As some media outlets downplay Elon Musk's Nazi salute at Donald Trump's inauguration, other reporters are calling them out for obfuscating what everyone plainly saw.
The Telsa CEO is under fire for Sieg Heiling after his remarks Monday, when he performed the Nazi gesture to the crowd once before turning around and performing it again to the group behind him.
While Musk's move sparked alarm among viewers, some outlets and organizations instead tried to downplay the gesture. Even the Anti-Defamation League referred to the widely-known Nazi greeting as an "awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute," while other outlets referred to it as simply a "controversial hand gesture." NBC News described it as Musk "forcefully touch[ing] his heart, before raising his hand and saluting supporters.”
However, some in media are still calling it for what it is. During a BBC segment on the inauguration, journalist Ava Santina Evans questioned conservatives' insistence that transgender people are detrimental to society when one of their biggest figures openly aligned himself with Nazis.
"Don't you love that we've been told for the past five, six years that the thing we need to be most frightened of is what pronouns people are using, and then someone actually does a Nazi salute behind the President's podium on live television and we're fine with that?" Evans said
Some have attempted to defend Musk's Nazi salute by claiming he intended for the gesture to be something else, with the excuses claiming simultaneously that the move was supposedly a symbol of love while somehow also being a reference to a Roman salute — except such a salute didn't actually exist in ancient Rome, according to historian Martin Winkler.
LBC host James O'Brien challenged anyone denying that Musk's gesture was a Nazi salute to "go and do it in Germany and see what happens," noting that it is "illegal to give the Nazi salute in Germany and in Austria."
"Anybody minded to tell me that's not what Elon Musk was doing must encourage him to then go and do it in Germany and see what happens," O'Brien said. "And in fact, if you don't think it was a Nazi salute, why don't you do it at parents' night next time you're at your kid's school? Or just do it now if you're at work and see what happens. I think that's probably the best way to test it. Make sure you do it twice as well, and make sure you hit your chest first before you throw your arm in the air."
Clips of the journalists have begun circulating on social media, earning praise from users for being straight-forward about the event. Other reporters have condemned publications that have obfuscated the Nazi gesture, including Author and columnist Jessica Valenti, who told them to "have some courage."
"I'm really gonna need media outlets to stop calling what Elon Musk did at the inauguration a 'hand gesture.' A 'controversial hand gesture' are you fucking kidding me?" Valenti said. "We all know what that was. He knows what it was. They are laughing at us. They are doing these things right in front of our faces because they know that all of these publications will not have the courage or the integrity to say what things really are."
"Over the next four years, it is so incredibly important that we are willing to tell the truth, and say it plainly, and not equivocate," she added.
