Whatever you hear as an explanation for this, Musk knew how this would be seen/received and made a show of doing it.
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 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.
He will do anything so that his biggest fans love him even more. They think this was so based and now he's a god among men for doing this so all is well
the boyz we tell to work the mines, like their fathers before and all be well while the world is going to hell. We do make it pretty easy to sell ideology atm and musk is just selling facism (and hope) faster than the natural growth rate of socialism
"... 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."
What are you trying to accomplish with this comment, protecting the reputation of the ancient Romans? The article you linked says, in the first line: "The Roman salute, also known as the Fascist salute"
While (ancient) Romans may have not done this salute, the salute is commonly referred to as Roman salute nonetheless
Trolling in the most idiotic, childish way possible is exactly what he's doing. He's done this forever. This is the guy who literally publicly trolled the SEC on Twitter when they charged him with fraud in 2018. The same guy who named the car models of his $1 Trillion company to spell "S3XY". He clearly has some kind of unresolved complex originating from his childhood that has stopped him from progressing to the mentality of a normal adult. What he fears most is being ignored. He needs everyone to be talking about him all the time.
People who are socially awkward do not tend to accidentally do a Hitler salute. Twice. With gusto. At the White House. I'm socially awkward. I have managed to not even be close to doing it. I have found it very easy to avoid accidentally performing a Hitler salute.
Maybe they do after documented instances of retweeting neonazi posts. And after publicly supporting the closest thing to the successor of the German Nazi party, AfD. And after calling for the release of a self-professed and documented fascist asshole in the UK. I don't know. Few people have that pedigree, after all, be them socially awkward or not. I'm not sure even being high as a kite on ketamine might do it, but I'm not sure. I think my employer would frown upon me being high as a kite on ketamine.
If he wanted people not to conclude he leans that direction, it would be pretty easy not to accidentally do these things over and over. Unfortunate. But here we are.
Do you think members of the KKK are wearing those robes and funny hats because of social awkwardness too?
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?