Save your outrage: Elon Musk’s inauguration salute is just another distracting meme
The new administration will bring four years of far more important battles to fight
Elon Musk makes a now-infamous gesture at an inauguration event. Photo by Getty Images
Senior Columnist Rob Eshman January 23, 2025
I have one bit of advice for all those people fuming over Elon Musk’s hand gestures: Stop.
I know it’s tough to resist the temptation to go into full outrage mode over the apparent Nazi gesture Musk made during an Inauguration Day speech at Washington, D.C.’s Capital One Arena. A lot of energy has gone into parsing Musk’s gesture, and attacking those who don’t see it your way. Was he trolling the libs to get just the kind of reaction he got? Was he channeling his grandfather, who blamed the world’s problems on Jewish financiers?
And Jews are as divided as everyone else about whether Musk sieg heil-ed or not — and if so, how important it was. The Anti-Defamation League, trying to chart a calm course through the storm, called the gesture “awkward” and said Musk deserves some “grace” in these trying times, which prompted the actor Joshua Malina to report what he considered the ADL’s support of antisemitism to the ADL itself. On Instagram,Larry Charles, the Seinfeld writer and Borat director posted, “It can’t happen here, right?” with the comedian Elon Gold shooting back that Musk visited Auschwitz and Israel after Oct. 7. “What have you done exactly for your people and homeland?” Gold asked.
What this discord makes clear to me: The debate over Musk’s gesture is more Yanny/Laurel than Himmler/Goebbels.
In 2017, social media went bonkers arguing whether a recorded voice was saying “Yanny” or “Laurel.” It was a fun distraction, and the objective truth mattered far less than the ferocity and snark with which people asserted their opinion.
The fact of that recording is that it contains both words, at different frequencies, and people tuned into the one they were predisposed to hear — which may be as close as we’ll get to understanding what Musk did, as well.
That means we can argue endlessly and cleverly over that dumb salute, but it’s fundamentally a distraction. Our more important task is to define those moments that truly matter, and throw our voices, talents, resources, time and energy into them.
Need examples? On the first day in office, President Donald Trump pardoned some 1,600 people charged in the Jan. 6 insurrection. He set free people who gouged the eyes of police officers, spread antisemitic lies and tried to overturn a fair election. These people have learned their lesson: there are no consequences for hate-fueled violence as long as you make sure your people win.
In the coming days, the Trump administration intends to begin deporting immigrants in massive sweeps that will disrupt local economies, sever families and traumatize innocent children. Arresting and deporting people who entered the country illegally and committed serious crimes makes sense. Doing so as part of a massive, indiscriminate, made-for-TV blitzkrieg is inhumane.
There will be coming fights over stripping away the protections of the Affordable Care Act, something Trump has long promised, raising prescription drug prices — which he already took steps toward by executive order Tuesday — and rolling back progress on climate change, sustainable energy and electric vehicle adoption.
It’s unlikely anyone could successfully make Elon Musk out to be a mensch. On his Substack, Steven Schmidt, one of the increasingly rare Republican Never Trumpers, wrote that he once asked the Polish tour guide who led Musk through Auschwitz if he believed the death camp made an impression on Musk. “I’m afraid not,” the guide said.
But even those Jews who disagree over how significant Musk’s salute was can agree that X, the social media platform Musk owns, must do more to counter hate speech — and that that problem is more meaningful than one simple arm gesture can be.
There are the hard, important fights we need to focus on, and there will be more. How will we know what battles are worth our time and energy?
One clue is that fighting them will sometimes make us as uncomfortable as our opponents.
Consider the words of the Right Rev. Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, who during a prayer service for the Inauguration looked directly at the President and asked him to show compassion to transgender people and immigrants, among others.
“You have felt the providential hand of a loving God,” Budde said. “In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.”
Trump was stone-faced. First Lady Melania Trump looked daggers at Budde. Vice President JD Vance squirmed. What the reverend did took guts; she couldn’t have enjoyed the moment, and it must have taken great bravery to speak truth to power on such a public stage. It was a much-needed reminder that many times in the next four years, we will be called upon to summon up not just internet commentary, but actual courage.
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