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As a biographer of the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and thus possessed of a certain expertise in the matter I want to add my thoughts about Elon Musk’s bizarre raised right arm salute.
Many on the left, including historians who ought to know better, say that the gesture delivered with such passion at the rally in Washington for the party faithful after Trump’s inauguration was a fascist or Nazi salute.
If Musk had made such a gesture in front of the Duce, he would have been instantly banished to the beautiful Tremiti Islands off the coast of Puglia along with the gays
But not just on the left. Even alt-right Steve Bannon’s Rome-based international editor Ben Harnwell — like his boss a sworn enemy of all things left-wing — has joined the howls of protest in unholy alliance.
Bannon was the architect of Trump’s 2016 presidential victory but is now in exile, with a popular podcast, War Room. He has declared Musk his enemy above all, maybe because the tech multi-billionaire wants to import lots of skilled migrant workers.
Well, be that as it may, whatever Musk did on Monday evening on stage in the Capital One Arena, it was most definitely not a fascist or a Nazi salute, or to give it its correct title, a Roman salute.
A proper Roman salute involves standing dead still and raising the right arm, from the resting position next to the right hip, straight out in front, up to an angle of forty-five degrees, with the palm of the hand facing down, fingers touching and outstretched.
It was the poet warrior Gabriele D’Annunzio, often called the first Duce, who made the Roman salute popular when in 1919 he led a force of volunteers to capture the port city of Fiume (now Rijeka in Croatia).
The fascists who seized power in 1922 soon made it their own. They said, without much evidence, it had its origins in Imperial Rome from which they took much of their inspiration. It was later copied by the Nazis.
However weird it may seem to us today, fascism was an alternative left-wing revolutionary movement to communism invented by the revolutionary socialist Mussolini to replace international with national socialism.
This explains the Roman salute. Mussolini insisted that it replace the handshake as the standard form of greeting on the grounds that the handshake was bourgeois and unhygienic. The handshake reeked of what he called “pipe and slippers unproductive parasites.” Yes, indeed, the bourgeoisie was the fascist class enemy just as it was for the communists. Who’d have thought it when today fascism is called far right?
The fascist version of the Roman salute involved raising the right arm higher than in the Nazi version. The Nazis also added a techno Teutonic twist: once the arm was raised to the correct angle the palm of the hand would be pivoted down.
During the Covid crisis I wondered if the Roman salute might make a come-back in Italy but instead the Italians opted for touching elbows.
Let us try to be honest. The arm gesture delivered by Musk during his three and a half minute speech was more like a Star Wars style version of a high-five.
His right hand began placed across his heart and from there shot out, yes, upwards but more or less sideways, not in front. He then repeated exactly the same gesture to the crowd behind him on the stage. Nor was he ever standing still as required but gyrating.
The gesture done, he then placed his right hand back across his heart and told the crowd: “My heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured.”
Obviously, he was using his right arm like an arrow or a spear that came from his heart and would reach the stars.
If Musk had made such a gesture in front of the Duce, he would have been instantly banished to the beautiful Tremiti Islands off the coast of Puglia along with the gays. If he had done it in front of the Führer, he would have been deported somewhere far worse.
Few know this but in America in the first half of the twentieth century a salute very similar to the Roman salute — known as the Bellamy salute — was widely used when taking the oath of allegiance which Americans do all the time. This meant — as the instructions to schools explained that “every pupil gives the flag the military salute — right hand lifted, palm downward, to align with the forehead and close to it.”
The lower angle of the arm made the salute closer to the Nazi rather than the fascist version. There was though a key, rather touching, difference. When the oath of allegiance was completed “the right hand is extended gracefully, palm upward, toward the Flag, and remains in this gesture till the end of the affirmation; whereupon all hands immediately drop to the side.”
In 1942, Congress then passed a law clarifying that the straight-arm salute during the oath of allegiance “be rendered by standing with the right hand over the heart; extending the right hand, palm upward, toward the flag at the words ‘to the flag’ and holding this position until the end, when the hand drops to the side.”
That surely is much closer to what Musk did. Only later did Congress ban the straight arm salute and insist that the oath be sworn with the right hand over the heart alone.
Regardless of all this, the left, with little else left to talk about, swung into action. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, professor of history and Italian studies at New York University, wrote on social media: “Historian of fascism here. It was a Nazi salute and a very belligerent one too.”
Oh no it wasn’t.
And here is Italy’s ever more insufferable left-wing cultural supremo, Roberto Saviano, author of the book about the Neapolitan Mafia, Gomorrah: “May you be cursed. The end of all this will be violent. His (Musk’s) fall will be equal to that of those to whom it historically refers with this gesture.”
But it’s not just the left.
It is also Bannon which means many of Trump’s MAGA base of so-called “deplorables.” Bannon is at daggers drawn with Musk. He told the Corriere della Sera earlier this month: “He is a truly evil guy, a very bad guy, I made it my personal thing to take this guy down.”
Harnwell, Bannon’s man in Rome, posted a vitriolic tweet on the social media platform Gettr about what he called Musk’s “quick little Sieg Heil” in which he said:
The guy is too much of a techno-nurd to be a neo-Nazi. If ever you hear him speak without notes, he can’t rise above third-rate platitudes — he has no political thought. He’s not well-read enough to be of those feverish white-supremacist marshes. No. He thinks that’s who you are. Never forget he did call you all racist retards during his H-1B (skilled worker) visa meltdown. He thinks by flashing you a fascist salute he will win you all over. That’s how little this opportunistic grifter understands MAGA.
Musk often gives me the impression that he is like a child unable to control his emotions. He is, it is said, autistic. I think it is this that’s behind his gesture. I do not think he is a fascist.
However, I do find it tricky to understand how such a brilliant mind could fail to see the inevitable reaction that such a gesture would provoke. Unless he wanted such a response. And why would that be? Simply to taunt the left?
He posted on X: ”Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.” But that’s not really much of an answer is it?
