So was it a Hitler salute or not?
Speaking at President Trump’s inauguration event this week, Elon Musk slapped his right hand on 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 the “Roman salute”. Others described it as a “sincere” expression of joy, or dismissed it as simply awkward.
The website of the Anti-Defamation League, which campaigns against anti-Semitism, defines the Nazi salute as “raising the right arm straight with the palm facing down” and classifies it as “the most common white supremacist hand sign to the world.”
But after Musk’s stiff salute, the Anti-Defamation League called it “an embarrassing gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute.”
Andrea Stroppa, known as Musk’s emissary in Italy, posted on the social platform X: “The Roman Empire is back, starting with the Roman salute”. He later deleted the post, saying that people interpreted “the whole thing 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 outstretched arm salute has meant very different things in different places and during different historical periods. But at a time when the far right is once again on the rise, the interpretation of this deliberately and publicly made gesture was simple, especially in Germany, where the history of the salute is most powerful.
“There’s no need to complicate it”
In Germany, gestures like the one made by Musk are illegal, along with other Nazi-era symbols and slogans. (On Wednesday evening, anti-Musk protesters projected an image showing his salute and the words “Heil Tesla” onto the facade of his company’s German factory.)
For the German establishment the situation was very clear.
“A Hitler salute is a Hitler salute, it is a Hitler salute,” the major German weekly Die Zeit wrote in an editorial.
“There is no need to complicate matters unnecessarily,” the editorial reads. “Anyone on a political stage who gives a political speech in front of a partly right-wing extremist audience”, – several far-right politicians from Germany, Italy, France and Great Britain were present at the inauguration – “anyone who raises his right arm as a sign of oscillating and several times askew he gives the Hitler salute.”
“Anyone who now thinks they need to discover the old ‘Roman salute’ as a supposed reference to Musk is, above all, demonstrating their willingness to reinterpret it in a benevolent way,” he concluded.
The “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 alongside Musk raising his.
But did the Roman greeting exist 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 late 19th century theater productions and early 20th century films, which later inspired its use by fascists in Italy and Germany. And it’s actually been performed for decades by American school children for completely different reasons.
From silent films to European fascists
“The Roman salute is a modern invention,” said Martin Winkler, professor of classical studies at George Mason University in Virginia and author of “The Roman Salute: Cinema, History, Ideology.”
“There is no evidence in surviving Roman art and paintings that the ancient Romans ever used that gesture,” he added.
The greeting first became popular in stage productions and silent cinema, when films began using the gesture for costume dramas set in ancient Rome, Greece, and Egypt.
“It’s simply a visual gesture that was widely used in the silent film era, when many films were set in antiquity,” Winkler said. “Why? Because in the absence of sound, dramatic gestures and what we would now consider overacting were virtually ubiquitous. Greeting gestures were no exception.
The salute had a real-life twist in 1919. Gabriele D’Annunzio, an Italian soldier and poet turned nationalist (who had worked on “Cabiria,” an Italian silent film set in antiquity) invaded Fiume, a coastal city that now part of Croatia.
He ruled Fiume for 15 months as a sort of mini-Caesar, calling his soldiers legionaries and addressing them from the balcony. And he adopted a ceremony involving an outstretched arm salute that he called “Il Saluta Romano,” or Roman salute.
“This Roman salute resembled a stab: You extend your arm, angled upward with fingers together, as if it were a dagger you symbolically thrust into the throat of an enemy,” Winkler said. “It’s a very militarized and politicized type of 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.
Curiously, there was an American salute that preceded both.
Salute to the American flag
To modern eyes, it would be jarring to see a group of schoolchildren giving an outstretched arm salute to the American flag. But the gesture has been commonplace for decades.
In 1892, in the run-up to the Chicago World’s Fair marking the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in America, Francis Bellamy, son of a Baptist minister from New York state, wrote the Pledge of Allegiance, a version of which is recited by many Americans. school-age children to date.
Along with his boss, James Upton, Bellamy also gave a salute to accompany the recitation of the pledge: standing, hand over heart, then extending his 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 straight-arm gesture was abandoned. “It looked too close to the Nazi salute,” Winkler said.
Whatever Elon Musk was trying to invoke on Monday, his salute looked very 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 may be closer to what American school children did until 1942.
But the salute of allegiance was abandoned 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. Among his audience in Washington on inauguration day were Tino Chrupalla, co-leader of the German Alternative for Germany party; Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, whose party descends from the post-fascist movement; Nigel Farage of the British Reform Party; and Eric Zemmour of France, who is also to the right of Marine Le Pen of the French National Rally.
“What is happening now is predictable,” Die Zeit said in its editorial. “Neo-Nazis and right-wing radicals may interpret the extended right arm as a gesture of fraternization and emancipation.”
Emma Bubola in Rome he contributed by reporting. Audio produced by Behrooz again.