"It has begun. Trump is the President and Elon Musk did his part in launching the administration by doing a Nazi salute at the inauguration.
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This iteration of fascism is all about the oligarch class. It will fuse corporate power with state power, as fascism has always done, but it will also strip our government for parts and attack the working class specifically to reinforce the power of the ruling class, rather than attempting to build the power of the nation in any way. The oligarchs want to repeal the New Deal, repeal worker protections, crush unions and more. We must understand this as we enter the second Trump administration. We will be confronted with Nazism, unparalleled greed, and countless attacks from multiple directions. And, in the chaos, we must keep hold of this bigger picture if we are to effectively fight back.
The Trump onslaught is already upon us in direct, material, tangible ways. ICE raids are about to start; by the time you read this, they may have begun. Today they will likely be executed in fourteen cities. At the same time, Trump and Melania are both scamming the MAGA faithful out of billions of dollars with crypto schemes. The first executive orders of the new administration target trans and non-binary people, increase oil production, and even move to end the birthright citizenship enshrined in the constitution."
— J. P. Hill, The Nazi Regime Begins: Trump, Musk, and fighting the fascist oligarchy. Jan 21, 2025
Regarding that scam:
"Today, the guardrails have become so flimsy that blatant corruption barely makes the news. On Friday night, Trump launched a meme coin—a digital token with no real-world value whatsoever—and abruptly increased his net worth by tens of billions of dollars.
Anyone in the world, whether foreign despots, criminals, or lobbyists hoping for a political favor, can now directly pay the president, a man who governs by loyalty tests and self-interested, transactional dealing. When I checked this morning, it was the tenth most prominent story on the New York Times website; by tomorrow, it will have mostly disappeared from view and discussion, even as it becomes a defining feature of his corrupt administration."
— Brian Klaas, How to survive the second Trump era. Jan 20, 2025
"The tone for the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 47th president of the United States at noon today was set on Friday, when Trump, who once trashed cryptocurrency as “based on thin air,” launched his own cryptocurrency. By Sunday morning it had made more than $50 billion on paper. Felix Salmon of Axios reported that “a financial asset that didn’t exist on Friday afternoon—now accounts for about 89% of Donald Trump’s net worth.”"
— Heather Cox Richardson, January 20, 2025
But more to the point:
When the Germans blur the image… #Elon #ElonMusk #Trump #FuckNazis #Truth
— Future in the Forest (@futureintheforest.bsky.social) January 22, 2025 at 12:09 PM
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"Of all the dark moments during Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday, the darkest may have been the moment Trump acolyte and world’s richest man Elon Musk threw up not one but two Roman salutes—the gesture most strongly associated with Nazis and the phrase “Heil Hitler,” but also used as a symbol of support in other fascist regimes. The gesture was shocking, and observers from the left to the racist right alike agreed on what they saw. Neo-Nazis cheered. (“Holy crap … did Elon Musk just Heil Hitler at the Trump Inauguration Rally in Washington DC … This is incredible,” one prominent Holocaust denier wrote, later adding, “We are so back.”) Moderates and liberals were shaken.
One group, though, was unbothered: The Anti-Defamation League, which has as its mission fighting antisemitism and bigotry more broadly.
“It seems that @elonmusk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute, but again, we appreciate that people are on edge,” the ADL posted on the Musk-owned X. “In this moment, all sides should give one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit of the doubt, and take a breath. This is a new beginning. Let’s hope for healing and work toward unity in the months and years ahead.”
Musk responded “Thanks guys” with a laugh-crying emoji.
Ha ha. The joke is on us.
The entire ethos of the men and women (but mostly men) who make up the white-supremacist-adjacent fascist-friendly too-online right is one of saying what they really think with enough plausible deniability to claim it’s all just a big joke, and if you take offense, it’s because you’re a triggered woke scold. There’s always a veneer of irony, a little smirk. If the story gets too big, then it’s yet another example of a biased media engaged in, as Musk called the latest headlines, dirty tricks."
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The ADL, after all, has as its national director a man who has compared wearing a kaffiyeh to wearing a swastika. The group has conflated protests against Israel’s war in Gaza with antisemitism—and while far too many of these protests have indeed veered into the antisemitic, the ADL seems to equate just about any opposition to Israeli militarism with antisemitism, a position that has badly damaged their credibility. It’s not that there is no antisemitic threat from the left; there is. It’s that a sense of proportion is also necessary, and the ADL seems to believe that an encampment of kaffiyeh-wearing college kids is more dangerous than the wealthiest man in the world who owns a major communications platform and has the ear of the most powerful man in the world. This posture is a damning indictment of an organization that has a crucial mission, is being put to the test, and is badly failing."
It’s Clear Enough What Elon Musk Did. The ADL’s Response Is Pathetic.: We desperately need a better anti-antisemitism group than this. Jill Filipovic, Slate, Jan 21, 2025
ICYMI: My floor speech about Elon Musk’s Nazi Salute. Did not expect this to go as viral as it has, but it needed to be said. Speech text 👇🏼
— Senator Dayna Polehanki (@senpolehanki.bsky.social) January 25, 2025 at 11:34 AM
[image or embed]Germans are in the streets demonstrating against the extremist right there and here (note the language of their message). Where are our rallies in defense of democracy? Where is our resistance? Sie wollen die Brandmauer www.zeit.de/politik/deut...
— Jeff (Gutenberg Parenthesis) Jarvis (@jeffjarvis.bsky.social) January 25, 2025 at 3:32 PM
[image or embed]For inspiration, look at this from the Süddeutsche: no paywall; with or without Google Translate, the photos tell the story of resistance. Thousands rally across Germany against the right. www.sueddeutsche.de/projekte/art...
— Jeff (Gutenberg Parenthesis) Jarvis (@jeffjarvis.bsky.social) January 25, 2025 at 3:36 PM
[image or embed]The groyper-posting billionaire who supports a far right German political party and waxes nostalgic about apartheid South Africa definitely knows what a Nazi sieg heil looks like and could easily make up other hand gestures that don’t look exactly like them.
— Aaron Huertas (@aaronhuertas.bsky.social) January 20, 2025 at 4:56 PMDo not waste time arguing about whether or not Musk believes all the tenets of Naziism. (We know he supports a few key ones.) The point of the salute was to (a) activate and encourage Nazis who were watching and (b) assert his own invincibility.
— Bilal Dardai (@bilald.bsky.social) January 21, 2025 at 1:13 PM
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