Elon Musk’s “Salute” Was More Than Trolling, and It Wasn’t Just a Dog Whistle—It Was Worse

By Michael Kelman Portney

Let’s get one thing straight: trolling is what you do to your buddy when you remind him of that interception you ran back for a touchdown in high school football. It’s needling, teasing, a deliberate act of minor provocation to get a rise out of someone. Trolling is obnoxious, sure, but it’s not a Nazi salute at a public event. That’s not trolling. That’s a deliberate signal. A deliberate provocation. A deliberate choice.

And no, it wasn’t just a dog whistle either. A dog whistle is coded—subtle enough that only a certain audience recognizes its meaning while everyone else dismisses it as harmless or meaningless. What Musk did was more blatant than that. It wasn’t a whisper; it was a shout. It was a signal loud and clear for anyone willing to listen.

I hear the excuses—oh, how I hear them. He was being “awkward.” He was “throwing his heart out there.” It was a “Roman salute.” He’s autistic, as though that absolves any and all questionable behavior. The Anti-Defamation League even lined up to play defense. And, of course, the all-purpose cop-out: “he’s just trolling.”

Let me tell you something: as a Jewish person in America in 2025, I’ve got zero patience for this gaslighting. I’ve got zero patience for apologists bending over backward to minimize something that is screamingly obvious to anyone who pays attention. That was a Nazi salute.

And whether it was done out of ignorance, indifference, or outright malice, the effect is the same: it stirs the pot of anti-Semitism already boiling over in this country. It emboldens the kind of people who paint swastikas on synagogues and whisper about "globalist agendas" on cable news. It sends a message that this is okay. That it’s fine to normalize hate. That it’s funny to some people when others live in fear.

This wasn’t just trolling. It wasn’t just a dog whistle. It was a deliberate act, and the harm it caused is undeniable. Because this isn’t just some abstract danger. This isn’t paranoia or hyperbole. This is my community we’re talking about. My friends, my family, my neighbors. It’s the elderly man walking into synagogue every Saturday morning, holding his prayer book and looking over his shoulder because we know what’s happened in Pittsburgh and Poway and countless other places. It’s the kids in Hebrew school who have to learn about the Holocaust far younger than they should because we know this kind of hate can grow and consume if left unchecked.

It’s me. It’s people like me who feel this fear every single day, even living in a blue state. Even surrounded by progressive policies and supposed safe havens, we’re not untouchable. Because hate doesn’t care about borders. Hate spreads. Hate is a virus that finds every crack, every weak point, every overlooked corner. And when someone like Elon Musk does something like this, he’s not just signaling to the far right—he’s amplifying that hate, broadcasting it to millions of people, many of whom are already teetering on the edge of radicalization.

This wasn’t some ambiguous, accidental act that only extremists noticed. It wasn’t a harmless inside joke misunderstood by the masses. It was blatant, undeniable, and impossible to dismiss as innocent. And what makes it worse is Musk’s track record. Let’s not pretend this came out of nowhere.

Let me be clear: this is not just about one gesture. This is about the pattern. The pattern of Musk’s actions, his platform, and his refusal to take responsibility for the toxic, hateful rhetoric that has flourished under his watch. This is the man who reinstated the accounts of white supremacists and Holocaust deniers on Twitter (let’s stop pretending it’s “X”—it’s still Twitter). This is the man who turned a blind eye to the harassment campaigns targeting Jews, LGBTQ+ people, and other vulnerable groups, all in the name of “free speech.” This is the man who, with all his billions, all his influence, all his power, could have chosen to be a force for good but instead chose to cozy up to the darkest corners of the internet for clicks, clout, and controversy.

And don’t think for a second that his actions don’t have consequences. This kind of behavior puts people like me in danger. It puts my entire community in danger. The people who are already radicalized, who are already looking for a reason to act, see this and take it as validation. They see a man as powerful as Musk, a man who is treated as a visionary, as a genius, as someone to emulate, making this gesture and think, “If he can do it, why can’t I?”

Hate crimes don’t happen in a vacuum. They don’t just spring up out of nowhere. They’re cultivated in an environment where hate is normalized, excused, and encouraged. When you allow this kind of imagery to go unchallenged, when you downplay its significance, when you brush it off as trolling or a joke, you are complicit. You are feeding the very same environment that enables violence against Jews, against immigrants, against people of color, against the LGBTQ+ community, against anyone who doesn’t fit into the narrow, hateful worldview of the far right.

And here’s the thing that makes me the angriest: this isn’t new. We’ve seen this before. We’ve lived through this before. And we know where it leads. We know what happens when people like Elon Musk decide that hate is a game, that fascist imagery is just “edgy” or “funny.” We know because we’ve seen the camps, the ghettos, the mass graves. We know because our grandparents and great-grandparents lived through it. We know because the scars of the Holocaust are still fresh, still raw, still bleeding in our collective memory.

When people dismiss what Musk did as “just trolling” or “just a dog whistle,” they’re not just excusing him—they’re erasing history. They’re erasing the lived experiences of millions of people who suffered and died because of that very same imagery, that very same ideology. They’re erasing the pain of those of us who are still here, who still have to carry that history with us every day.

And let’s talk about those excuses for a second. The people saying, “It was a Roman salute,” or “He’s autistic,” or “He was just being awkward”—do you hear yourselves? Do you hear how ridiculous, how insulting, how dangerous those excuses are? You’re bending over backward to protect a billionaire who doesn’t give a damn about you while throwing an entire community under the bus. You’re telling us that our fear, our anger, our lived experience doesn’t matter as much as his reputation.

To those people, I say this: if you’re not Jewish, if you don’t live with the constant awareness of how quickly things can escalate, maybe you don’t get it. Maybe you don’t understand how terrifying it is to see someone with that much power play games with our safety. But here’s the thing: just because you don’t get it doesn’t mean it’s not real. Just because you don’t feel the fear doesn’t mean it’s not valid.

And if you’re Jewish and you’re still making excuses for him? I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know how to reach someone who’s so willing to betray their own community for the sake of defending someone like Musk. But I’ll say this: when you minimize what he did, when you downplay its significance, you’re not just excusing him—you’re emboldening everyone who wants to see us gone.

Because make no mistake: this isn’t a game. This isn’t a joke. This isn’t trolling. This wasn’t just a dog whistle. This was a signal. A deliberate choice. A choice that puts people like me, like us, in danger.

And I am righteously pissed off. I am furious at every person who enabled this, who defended it, who excused it, who laughed it off as a joke or a troll. You want to play games with fascist imagery? Fine. But don’t be surprised when people like me refuse to sit down, shut up, and let you minimize what that salute means.

Because when you do something like that, you’re not just trolling. You’re pulling a thread that has unraveled into genocide before. And I’m done pretending that’s okay.

If you're willing to play with fire like that, don’t be shocked when people like me don’t trust you. Don’t expect us to shrug it off. Because we know what it’s like when the fire spreads. We've seen the ashes. And if you can’t see why we’re terrified, then maybe you should take a long, hard look at yourself.

And if you still don’t get it? Maybe you’re part of the problem.