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 usually try to avoid politically charged content here but if you think this wont affect you, you are out of touch.
Also people just don't want to hear about it on HN when it is all over the media already
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.
Look at all the comments here. If a story leads to the comments here, it almost always gets flagged to discourage further unproductive commentary
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/would-...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-08-22/tesla-reputat...
https://nltimes.nl/2025/01/19/tesla-owners-react-elon-musks-...
This will not help it.
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.
This is a disturbing thing to me when people want to discuss the tech but without the politics (and the rocket launches but not the fallout).
"... 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."
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.
Not sure how accurate it is but it was an interesting watch.
https://x.com/bungarsargon/status/1881439445523775961
> 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.
"Opinion editor of Newsweek", 150k followers.
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(mirror: https://files.catbox.moe/icky5m.mp4 )
(BTW; Von Braun cared greatly about "where they came down")
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.
I'm supposed to give this guy good faith:
https://nypost.com/2024/03/06/us-news/elon-musk-wont-donate-...
Also, he's not an aspy. I worked with him. He's an Asshat.
“It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured,” Musk said.
Similar past use by Hitler.
“Only the Aryan can secure the future of civilization through his creative and organizing power.”
https://efiretemple.com/analyzing-adolf-hitlers-use-of-the-t...
If Hacker News is about the tech industry then we need to see the tech industry clearly, warts and all.
We cannot run away from it. We cannot memory hole it.
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.
Your policy settings are wrong.
You need only look at any thread involving His Muskness from the past several years to satisfy yourself that is not the case.
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.
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.
I'm leaving.
Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/1i53nzv/elo...
Flagged + deleted HN story: >>42775528
Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/elon-r-musk/
And he isn't leverage. In the end, he sold Tesla share and bought Twitter with cash, contrary to what most newspaper wrote (and never corrected).
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.
While (ancient) Romans may have not done this salute, the salute is commonly referred to as Roman salute nonetheless
There's clearly forces flagging all the remotely important things, just take this: >>42777938
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 seems, YC and HN made their decision.
A discussion worth having, if we could.
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.
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).
Some combination of being playful, superstitious, squeamish, and hoping not to trigger a headless chicken effect, I suppose.
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.
I'll flag any post that contains Trump or Musk in the title.
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.
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.
We never delete a post outright except when the author asks us to (and not necessarily then, either, for example if it got replies).
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?
You can tell because the ADL basically shrugged it off.
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.
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.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
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
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.
But the DOGE ones also being flagged[0] don't fit that category and are highly relevant and impactful, IMO.
[0] >>42775684
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.
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.
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!".
I wouldn't be surprised that they would have few here too.
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.
And I don't know about the people who were present in that rally, but Andrew Tate for example loves it: https://bsky.app/profile/junlper.beer/post/3lgemglpkws2s
https://www.forbes.com/sites/esatdedezade/2025/01/21/meta-fa...
https://www.techspot.com/news/106464-meta-denies-forcing-acc...
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.
> And I don't know about the people who were present in that rally, but Andrew Tate for example loves it: https://bsky.app/profile/junlper.beer/post/3lgemglpkws2s
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.
No. Near 100% would see it as a fascist salute because it is a fascist salute.
Sometimes things are exactly as they appear to be. There's no explaining away this one.
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.
Respect my neurodivergence! Fuck your woke mind virus infected existence!
