AOC Hammers Elon Musk Over Salute: ‘In This Country, We Hate Nazis’
Alamy Live News via AP
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) ripped Elon Musk after the billionaire made a gesture that sparked a Führer furor on Monday.
Speaking at an inauguration rally for President Donald Trump, Musk thanked the crowd while twice appearing to make a Roman salute similar to one used in Nazi Germany. Conservatives and the Anti-Defamation League defended Musk and insisted the salute was not fascistic.
Ocasio-Cortez, however, rejected their explanation. Speaking on an Instagram Live stream on Tuesday night, the congresswoman did not hold back:
This is the United States of America. And I don’t care what Elon Musk is doing behind a presidential seal. In this country, we hate Nazis. Kind of like a foundational, defining thing.
Two of probably the most foundational, defining things about American history is that we beat the Confederates and we beat the Nazis. And I don’t know what side people may be on today, but I still am not rocking with anyone sympathetic to Nazis. And I will do that until I am six feet in the ground. Like, kind of foundational to me as a human being. And so if you’re cool and want to defend the Sieg Heils and the Nazi salutes, all the, you know, whatever you want to do, that’s on you. I’m on the opposite side of that. I’m not with the Nazis. How about that?
Musk has dabbled in anti-Semitic tropes before. In 2023, Musk agreed with a tweet claiming that Jews “have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.”
Musk replied, “You have said the actual truth.”
He subsequently attempted to backpedal.
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The billionaire spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars helping get Trump elected. Trump has named Musk the head of the “Department of Government Efficiency,” an advisory commission ostensibly meant to eliminate government waste.
