Why is this flagged? Surely one of the most influential people in the tech space (and the richest man in the world) doing a nazi salute is pertinent to Hacker News?
Past experience with this kind of thing by you-know-who does not lend itself to the idea of a substantive discussion.
HN isn't "about the tech industry" per se - its mandate is to discuss topics of intellectual curiosity. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Celebrity troll moves (or whatever this is) don't fit that bill, so in this case I'm inclined to agree with the users who flagged the story.
There must have been a breakdown somewhere in our objective view of reality when doing fascist salutes at the inauguration of the largest tech-business bearing country in the world, by the wealthiest tech CEO in the world, are whittled down to "Celebrity troll moves". I don't know if HN is beyond saving, but it does feel like it tows the line when it comes to techno-fascism.
I wonder if there were any concerned engineers at IBM who tried to raise their voices over the tabulating machines being sold to Nazi Germany? If there were, I bet they heard similar things as today when they were brushed off.
I would like to see a discussions on about ethics and symbolism. The hand on heart, and then a gesture of throwing it outwards towards the public while saying "My heart goes out to you" is a very different symbolic gesture compared to a salute were a person execute it by extending the right arm stiff to an upward 45° angle and then straightening the hand so that it is parallel to the arm. In term of symbolism, what create the difference in interpretation? How much does the context of the speech and speaker influence how the symbolic gesture get interpreted?
In terms of ethics, if the intention is to generate outrage in order to generate views and media coverage, does media coverage help or harm? Research on violence has has reached a fairly strong consensus that symbolism and displaying of cultural values is a major contributor for continued violence and conflicts. What should be the most effective (and ethical) strategy in reducing such display?
Watch this at 00:35. Debunks your entire point about "the look" with Hitler doing the salute exactly as Musk did it.
I'm from Switzerland / Swiss German and maybe we just watched way more WW2 docs in high school and had more exposure to the various ways a Nazi salute can be done, but across the German speaking sphere we all saw this as a Nazi salute. In this variation it was often done with hand on breast during "Sieg!" and then the extension with "Heil!".
If the goal here is the show that intellectual curiosity can be had by a discussions on ethics and symbolism, I would recommend reading the comment in the best light possible and find the strongest arguments to talk about. Comments like "Debunks your entire point" does not do that and only closes the discussion. For the purpose of this thread that started with the question of "Why is this flagged", I would like to see if its possible to have that discussion.
The many published ww2 documentaries do indeed shows some variability in the Nazi salute, just like that youtube video you linked. The Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_salute) definition and their linked sources do not include the "hand on heart" part, which may indicate how common different versions are. The added "My heart goes out to you" statement to it is also seems like an very uncommon addition. A question we could ask is what people in the rally interpreted the gesture as in the context of the whole speech. Did they see it as an variable form of the Nazi salute, or did they interpret it as a gesture of gratitude?
Gestures has a natural ambitiousness in them. A person taking a knee in front of a king is different from a person taking a knee in front of a significant other and asking their hand in for marriage. The context and additional variability (like saying "do you want to marry me") changes the meaning of the gesture. In order for it to be one or the other the whole picture, context and gesture, need to align.
If the discussions is about ethics and symbolism we should also look at the ethics part. Political rallies are seemingly about displaying symbols and generating boundaries between in-groups and out-groups. If the gesture was intended to be an ambiguous Nazi salute in order to ignite controversy, we can look at what the consequences are. The in-group feels attacked, while the out-group becomes a threat for which the in-group can rally against. This strengthen the bonds of the in-group. It also increases political violence and instability, with both group "othering" each other. By instantly and publicly distance himself from the others interpretation, there is a gain of presenting themselves as the "true" anti-nazi and friends to Israel, especially now in the context of the current war in Gaza. This kind of political maneuvering is not that uncommon in far left and far right. Political researchers and analysts often remark that this create a problem of actually identity what the movement actually believes in, since the message is not in the actually words (or gestures), but rather in the intended outcome. The ambiguousness also create an environment that invites more extreme members which can be used to gain votes, or to kick out when there is political points to be gained.
Even the video in the comment you replied to shows Hitler doing it that way, and people who do the salute today do it constantly, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN8Q3U1GYmo
It's not required, but it takes nothing away from the salute. On the other hand, there is no such "my heart goes out to you" gesture. That'd be throwing kisses, or moving your hand to your heart and then extending it with palms sideways or slightly upwards. IF there was such a gesture that is similar and easily confused with the nazi salue, the WP page would mentioned it. But there isn't, we all know there isn't, it's only created ad-hoc to rationalize inaction.
There is no named gesture called "my heart goes out to you". Air kiss has an Wikipedia article, but "moving your hand to your heart and then extending it with palms sideways" does not have an article. Wikiepdia has an article on gestures and a non-exhaustive category, but as it is written in the Wikipedia policy, Wikipedia is not a dictionary, and definitively not an exhaustive list of everything. If there are gestures that can be confused with the Nazi salute then Wikipedia has no obligation to list them nor any directive to do so.
The alternative interpretation of the gesture that Musk did is however written on the Wikipedia article on the Nazi Salute, and on the article on Musk himself. It says: "it could indicate a sort of gesture of thanks to the crowd".
People see what they want to see. Having said that (and looking at the snarky "ad-hoc to rationalize inaction" comment), does it help producing a discussions on ethics and symbolism that produce intellectual curiosity? A more neutral way to describe it is likely to quote Wikipedia that quoted multiple other sources: "regardless of what Musk meant, his salute was widely embraced by right-wing extremists". As such, while different people will interpret the gesture differently, what matter is the outcome. That would be the ethical discussion we are not talking about but that I have now written twice about. What is the effect of the gesture and what was the goal.
That is a association fallacy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy). A speech during a rally is no the same as a short clip. If we are asking why people present during the rally did not react to the gesture, we need to ask what those people saw in the context of being at that rally and the speech up to that point. A good thing to have in the intellectual tool belt is the Invisible Gorilla, in that people don't always see what other see if you change the context. My personal guess is that taken out of context, if we gave the gesture blindly to people and especially without the "my heart goes out to you", most people would label it as a salute, and a subset would label it as a Nazi Salute. Give the pretext and the post-comment, an other subset would see it as a gesture of thanks. Give a context of a Nazi rally and close to 100% would see it as a Nazi Salute. Give the context of a funeral, and close to 0% would see it as a Nazi Salute. Context matters in interpreting the meaning of a gesture.
Can you show me someone doing that at a funeral? Because as a German I'm telling you, you can say about your heart whatever you want, if you do that on anything but a right-wing extremist funeral without other witnesses, you're in deep shit instantly. I know the US is more "free speech" about that, but this is still where that gesture originates or rather, why it's this big of a deal.
You could say I care more about what I know what Elon did, than what he may think he did. He's just someone wearing it like a "funny" hat. He has no clue, and that does not matter.
You brought up the WP article on the nazi salute not mentioning moving the hand to the heart first, as if that implies they are different gestures. However, apart from Neo-Nazis, the original Nazis including Hitler did the salute that way, too. Obviously video footage of Nazis doing the salute that way weighs more than WP just not mentioning it can be done that way.
> There is no named gesture called "my heart goes out to you"
No, the one on the nazi salute has mentions no possibility of confusing the two, and IMO there is none. Haaretz said it best: "you don't usually hurl it like a discus".
> A good thing to have in the intellectual tool belt is the Invisible Gorilla, in that people don't always see what other see if you change the context.
I'm not concerned that Americans, in that moment (where "making a scene" has a extremely high threshold for cause) didn't think much of it. I'm concerned with what I think of it, and while even that is under debate, that starts with the basic fact that it's a nazi salute, not remotely something like a "my heart goes out to you" gesture, especially one would repeat to his leader on top of that, and that particular one to boot, the one who said he could shoot people in broad daylight and his followers would not mind.
If I show someone the middle finger, either because I was told it means "hi, how are you?", or because I want someone to think I don't like them, but in reality I'm just trolling and I really do like them; that doesn't change that I'm showing them the middle finger. If I do it while reciting a poem and time it with the line "and my middle chakra yearns for thee", I'm still showing them the middle finger, that just makes it seem like some plausible deniability thrown in on purpose. I mean, this is not an obscure gesture.
And even though Musk endorsed the German AfD, and keeps courting Neo-Nazis, I'm not even sure he is fully aware of what he is doing. Maybe he is, or maybe he finds it very based and contrarian. What is inside his mind is not really something I can or care to guess at. The way he pretended to be good at Path of Exile doesn't allow me to assume he has any real thought process until he verbalizes it and I recognize it as coherent. I'm concerned with the media and other people I do hold to a higher standard.
A story about Musk being unable to explain X/Twitter's stack and immediatly attacking the person asking him about it has been not only flagged but completely removed.
I hate Musk, and he doesn't seem to have a clue about the Twitter stack.
But in this link that you shared, those who ask the questions are being disrespectful first. From my point of view, this recording has no value at all.
There are plenty of authors and writers who could discuss political controversies as intellectually profound learning examples, etc. That is a norm in academia, for example. It reflects more on online forums and basic limitations of forum structure and demographics, rather than anything intrinsic about a given topic.
I highly doubt you hold this degree of standard to any other person who was caught in similar obvious predicament.
Saying "oh this forum doesn't like him therefor we don't need to see this" is just bizarre, since then people ought to rejoice at the self proclaimed nerd and tech wiz showing a different color then stated.
Thank you for keeping this inflammatory garbage to a minimum. If photographers followed anyone around for a day, they could catch you do any number of silly poses.
Nono, you don't understand. He is autistic so he didn't know what he was doing, in fact he is giving money to far right/nazi parties throughout the whole europe because he loves free speech and democracy
More importantly, the issue isn't whether people are boo or yay; it's that both the boo comments and the yay comments are repetitive, nasty, and boring...keeping in mind that something can be both boring and intense at the same time. Since that's what we're trying to avoid here, we should avoid it in this case as well.
I 100% agree with your opinion that the top level comments would all be of a similar nature, but I think youre not considering how the thread comments would allow people to have a place to discuss what comes next, both for the nation and for the troll. It's a stunt clearly done to keep the executive orders out of the light, but unlike many of their previlus troll actions that had a similar goal, it's a stunt that will have long term implications.
The only other place to discuss it are the one million threads on reddit, where all the top level comments are bots. Again I agree with your points, but not your conclusion.
There will be other articles that provide a better foundation to discuss that (i.e. "what comes next").
On HN the idea is we want some, but not too much, discussion of such issues, and for the discussion to be intellectually curious rather than flamingly indignant. For the first point to work, we can't have too many threads; and for the second to work, the threads we do have need to be based on more substantive articles (and events).
The problem is that there's a finite number of writers of substantive articles; the strategy used by these trolls-in-chief is to overload these writers by conducting a blitzkrieg of events. By preventing substantive articles from being created for each event, they benefit the lack of public discourse that occurs for each singular event.
Thus I feel like youre right in everything youve said, but your decision is exactly what the trolls were hoping for. I think part of it is the design of hackernews threads; I think the old internet 1.0 forum style would be better suited for today's discourse. Having a dozen stickied threads for each of the executive orders inside of a sub forum for "news and events", for example.
The old 1.0 forums went by the wayside for good reasons, but the current upvote style has been in place for a long enough time now for bad actors to learn the strategies that manipulate the upvote system. IMO there's a need for a new forum style to replace the upvote/article based system.
Is that really want the trolls were hoping for? A political researcher interpretation (published on Swedish national news) was that this kind of behavior is historically common, where a group or person want to generate news by first initiating a provocation and then directly denying and distance themselves from it. The goal is to both cause provocation in order to generate media coverage, and also to distance themselves from the interpretation in order to paint themselves (for the in-group) in a good light while at the same time framing the opposition. In extension this helps them to distance the in-group from the out-group. The analyze also mention a possible in-group that include pro-Israel, which makes the distancing of the interpreted provocation critical.
That may or may not be a correct analyze of the situation, and other political researchers might make a different interpretation, but in that scenario the goal is to get people to talk about it. The opposite would be for the story to be buried and ignored.
Do you consider this interpretation of the topic interesting and 'curious' enough for hackernews?
One of the main reasons that I come here is to interact with people in the tech industry and I think that the opinions of the people who work for the man or who have worked for the man about this event are important to hear.
Probably not, because most of the responses aren't coming from employees, the ones that say they are may not be, and even the real ones may not feel free to say much.
If it were verified employees saying what they really think, would that be interesting? Sure. Even then though, keep in mind that HN's standard isn't "interesting", it's intellectually interesting. Similarly, it isn't "gratify curiosity", it's "gratify intellectual curiosity" (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
There are other kinds of curiosity (e.g. social curiosity) and they're interesting too (to me also!) but they're not the same as intellectual curiosity and thus not what this site is primarily for.
It's not surprising that most of the responses aren't coming from employees in an /r/askreddit post. I would imagine that the signal to noise ratio in a similar HN post would be better because there are more people who have worked for Musk or know someone who have worked for Musk here.
As I said above, part of the draw of this website is having a chance to see the comments from people who may or may not have the experience that they claim to have and to decide yourself if what they're saying has merit. A big difference between this site and Reddit is that people often use their real names and they'll even sometimes link to their github pages or resumes. Even if they're using pseudonyms they'll have extensive comment histories that span years of thoroughly written comments. All of this is stuff that can allow the reader to better judge the veracity of claims made. Regardless of the difficulty in verifying people's claims it's really hard to find another website that such a great concentration of people in these kinds of fields.
And there is an intellectual curiosity to this subject, but it isn't the kind that can be encapsulated in a single discussion. The value in something like this comes over time as a chain of discussions are posted on a site like HN. This allows us to observe and understand how people's opinions on this controversial figure evolve over time.
Imagine if HN existed during the time when Von Braun became instrumental in the American space program. Being able to go back and read comments on that critical and fascinating slice of American history and geopolitics would be fascinating even if it's the mundane knee-jerk crap that people post on forums immediately after events like these. Historians would certainly find it absolutely intellectually interesting. It's the kind of content that would even shape contemporary conversations about this current event.
I understand that there are extreme difficulties in moderating these kinds of discussions but there is absolutely merit in these kinds of discussions happening on a site like HN.
This has been happening for quite some time. For example, a popular news item that is critical of Musk is published by many news organisations across the web. The item will then be submitted to HN by various users, sourced from various news organisation websites. Sometimes _each and every submission_ reporting the same story gets flagged. It would be helpful to see which users are flagging these submissions.
He uses bots (or some PR agencies) everywhere to promote his image, I see it personally on Facebook, on Reddit, but it is on all social media. This is how everyone think he is an engineer, a genius and turns even his failures (like hyperloop) as a successes.
I wouldn't be surprised that they would have few here too.
Nearly all stories about His Muskness get flagged, especially the sensational ones, for reasons that are not hard for anyone who has read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html to understand. (Edit: if it helps at all, I would expect that positive cases get even more flagged than negative cases.)
The underlying issue isn't boo-$celebrity vs. yay-$celebrity, it's that HN doesn't function well under indignation or repetition, and that topic maximizes both.
With that one, it was hard to tell how much the story was just about a rename vs. how much was about substantive changes. I've belatedly turned off the flags though.
What "users flagged it" tells you is that it wasn't moderators who flagged it. That's important because many readers assume otherwise.
Re that link: I turned off the flags on it earlier, but it isn't a great story for HN. The way it is written is as tendentious as it gets; at minimum, we would need a more neutral source.
Beyond that, there are endless stories about weird patterns showing up in someone's limited set of data points on the internet. I can tell you from personal experience running one of these sites* that sometimes these turn out to just be people seeing patterns in randomness, as humans do; sometimes they are actually happening, but people are misinterpreting and jumping to dramatic conclusions about them; and sometimes (though rarely) they turn out to be an interesting story. What that means is that the existence of a post like this isn't enough of a signal to make for a good HN thread. At minimum there would need to be more information. This is the case regardless of what side of any political fence a post or an author happens to be on.
* a tiny one compared to the big fish! but big enough to observe all these phenomena, which show up increasingly at scale
> Re that link: I turned off the flags on it earlier, but it isn't a great story for HN. The way it is written is as tendentious as it gets; at minimum, we would need a more neutral source.
Yeah I get that, the link itself wasn't much. What made that thread interesting IMO was people reporting what hashtags work or don't work for them in what country, pondering possible explanations, etc. At least from my perspective, and this goes back to sites like slashdot, it's not always about what TFA can do for us, but what we can do for TFA, if you know what I mean.
> What part of "Hacker" or "News" makes this stupid hot take relevant exactly?
Hacker News is run by a VC company that funds tech companies. Elon Musk owns many major companies in the same tech space. That's what makes it relevant to Hacker News.
> this stupid hot take
If you mean the two nazi salutes that he clearly did, I'd say it's obviously relevant.
I don't have insight into what Elon thinks, but there's just no reason to make that sort of sign regardless of the context or history ("giving my heart" or roman or other salutes or whatever). Please don't attempt to downplay what was probably an intentional gesture, and if it wasn't intentional, simply shows how clueless he is.
I rarely comment on politics on HN but when folks start acting like Hitler, it's time to speak up and say no.
Anyone making a gesture of that sort is going to get an enormous amount of media. It was outrageously poorly considered to anyone with any knowledge of history, especially in such a venue and situation.
Most people don't make gestures that can so easily be misunderstood as a sieg heil.
Now add in Elon's many, many weird overlaps with white supremacy -- not to mention that we can't ignore the weird correlation with Musk, Sacks and Thiel all being outputs of apartheid South Africa, all three showing certain predilections -- most recently heralding a notorious far-right German party AfD, and it takes just incredibly gymnastics to pretend this was benign. That the obvious interpretation was, as the other person said, wink wink nudge nudge encouraged.
Just for the record, because it irked me and I wanted to refute it: the flagged comment said anyone with a knowledge of history would know this isn't a Hitler salute, because that's not done at an angle. And yes, I guess the "most pure" form is doing it frontally, but here is an image of Hitler doing the salute -- at an angle, from what I can tell.
NSFW, I guess. actually, who wants to look at it even outside of work... but anyone who genuinely doubts that this could possibly be mistaken for a Hitler salute, do take a look.
> The Roman salute, also known as the Fascist salute, is a gesture in which the right arm is fully extended, facing forward, with palm down and fingers touching.
Not knowing the most basic details of the gesture makes it hard to credit your "it's very different" message.
He’s done it twice. He also openly supports the German far right party. He also famously does nothing against neo nazis on Twitter. What more do you want?
Musk would literally have voted for Hitler in the 30’s. And probably paid for his campaign too.
Politics did not belong here at a time when CEOs for tech companies cared about creating new tech. But if tech company CEOs buy of politicians and romanticises nazism and facism publicly then suddenly tech becomes political and then it belongs here.
Taking this and the context of all of it and reducing it to "politics" is not exactly being intellectually curious. What you wrote could be a standard reply triggered by a button click.
Bold faced lies that followers take as a sign of power, and non-followers wonder about because they're so stupid and blatant (cheating in PoE2, Hitler salute) are exactly reminiscent of the Nazis, that serves a function, that can be dissected and analyzed. Not by everybody, just like some people think philosophy sucks because they suck at it, but people should keep their sour grapes out of it, just like I do when people discuss the latest compiler they designed. As the Chinese proverb allegedly goes, those who say something is not possible should not interrupt those doing it.
Because people are tired of hearing about Trump and Musk literally all day long and every day. It's almost impossible not to hear about them. And most likely, it will last at least 4 years. Seriously, at that stage, I think everybody had already a well forged opinion on this whole situation and no new information can change it.
I'll flag any post that contains Trump or Musk in the title.
And you don't actually "hear" people discussing in threads you don't click on. I don't want to hear about Apple, ever, nothing they do or make interests me, or ever will. Yet I wouldn't dream of curtailing others discussing that stuff.
You don't have to talk about anything, just because others talk about it. Someone is deciding that nobody should talk about it.
When Meta changed their terms, it was a BIG topic. When TechCorp releases anything, it will be covered in alllll the tech publications, and so many of them have comment sections, social media presences, the works. But it turns out people want to discuss the same issues also in this circle.
And with this topic, social media manipulation, wanting to decide what people see and what they don't, is intrinsically woven in (via Musk and X directly, and Musk's role in an administration that seems to play janky games with TikTok we probably should pay attention to, too). How can we, with good conscience, have articles talking about how we should make the world more accessible and diverse on one hand, and then enforcing silence when a tech bro mogul throws a Hitler salute... just because others, the non-techies, are already talking about it, too?
What data point? That a question goes unanswered because my account is 5 months old?
> If you can find a contentious story and plenty of debate elsewhere, it almost always gets flagged for multiple reasons by a variety of people
You just said "just look at the comments", now you backtrack to nebulous "multiple reasons by a variety of people". From the data points I have so far, the people who are for flagging don't want to talk about their reasons. Maybe they all think they have good reasons, and would say "just look at $thing", and then have no good reason when I ask "what about $thing"?
So that is literally the data point I have... when I have three I'll declare my discovery of how this all works and ignore all further data, unless it fits my theory of course.
> As for the comments, I see people trying to claim this isn't an issue and being refuted, how is that bad? How is that "unproductive"? Compared to what?
You just ignored it outright. Just because it's not flattering that I call out excuses that have no substance, doesn't mean I'm wrong. You're essentially saying "I could make the argument, but now I don't want to", and I say you're bluffing.
I doubt this is meant as a nazi salute at all. This is click and outrage bait. I did not flag this article, but I believe many question the honesty here.
Whatever you hear as an explanation for this, Musk knew how this would be seen/received and made a show of doing it.
If I suspend all possible disbelief, the best scenario is a rich white kid raised in Apartheid South Africa giving "Roman Salutes" to troll people for his own personal LOLs?
I tried, watching the video a few times. I can't believe that he didn't know what he was doing.
At best, he wants to demonstrate that he can make one of the worst gestures anyone can do in this position and suffer no consequences. Some kind of demonstration of power.
He will do anything so that his biggest fans love him even more. They think this was so based and now he's a god among men for doing this so all is well
the boyz we tell to work the mines, like their fathers before and all be well while the world is going to hell. We do make it pretty easy to sell ideology atm and musk is just selling facism (and hope) faster than the natural growth rate of socialism
"... commonly considered a symbol of fascism that had been based on a custom popularly attributed to ancient Rome.[1] However, no Roman text gives this description, and the Roman works of art that display salutational gestures bear little resemblance to the modern so-called "Roman" salute."
What are you trying to accomplish with this comment, protecting the reputation of the ancient Romans? The article you linked says, in the first line: "The Roman salute, also known as the Fascist salute"
While (ancient) Romans may have not done this salute, the salute is commonly referred to as Roman salute nonetheless
Trolling in the most idiotic, childish way possible is exactly what he's doing. He's done this forever. This is the guy who literally publicly trolled the SEC on Twitter when they charged him with fraud in 2018. The same guy who named the car models of his $1 Trillion company to spell "S3XY". He clearly has some kind of unresolved complex originating from his childhood that has stopped him from progressing to the mentality of a normal adult. What he fears most is being ignored. He needs everyone to be talking about him all the time.
People who are socially awkward do not tend to accidentally do a Hitler salute. Twice. With gusto. At the White House. I'm socially awkward. I have managed to not even be close to doing it. I have found it very easy to avoid accidentally performing a Hitler salute.
Maybe they do after documented instances of retweeting neonazi posts. And after publicly supporting the closest thing to the successor of the German Nazi party, AfD. And after calling for the release of a self-professed and documented fascist asshole in the UK. I don't know. Few people have that pedigree, after all, be them socially awkward or not. I'm not sure even being high as a kite on ketamine might do it, but I'm not sure. I think my employer would frown upon me being high as a kite on ketamine.
If he wanted people not to conclude he leans that direction, it would be pretty easy not to accidentally do these things over and over. Unfortunate. But here we are.
Do you think members of the KKK are wearing those robes and funny hats because of social awkwardness too?
How do you not unflag this? This is a historic moment with the whole country watching. Not separate from technology intellectual curiosity or the world. What does it say that this discussion is being suppressed?
I mean, it changes nothing on one hand, but it also crosses another line. From a European perspective (my perspective), this has burned all his credibility in Europe outside of fringe groups, there is no ambiguity.
> As a person with a strong track record of criticizing Elon Musk, I feel extremely confident asserting that this was not a Nazi salute. Elon Musk is a friend to the Jews. This is a man with Aspergers exuberantly throwing his heart to the crowd. We don't need to invent outrage.
He braces himself, makes an aggressive facial expression and stiffens his arm (not a thank you loving face), his palm facing down, elbow stiff, fingers locked together (not how one throws their heart), does it a second time, then comments that 'the future of civilization is assured'. Go Google images and look from multiple angles. Of BOTH salutes. Try not to puke at the smiles/cheers in the crowd.
Subtle Elon used the Fraktur font on his MAGA hat. Elon supports the AFD. Elon intentionally does a Nazi salute twice. Elon likes/responds possitively to Nazi's and white supremacists on X. Elon talks about 'declining birth rates and immigration policies' as closely as he can get away with to 'race replacement theory'.
Somehow we are just misunderstanding him. Nah bro. Stop. At some point we have to stop err'ing on the side of 'he's just an accidental unintentional Nazi'. Guess what, still a Nazi.
You are not allowing a broader discussion on this by having it flagged. I asked you how a discussion on ethics and symbolism doesn't fall under "intellectual curiosity" in a other reply. It's difficult to not come to the conclusion that you support Elon Musk and approve of his behavior. Calling it "celebrity trolling" is the cherry on top.
On Elon Musk:
- By most measures one of the richest and most influential persons in the world
- Owner of X
- OG member of the PayPal mafia
- Spent millions on Trump's election
- Official member of the new administration
- Makes two (not one) Nazi salutes on public television
But no, discussing what this means or implies does not satisfy one's intellectual curiosity.
It always feels like the mods are against you and secretly on the side you don't like. The other side feels the same way when we make a call in your direction. This is a well-established pattern. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
In this case the call is clear because the inputs to the discussion are provocative, inflammatory, and intense; and there's almost no information. Discussion will break down along partisan lines. Nobody will come to any new conclusion or persuade anyone. They'll just say things they would have said before, only more strongly. That's the kind of dynamic we hope to avoid on HN.
That said, I have to call out 'almost no information'. There are videos and photos from multiple angles of Elon making this salute, very intentionally, in a very specific way, stylistically matched both times. Seems like a heck of a lot of information is being ignored and too much graciousness is being given that would not be in any other situation. Elon has endorsed extremely right wing German nationalist party, has come as close as humanly possible to publically aligning with 'white replacement theory' as possible, interacts with nazis/white nationalists on Twitter. Be honest, you wouldn't give two recorded on video seig heil passes to anyone else as 'almost no information'. Dude. Come on. Look at the multiple angles. Confusion on this is forced confusion because people don't want to admit the reality.
Gather 'round while I sing you of Wernher von Braun
A man whose allegiance
Is ruled by expedience
Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown
"Ha, Nazi, Schmazi" says Wernher von Braun
Don't say that he's hypocritical
Say rather that he's apolitical
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department" says Wernher von Braun
I strongly encourage people to read Operation Paperclip which tells the story about how the US smuggled Von Braun and many other german scientists into the US post-war, housed them, and gave them resources to develop ballistic missles. It also documents in detail how the Nazis used Jews and others as slave labor to build V-2.
(BTW; Von Braun cared greatly about "where they came down")
It doesn't really say anything about what side HN and YC has chosen. It just means a few users clicked flag. The flagging system is not very well designed.
This guy is so fucking weird. Everything about him elicits intense feelings of cringe. It really amazes me that he has the level of success that he does, because he's definitely not all there.
In fairness to Musk he explains the gesture as 'my heart goes out to you', and the general vibe is not really fascist. Very cheerful about sending people to Mars. For comparison here's Hitler - all anger https://youtu.be/FJ3N_2r6R-o
That said I'm sure Musk knew what he was doing. He seems to be going a little nuts these days.
It is amazing what HN mods choose to step in an unflag. Really speaks to the performative ethos around “intellectual curiosity”. Elon making a nazi salute is not interesting but Graham speaking about wokeness is interesting and should be discussed.
The case for this not being flagged: this is an intellectually curious forum and the mods have a proven ability to adequately moderate other contentious threads and allow politically-charged posts.
If what Pres. Biden said about a growing oligarchy holds true, more posts like this should be expected in the future (especially given the attendees from the tech sector at today’s inauguration), and it’s far better to have a trustworthy place to discuss these types of stories, given HN’s readership, than places like BlueSky or Reddit (read: content optimized for algorithms); the amount of intellect here could lead to positive outcomes. Additionally, given the amount of industrywide impact the actions of CEOs have, and a large percentage of us are founders, it would be more valuable than not to have the discussion.
So to the mods: please consider updating the site’s ToS to allow posts and discussions like this. It’s valuable to have these discussions, and quasi-favoritism like allowing pg’s DEI screed while flagging this, shows clear editorial bias.
Yes. 4chan had this unfortunate effect of turning “ironic” use of Nazi memes into full blown embrace of the Nazi movement.
I’ve seen the same thing happen in my own life by listening to Vaporwave. Vaporwave’s ironic use of 90s smooth jazz has given way to me seeking out the depths of Kenny G’s discography. I actually love Pat Metheny Group now.
Be careful out there. You become the memes you consume.
If we accept any other explanation for what Elon was doing there, then we also need to accept that he somehow cannot see how this would be seen as a pure fascist signal. We also then need to ignore his public opinions, "true"/"concerning" comments on what remains of Twitter, and his recent / very public donations and commentary on world politics centering on "Nazi-adjacent" communities to accept the former.
That's a lot going on for the CEO of (3) companies (last I checked) with gov't contracts and investor/founder of several other adjacent and frequently intertwined related orgs.
Oh, and he's apparently one of the best Diablo IV players globally.
