Did Elon Musk give a Nazi or Roman salute, and what’s the difference?

What was the reaction to Musk’s gesture?

Stroppalater posted that the gesture was “simply Elon, who has autism, expressing his feelings by saying ‘I want to give my heart to you,’”.  

Others also weighed in. The Anti-Defamation League said on social media that Musk’s gesture had not been a Nazi salute. Instead, it said Musk had “made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm,” in a post that added: “All sides should give one another a bit of grace.” 

A number of historians countered that view. “It was a Nazi salute and a very belligerent one too,” Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history and Italian studies at New York University, wrote on social media.  

Claire Aubin, who researches nazism in the US, echoed Ben-Ghiat’s sentiment. “My professional opinion is that you’re all right, you should believe your eyes,” she wrote online. 

Many argued that Musk’s increasing outspokenness over his own political views contextualised the gestures. After spending about $200m (£160m)to help secure Trump’s return to the White House, Musk has used his influence to back far-right and anti-establishment parties across Europe.

Most recently he has vigorously campaigned for Alternative für Deutschland, whose leader in the eastern state of Thuringia, Björn Höcke, has twice been convicted of using the Nazi slogan “Everything for Germany” at political events. A former history teacher, Höcke has called for an “about-face” in Germany’s culture of Holocaust remembrance and atonement. 

As reaction to his gesture dominated headlines on Tuesday, Musk weighed in with his own response, writing: “Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.” 

 What is the Roman salute?  

Fascist ideology in the 1920s claimed that the Roman salute – which involves placing a hand over one’s heart and then raising it upwards in a straight-armed, palm-down salute – originated in ancient Rome.  

But a 2009 book by the classics professor Martin M Winkler that delved into the Roman salute found no evidence of this. “Not a single Roman work of art — sculpture, coinage, or painting — displays a salute of the kind that is found in Fascism, Nazism, and related ideologies,” he wrote. “It is also unknown to Roman literature and is never mentioned by ancient historians of either republican or imperial Rome.” 

Instead Winkler argued that what came to be known as the Roman salute was invented in the 19th century to be used in melodramas set in the Roman empire. The gesture eventually made its way into films set in the same period, leading the myth to endure, he said.    

Is there a difference between the Nazi salute and Roman salute?  

After the salute was adopted by Italy’s fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, and his party, the Nazis in Germany copied the idea, adopting a similar gesture with a slightly lower extended hand. By 1933 it had become the German greeting, the author Torbjörn Lundmark wrote in his 2010 book, Tales of Hi and Bye.  

It soon went on to become one of the most potent symbols of Nazi ideology in 1930s Germany. “Five-year-olds were taught how to thrust the arm in the air ... and people were refused service in shops unless they did the salute,”  Lundmark wrote.  

Both the Roman and Nazi salutes are considered hate symbols by the Reporting Radicalism initiative, which is managed by the US-based NGO Freedom House and reports on extremist groups and individuals in Ukraine. It considers them to be similar but separate symbols.  

It also notes that there is little ambiguity about the meaning of Nazi salute and those similar to it. The US abandoned a gesture known as the Bellamy salute , which was introduced in the 1890s to unite the country after the civil war, in 1942 because of its resemblance to the fascist and Nazi salutes. 

After Trump’s the inauguration, the former Guardian reporter Alec Luhn noted that several variations of the salute exist. “Slavic neo-Nazis do a similar salute, to the point that the phrase ‘from the heart to the sun’ often serves as a stand-in for actually doing the salute,” he wrote.

The gesture is banned in a handful of countries, including Germany. In Italy, in contrast, the country’s top court ruled last year that performing the fascist salute was not a crime, unless it endangered public order or risked reviving the banned fascist party. The ruling, sparked by an incident in Milan, came days after video emerged of hundreds of men giving the salute during an annual gathering in Rome. 

Why are some seeking to differentiate the Roman and Nazi salute?  

It appears as though efforts to rebrand the Nazi salute stretch back years. After members of the neo-nazi National Socialist Movement held a small rally in the US state of Georgia, a Huffingon Post reporter asked its former leader, Jeff Schoep, about the Nazi salutes performed by some of those who had been on stage alongside him.  

“It’s a Roman salute,” he said in an exchange caught on video. The reporter insisted: “You know that’s not what that means. You know what people think that means,” leading Schoep threatened to have the him removed from the park for being “disrespectful”.  

As debate swirled online as to the meaning of Musk’s gesture on Monday, Rolling Stone reported that some on the far right had drawn their own conclusions and were celebrating the moment on social media.  

The leader the neo-Nazi Blood Tribe, Christopher Pohlhauswrote: “I don’t care if this was a mistake. I’m going to enjoy the tears over it.” The founder of the far-right social media platform Gab, Andrew Torba, echoed his sentiment. “Incredible things are happening already,” he wrote.

The Australia-based neo-Nazi Thomas Sewell, also shared the video of Musk, describing it as a “Donald Trump White Power moment”.