over, amassing over 4 million followers. She is best known for demonizing the LGBTQ+ community through hoaxes. Raichik recently posted about Trinity, mocking the post-election wall of grievances. Her platform is a product of the new Musk regime.
Let’s take a step back. Sure, there are business reasons why Musk has affiliated himself with American conservatism. The tech elite is just another example of a long lineage of stakeholders in American politics. For instance, the American tech economy rallied around Trump to protect its market share in a rapidly developing AI-led economy. DeepSeek disrupted the American tech industry, and the looming status of TikTok in the U.S. shows that Chinese-owned businesses continue to threaten their precious American hegemony in the global tech industry.
Business interests have taken precedence throughout American political history. The difference here is how the tech industry has shifted since 2020, demonstrated by the wealthiest man on the planet. What separates tech industrialists from something like oil magnates is how they dominate the current mainstream political discourse. Even if Musk is merely displaying political showmanship for the Trump administration, he appears to be all in.
Elon is not alone. To a lesser extent, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg is another example. He recently commented on the Joe Rogan Show about how companies need “masculine energy” and “aggression” back in the workplace. Despite their differences, both men’s ideological playbooks follow billionaire Peter Thiel, a Republican super-donor who helped fund JD Vance. Thiel once wrote in 2009 that he no longer believed that “freedom and democracy are compatible” due to women’s suffrage and welfare expansions. Their thoughts are salient and are embedded into their platforms, and now the Executive Branch.
Musk’s place of power is undeniable, as “X” boasts more than 600 million monthly users and a direct line to a president. “X” has become ground zero for conservative capture online. While this “culture war” is manufactured, it has tangible effects and has been institutionalized on sites like Musk’s “X.” When he creates shock waves through gestures or tweets, they undoubtedly reverberate to all of us.
