What Elon Musk’s greeting was about

So was it a greeting from Hitler or not?

Speaking at President Trump’s inauguration event this week, Elon Musk slammed his right hand into his chest before shooting his arm diagonally upward, palm down. He did it twice.

It closely resembled the salute used in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. But almost immediately, a surprising number of different interpretations began to circulate.

Some commentators called it a “Roman salute.” Others described it as an expression of “sincere” joy, or dismissed it as simply clumsy.

The website of the Anti-Defamation League, which campaigns against anti-Semitism, define The Nazi salute as “raising an extended right arm with the palm facing down”, classifying it as “the most common white supremacist hand sign in the world.”

But after Mr. Musk’s stiff-arm salute, the Anti-Defamation League called it “an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute.”

Andrea Stroppa, known as Mr. Musk’s emissary in Italy, posted on the social media platform X: “The Roman Empire is back, starting from the Roman salute.” He later deleted the post, saying people were interpreting “everything as a reference to Nazi fascism.”

Mr. Musk, owner of X, posted in response to the criticism: “The ‘Everyone is Hitler’ attack is so tired.”

The straight-arm salute has meant very different things in different places and during different periods in history. But at a time when the far right is once again on the rise, the interpretation of this gesture being performed deliberately and publicly was straightforward, especially in Germany, where the history of the salute remains most powerful.

‘There’s no need to make this complicated’

In Germany, gestures like the one Mr. Musk made are illegal, along with other Nazi-era symbols and slogans. (On Wednesday night, anti-moss protesters projected an image showing their salute and the words “heil tesla” on the facade of his company’s German factory).

For the German establishment, the situation was very clear.

“A greeting from Hitler is a greeting from Hitler is a greeting from Hitler.” the prominent German weekly Zeit died he wrote in an editorial.

“There is no need to make this unnecessarily complicated,” the editorial said. “Anyone on a political stage giving a political speech in front of a partially right-wing extremist audience” – present at the inauguration were several far-right politicians from Germany, Italy, France and Britain – “anyone who raises his right arm in a swinging manner and at an angle several times he is doing the Hitler salute.”

“Anyone who now thinks they have to discover the oldest ‘Roman greeting’ as a supposed musk reference is, above all, demonstrating their willingness to reinterpret it in a benign way,” he concluded.

“Roman Salute” is indeed trending on social media, along with images of toga-clad actors in grainy films set in ancient Rome raising their right arms along with Mr. Musk raising his.

But was there a Roman greeting in ancient times? No: there is no evidence that the greeting was used in ancient Rome.

The actual history of the salute is little known, and much shorter: it was used in late 19th century theater productions and early 20th century films, which later inspired its use by fascists in Italy and Germany. And it was actually done for decades by American schoolchildren for completely different reasons.

From silent films to European fascists

“The Roman salute is a modern invention,” said Martin Winkler, a classics professor at George Mason University in Virginia and author of “The Roman greeting: cinema, history, ideology.“

“There is no evidence at all from surviving Roman art and paintings that the ancient Romans used that gesture,” he added.

The salute first became popular in stage productions and silent films, when films began using the gesture for costume dramas set in ancient Rome, Greece, and Egypt.

“It’s just a visual gesture that was heavily deployed in the silent film era when many films were set in ancient times,” Winkler said. “Why? Because in the absence of sound, dramatic gestures and what we would now consider exaggerating were practically ubiquitous. Greeting gestures were no exception.”

The salute had a real-life preview in 1919. Gabriele d’Annunzio, an Italian soldier and poet turned nationalist (who had worked on “”Cabiria“, an Italian silent film set in ancient times) Fiume invadeda coastal city that is now part of Croatia.

He ruled Fiume for 15 months as a kind of mini-Caesar, calling his legionary soldiers and addressing them from his balcony. And he adopted a ceremony involving a straight-arm salute that he called “Il Saluto Romano,” or the Roman salute.

“This Roman salute resembled a stab: you extend your arm, angled upward with your fingers together, as if it were a dagger that you symbolically shoved down an enemy’s throat,” Winkler said. “It is a very militarized and politicized gesture.”

The Roman salute was adopted soon after by the 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.

Interestingly, there was an American greeting that preceded both.

Salute to the American flag

To modern eyes, it would be jarring to see a group of schoolchildren giving the stiff-armed salute to the American flag. But the gesture was common for decades.

In 1892, in the run-up to the Chicago World’s Fair that marked the 400th anniversary of Columbus arriving in America, Francis Bellamy, the son of a Baptist minister from upstate New York, wrote the Pledge of Allegiance, a version that is recited by many American schoolchildren to this day.

Along with his boss, James Upton, Bellamy also came up with a salute to accompany the recital of the pledge: stand, hand on heart, then extend your right arm to salute the stars and stripes. He became known as the Greeting Bellamy.

The promise itself was part of a Americanization program for immigrant children. But in 1942, when the United States was fighting the Nazis in World War II, the outstretched arm gesture was abandoned. “It seemed too 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. He first put his hand on his chest, which is not part of the Nazi salute, and might be closer than what those American schoolchildren did until 1942.

But the salute promise of allegiance was dropped in a way that left no room for misinterpretation: the gesture had become inextricably linked to 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 courting far-right parties in several European countries. His audience in Washington on Inauguration Day included Tino Chrupalla, co-leader of Germany’s Alternative for Germany Party; Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister of Italy, whose party is descended from the post-fascist movement; Nigel Farage of the Reform Party of Great Britain; and Eric Zemmour of France, who is to the right even of the navy of the French national rally Le Pen.

“What is happening now is predictable,” Die Zeit said in its editorial. “Neo-Nazi and right-wing radicals may interpret the outstretched right arm as a gesture of fraternization and empowerment.”

Emma Bubola In Rome he contributed to reports. Audio produced by Stop behrooz.