Symbols mean things. They are fundamental to us being able to navigate the world, it’s the reason Tesla, SpaceX and every other corporate entity protects their brand with trademarks & copyright. It doesn’t take a genius to realise this.
Featured illustration: J.Sears using an image by Jorge Lascar, of the mountain of victims shoes found in a warehouse at Auschwitz-Berkenau 80 years ago today.
When the world’s richest self declared genius attempts to brush off horror at a well practised Nazi salute claiming in effect that calling people Nazis is so common it has no meaning and his friends & pundits defend it as a simple misunderstood gesture, it seems long past due that we review just what lies behind that salute.
“Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.” Elon Musk posting on some shit boomer network we won’t link to.
“that gesture, which some mistook for a Nazi salute, is simply Elon, who has autism, expressing his feelings by saying, ‘I want to give my heart to you’”. Andrea Stroppa also posting (since deleted) on the same beta grandads app
gesture
noun[ C ]a movement of the hands, arms, or head, etc. to express an idea or feeling:
“The prisoner raised his fist in a gesture of defiance as he was led out of the courtroom.”
“She made a rude gesture at the other driver.”
Today is the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi’s Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. Each day that salute was performed time again as men women & children were systematically abused, starved, beaten tortured and murdered.
A quote from the US Holocaust museum says.
Along with elderly people, children had the lowest rate of survival in concentration camps and killing centers. People over fifty years of age, pregnant women, and young children were immediately sent to the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau and other killing centers
Now let’s assume you actually believe the nauseatingly often repeated “world’s richest man” & self declared genius wasn’t aware of WWII and the 6 million humans murdered by people making that very same gesture he so enthusiastically made on the world stage…twice. You might at least assume that 7 days later he has by now been educated in the death camps & murder of millions of innocents, seen the association & issue a grovelling apology.
Instead he had another meeting with Germany’s AfD Leader.
Elon Musk only seems to care about how many people he can reach on twitter & where his next $59b is coming from so I would suggest avoiding any company of his or who advertises on X
Give bluesky a go. It’s like twitter but without the racists.
If you really believe that the world’s richest AfD supporter or the world’s richest Steven Yaxley Lennon supporter isn’t the world’s richest nazi. This video uncovers a lot more of his blatent far right love-ins.
Lest we forget….
“In Block 5, there are displays devoted to the “Material Evidence of Crime.” One of the saddest sights at Auschwitz is the display of shoes in a huge glass case that takes up half a barracks room in Block 5. The shoes seem to be deteriorating and are mostly the same dark gray color, except for a few women’s or children’s shoes that are made of red leather. The red shoes stand out like the red coat worn by the little girl in Schindler’s List, a black and white picture.
When the Soviet Union liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 27, 1945, there were 43,000 pairs of shoes in the camp. The photo below shows the shoes found in a warehouse”