This comes in response to news that I’ve heard of recently. Goes to show if you value your posthumous requests, organize them wisely.
The concept we generally call “dying wishes” are a staple in how we think of society. Just look to the ancient play Antigone for that. However, things don’t always go as planned, especially in the wrong hands. What’s the biggest difference you’ve seen between someone’s “dying wishes” and what actually ended up happening?
Hi! The salute that Elon Musk did twice looks exactly the same as Hitler himself doing it. Elon Musk made Nazi jokes afterwards, and he also made an appearance at Germany’s far-right AfD party, a party that is no stranger to creating posters with Nazi imagery. I totally understand trying to give people the benefit of the doubt, but in this case it is very blatant that Elon Musk is not a good person and genuinely holds some troublesome beliefs, which is why many people, me included, have deleted their Twitter accounts.
I mean intention-wise. Even though it definitely looks like a Nazi salute (why is Hitler saluting himself by the way), and even though many of us wouldn’t put it past Musk to have known this was coming, in the end, I would hold the view that nobody can speak for the intentions of an individual aside from that individual, and Musk is no exception even despite how tempting he makes it seem to interpret what he means, even in all his incompetent, politically-charged glory. Anyone distancing themselves from him for this is doing it based on the impression as opposed to the intention, not that this isn’t still understandable and their choice. We just can’t speak “for him”.
Intent is why we speak of Nazism as “taking” the salute (which used to just be a greeting) from the Romans, the swastika (or manji in this case) from the Buddhists, and a bunch of random Norse symbols in the first place. Japan, a nation where Neo-Nazism is much less of an issue, still uses the manji everywhere for spiritual significance, and this leads to a lot of culture shock in anime re-edits and Japanese merchandise because of this habit of forgetting our expectations don’t apply automatically.
With all due respect, Musk has made his intentions more than obvious. The links I provided regarding Elon are non-exhaustive, he’s also spread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and has promoted a safe space for pro-Nazi sympathizers to spread their hate speech. All things considered, it makes it very hard for me and many others to plausibly believe there is any ambiguity regarding his intentions.
The claim of it being a “Roman salute” is a disingenuous one, because the Nazis in history also claimed that the salute was “Roman”. Whether it truly did originate from ancient Rome or not, it’s a salute that is now unequivocally associated with Nazis and the people who pretend that this isn’t the case are being deliberately misleading.
That I did not know. Would’ve helped if this was what his opponents go by, not what looked like a salute.
No problem! 🙂 A lot of this stuff about him is kinda new to me too!