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I was out buying eggs when I saw a video of Elon Musk giving a Hitler salute at the inauguration.
In the movies, this stuff is highlighted and separated: punctuation in itself instead of an event that you see in the background of your everyday life. Hannah Arendt talked about “the banality of evil” in the context of Eichmann, one of the core organizers of the Holocaust, telling prosecutors that he was just doing his job. But banality pervades. Sometimes, you need to buy eggs. And sometimes, when you get back in the car and pick up your phone, you get a notification about the richest man in the world signaling his intentions on the world stage.
There has subsequently been much discussion about whether it really was a Nazi salute. It’s insultingly stupid. Even if he truly didn’t intend to throw three successive Sieg Heils, he certainly knows what one is, and most of us have enough self awareness not to accidentally look like a Nazi on national television. He had to know what he was doing. It was a deliberate Nazi salute. The act itself, and the subsequent denials, serve to normalize fascism; just another banal event for you to scroll past on your phone.
Still, these conversations serve a purpose. It’s worth noticing who wants to downplay the Nazism, which, after all, is not “just” manifested in the world’s richest man doing a Hitler salute on national TV. Make no mistake, Musk’s salute was a clear signal, but it’s far from the only one. It’s part of a broader pattern of normalization, visible in policies and actions designed to dismantle rights and embolden oppression.
Will they also downplay executive orders that repeal important civil rights gains from sixty years ago (as an appellate court simultaneously reinstates a Jim Crow era voter suppression law, with doubtless more to follow), or encouraging employees to inform on their colleagues?
Or decimating rights and protections for transgender people, preparing for mass deportations including by removing protections for schools and churches from raids, pardoning January 6 extremists who vow revenge on their perceived enemies, or deploying the military as internal law enforcement in border states?
Or freezing scientific research at the NIH and thereby putting universities and research organizations at risk, or attempting to end Constitutionally-protected birthright citizenship?
“Optimistic and celebrating,” Mark Zuckerberg said, on the same night that Musk Sieg Heiled the room three times. “I’m not going to agree with him on everything, but I think he will be incredible for the country in many ways,” Sam Altman said. Microsoft put out a statement saying that “the country has a unique opportunity to pursue […] the foundational ideas set for AI policy during President Trump’s first term”.
And those are public figures in technology. My Facebook feed, and likely yours, is loaded with acquaintances and extended family members who welcome the change; one on mine welcomed “the return to logic and reason”. My LinkedIn feed is worse, with many business leaders echoing Zuckerberg’s “optimistic” language, and some calling the Nazi salute into question.
We’ve tumbled into a deep, dark hole, and, as it turns out, many of us are glad to be there.
It’s just not always clear who.
Though dated in some ways, this 1941 Harper’s Magazine article still resonates. The question then was, “Who goes Nazi?” Who is going to be a sympathizer or even a collaborator with a regime that seeks to subjugate, deport, and, as it turned out in the 1940s, kill so many people?
And to be clear, collaboration doesn’t require slapping on an armband and goose-stepping behind a demagogue. Nice people made the best Nazis, as Naomi Shulman wrote eight years ago:
My mother was born in Munich in 1934, and spent her childhood in Nazi Germany surrounded by nice people who refused to make waves. When things got ugly, the people my mother lived alongside chose not to focus on “politics,” instead busying themselves with happier things. They were lovely, kind people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away.
The question now is not a million miles away. Who will support? Who will collaborate? Who will decide that they are “not political” and look away as millions of people are harmed? Who will make excuses for it all? Who secretly welcomes the push for theocracy, for in-groups and out-groups, for “traditional” values that prioritize rigid gender roles, segregation, and oligarchy? Who, in other words, is safe?
Are you “optimistic” about the new regime? Will you be complicit?
When someone needs help — when ICE comes after them, or worse — will you look away, or worse, cheer them on? Or will you be a point of safety for someone who needs it?
And what about when it gets worse? Because, left unchecked, it will.
In the face of rising fascism, what kind of person are you? What kind of person do you want to be?
