No Stupid Questions

What you're seeing is the end of Truth.

Especially in the face of AI generated photos, we're dealing with a future where the youth can easily be misled about what actually happened in the past, or even in the current moment. There is very much an upswing of young people questioning established narratives of the past, often under the guise of "well you weren't there, how do you know for sure?"

Reality is perception, and they are busy managing reality to deny any perception of Nazi behavior.

It's why Musk especially lies so fluidly and easily in the face of hard evidence.

It's all perception management, and as long as they keep talking and keep repeating the same lies, a significant number of people will believe them.

Musk still claims it wasn't a Nazi salute, and a significant number of people believe him. It's kind of like Trump's statement that he could shoot someone in the middle of 5th avenue and not lose any support. It's all attack, never back down, never admit fault.

EDIT: It's also Bannon's "flood the zone with shit" strategy at work, too. We've been in an Attention Economy for a long time now (at least since 2007 when the iPhone put a screen in everyone's pocket), and they know people's attention is limited, so they work to force themselves into people's limited time and attention spans. If your message is the only one they have time to hear, they'll probably be more likely to consider yours true. This, for example, is why Musk forced himself into everyone's Twitter feeds, he's force feeding himself the limited attention of millions.

Nazis didn't come around all of a sudden, either. People have always, on the whole, been horrible. What changes is what is culturally acceptable to talk about.

Non-American here. My brother and dad STILL cling the the narrative of "He's autistic, he was excited." and nothing will disusde them from that.

Astroturfing and boosting on Twitter and other platforms.

They wrote a nazi manifesto, it got reported on widely, they barely denied it and they won anyway.

Nothing that is happening on their end is the slightest bit unexpected, so I'm just isolating myself from America and Americans as much as I can until I don't get a choice. However, when I see things like this post by accident I do feel a remarkable urge to grab anybody who expresses disappointment or surprise and shake them by the lapels until they pass out.

I wonder the same, my theory is that this gesture is used both as a loyalty test and a way to further polarize society.

Making this gesture draws clear lines in society: those who say it was fine, those who say it wasn't, those who don't take a stance (ie the media calling it a "controversial gesture" or similar). So Musk & al now have a clearer idea of who stand where. It also cleaves those "for" and those "against" further away, solidifying their base.

Another explanation is this is part of the normalization of extreme rethoric and symbols. I doubt he could have gotten away with it ten years ago; who knows what they'll be able to do and say in 2035?

Yet another possibility, he did it on a whim and the neo-nazis like Bannon are now seizing the opportunity. It's unclear how planned this was and how intentional the consequences were.

(And all might be true at once)

Just a lack of Nazi hunters.

But Seig Heils? Even the most dense among them must know that blatant Nazism hurts their legitimacy in the eyes of the public, even among MAGATs

"hE wAs jUSt joKING 😡😡😡" -every magat ever

It's always been there. Just now that people in power are the Nazis ppl can come out

we're in the end stages of a campaign by assholes to overthrow our deomocracy.

It's been getting waged for decades. they've been doing this shit for years, behind closed doors and they now feel comfortable with being nazis in public.

When the Hail Hydra comes out a little too early so they call it a speech impediment.

People become less hospitable in economic downturns, remember the original Nazis exploited that in the Versailles hit Weimar.

They want people to feel like rebels with a cause.

This is a good symbol to make a lot of people your enemies. Your ingroup can now rally against "the establishment".

It couldn't work before, because it made too many enemies for your small ingroup, but we've reached a tipping point where it is feasible to keep a thing going for a while.

It wasn't sudden, this shit's been muddying the waters for a decade and the precursors were seeping in for another decade or more before that.

They feel safe, that's why they salute now.