Category: far right

  • Last week, Trump administration officials blasted Germany after a 1,100-page report from that country’s intelligence agency found that the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is a racist and anti-Muslim organization, labelling it “a proven right-wing extremist organization.” The report was compiled by experts and was years in the making. Among its key findings is that the AfD poses a threat to…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

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    FAIR: Cuts to PBS, NPR Part of Authoritarian Playbook

    Ari Paul (FAIR.org, 4/25/25): “Going after public broadcasters is…part of the neo-fascist playbook authoritarian leaders around the world are using to clamp down on dissent and keep the public in the dark.”

    The death of former 1960s radical turned right-wing provocateur David Horowitz brought to mind the time he called me “stupid” (Michigan Daily, 9/8/03) because he disliked a column (Michigan Daily, 9/2/03) I wrote about neoconservatism.

    I was reminded of that again just days later when Matt Taibbi (Racket News, 5/4/25), a journalist who left Occupy Wall Street populism for ruling class sycophancy, attacked my recent article, “Cuts to PBS, NPR Part of Authoritarian Playbook” (FAIR.org, 4/25/25). In his response, titled, “No, State Media and Democracy Don’t Go ‘Hand in Hand.’ Just the Opposite,” Taibbi asked, “How nuts do you have to be to think ‘strong state media’ doesn’t have a dark side?”

    It’s a straw man argument, with a heavy dose of McCarthyism thrown in to boot. I’d encourage everyone to read both pieces in full, but here I’ll break down the main problems with Taibbi’s piece.

    Public vs. state media

    Racket News: No, State Media and Democracy Don't Go "Hand in Hand." Just the Opposite

    Matt Taibbi (Racket News, 5/4/25): “The above is either satire or written by someone consciously ignoring the history of state media.”

    Taibbi’s main trick is to pretend that “state media” and “public media” are interchangeable. They’re not. State media consists of government propaganda outlets that answer directly to executive authority, rather than independent editors. Public media are independent outlets that receive taxpayer subsidies. As I wrote in my piece, NPR “only gets 1% of its funding directly from the CPB,” the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

    Obviously, if NPR and PBS were “state media,” Trump wouldn’t need to try to shut them down; he would already control them editorially. That’s not to say that they’re perfectly independent. FAIR writers, including myself (11/26/20), have for decades been critical of NPR and PBS political coverage. FAIR (e.g., 6/1/99, 9/17/04, 5/11/24, 10/24/24) has pointed out again and again that right-wing complaints about supposed left-wing bias in public broadcasting have repeatedly resulted in compromised coverage. (I noted in the very piece Taibbi purports to critique that Republican critics of public broadcasting “use their leverage over CPB funding to push NPR and PBS political programming to the right.”)

    FAIR’s Julie Hollar (FAIR.org, 5/2/25) wrote just days before Taibbi’s post that NPR had downplayed the Trump administration’s attack on free speech, taking a false “both sides” approach to the issue. So, yes, FAIR is outspoken about the “dark side” of NPR and PBS, and Taibbi surely knows it. But he doesn’t seem interested in an honest argument.

    His words, not mine

    White House Wire: The Most Successful First 100 Days in Presidential History

    White House Wire (4/30/25) is already the kind of state media Taibbi warns PBS could turn into.

    Taibbi used quotation marks around “strong state media” twice, when those aren’t the words I used—they’re his. He claimed that I was “consciously ignoring the history of state media,” though much of my piece concerned state efforts to force conformity on public outlets. While failing to engage with the rest of my article, he took the reader to Russia in the 1990s, when independent journalists (like himself) were working:

    That period, like the lives of many of those folks, didn’t last long. Vladimir Putin sent masked police into the last independent TV station on May 11, 2000, capping less than ten years of quasi-free speech. “Strong state media” remained, but actual journalism vanished.

    I’m very open about my opposition to the tyranny of autocrats shutting down and raiding journalistic institutions (FAIR.org, 5/19/21, 6/8/23, 8/14/23, 10/22/24). And my article noted that other wannabe autocrats are attacking public broadcasters, notably in Italy, Israel and Argentina, a fact that does not undermine but rather supports the idea that there’s a correlation between public broadcasting and democracy.

    If Taibbi were truly worried about “state media,” he wouldn’t be mad at a meager government subsidy to NPR or PBS, but instead would show more concern for something like the Trump administration’s White House Wire, “a news-style website that publishes exclusively positive coverage of the president on official White House servers” (Guardian, 5/1/25). And mentioning Putin’s attacks on “independent TV” is certainly a better argument against Trump’s FCC investigations into private US outlets like ABC and CBS than it is against the existence of NPR or PBS.

    Taibbi’s invocation of “Putin” and “Russia” as a reason why we should not be concerned about Trump’s attacks on public broadcasting is such an illogical non sequitur, it makes more sense to interpret it as standard-issue McCarthyism. This is bolstered by Taibbi’s invocation of more paranoia about any state subsidy for media:

    Yes, Car Talk and the MacNeil/Lehrer Report were cool, but outlets like Neues Deutschland, Télé Zaïre and Tung Padewat more often went “hand in hand” with fingernail factories or firing squads than democracy.

    He seemed to be trying to scare the reader into thinking that we are just one episode of Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me! away from the Cambodian genocide.

    The neo–Cold War trick is to just say “Putin” enough times in hopes that the reader will eventually realize that the US government funding anything is a sign of impending tyranny. It’s an old joke to accuse greying reactionaries of hating publicly funded snowplows because “that’s socialism,” but that appears to be where Taibbi is these days.

    A sloppy attack

    Annenberg: Public Media Can Improve Our ‘Flawed’ Democracy

    Timothy Neff and Victor Pickard (International Journal of Press/Politics, 7/24): “High levels of secure funding for public media systems and strong structural protections for the political and economic independence of those systems are consistently and positively correlated with healthy democracies.”

    Taibbi pretended to refute my claim that “strong public media systems and open democracy go hand in hand,” but in his article’s large block quotation, he omitted two embedded citations to scholarly studies that support this assertion. One of those was from Political Quarterly (3/28/24), the other was an Annenberg School study (3/16/22) whose co-author, Annenberg’s Victor Pickard, has also written about the importance of public media for The Nation (4/15/25).

    Taibbi could have challenged those studies if he wanted, and good-faith disagreement is welcome. Omitting them from the quotation, though, leaves out the critical part of my statement.

    Taibbi continued:

    People who grew up reading the BBC or AFP may imagine a correlation between a state media and democracy, but a more dependable indicator of a free society is whether or not obnoxious private journalism (like the Russian Top Secret, whose editor Artyom Borovik died in a mysterious plane crash) is allowed to proliferate.

    I’ve written at length about that dangers that the Trump administration poses when it comes to censorship, intimidating journalists, lawfare against media and using the power of the state to chill speech (FAIR.org, 12/16/24, 1/23/25, 2/18/25, 2/26/25, 3/28/25, 4/29/25). Taibbi ignored this part of my record, which is referenced in part in the very article to which he’s responding. This is crucial, because my defense of PBS and NPR in this instance is part of a general belief that the government should not attack media organizations, public or private.

    As someone who read Taibbi enthusiastically when he was a Rolling Stone and New York Press writer, it’s sad to see someone I once admired so sloppily attack FAIR’s defense of press freedom against anti-democratic state power. But on the bright side, his outburst acts as an inspiration for a place like FAIR to continue defending free speech and a free press, while mercilessly calling out state propagandists who disguise themselves as journalists.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • “I have nothing to do with Project 2025,” Donald Trump said during last September’s presidential debate. “I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it purposely. I’m not going to read it.” Such disavowals were common on the campaign trail. But just 100 days into his second term, Trump has enacted many of the key policies laid out in the Heritage Foundation’s 922-page blueprint for a far right…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • An interview with Quinn Slobodian, the author of Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right.

    This post was originally published on Dissent Magazine.

  • Since taking office in January, Trump and his regime have increasingly weaponized the immigrant detention system for his white supremacist agenda. Suppression of dissent and intimidation have been cornerstones of the MAGA regime, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) forcefully abducting and incarcerating students and scholars for what is essentially a thought crime — expressing…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • America desperately needs a united front to restrain the wrecking ball of the Trump regime. While outraged opposition has been visible and vocal, it remains a far cry from developing a capacity to protect what’s left of democracy in the United States. With the administration in its fourth month, the magnitude of the damage underway is virtually impossible for any individual to fully grasp.

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Before settling on a hospital, Timothy Wilson considered myriad targets for a terrorist attack, including a mosque, a synagogue, and an elementary school attended mostly by Black children. As he narrowed down his choices in the spring of 2021, however, and his plan began to take shape, the 36-year-old white supremacist texted a question to another plotter: “How did McVeigh do it?”

    Thirty years ago this week, Timothy McVeigh rented a Ryder truck, loaded it with a 7,000-pound fertilizer bomb, drove to the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, parked, lit the fuse and escaped to a waiting getaway car.

    The post How Timothy McVeigh’s Oklahoma City Bombing Birthed The Trump Era appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Just as was warned by leftist and social organizations , the march called by the Dominican far right against the community of Friusa on March 30 ended in chaos, violence and destruction of community property. Both the government, through its spokesman Homero Figueroa , as well as the paramilitary organization Antigua Orden Dominicana (AOD), which organized the march, are washing their hands and accusing alleged infiltrators of the violence, all in an attempt to do damage control and evade responsibility. According to the authorities, weapons were confiscated and 32 arrests were made.

    The post The March In Friusa Failed; The Neo-Fascist Movement Was Divided appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • More than 2,000 people joined the We Demand Change summit in London on March 29, taking a stand against the anti-people agenda of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, as well as the racism and warmongering embedded across Britain’s mainstream political landscape. Organized by groups including the Peace and Justice Project, the Stop the War Coalition, and several trade unions, the summit was described as the beginning of a national resistance-building effort, with local meetings to follow.

    “The government and the employers tell us that they can’t afford decent pay or afford to fund our schools and hospitals but when it comes to wars, there is a bottomless pit,” reads the summit’s statement.

    The post We Demand Change Summit Charts Resistance To Labour Austerity appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The far-right French politician Marine Le Pen was convicted on embezzlement charges by a national court on Monday, sentenced to four years in prison and barred from seeking elected office for at least five years — a development that progressives warn could backfire if too many people see the ruling as an attempt to preemptively subvert democracy. Le Pen’s “electoral ineligibility is effective…

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  • A far-right, pro-Israel group with a history of support for terror and genocide is working closely with the Trump administration, preparing dossiers on thousands of pro-Palestine figures it wants deported from the United States. Betar U.S. is known to have had several meetings with senior government officials and has claimed credit for the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of the nationwide anti-genocide student demonstrations that began at Columbia University last year.

    Ross Glick, the group’s executive director until last month, noted that he met with a diverse set of influential lawmakers, including Democratic senator John Fetterman and aides to the Republican senators Ted Cruz and James Lankford.

    The post The Far-Right Hate Group Helping Trump Deport Israel’s Critics appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Growing up in the early 2000s, my mother instilled within me certain precepts: eat your vegetables, avoid processed foods, recycle. Buying organic was preferable, but often cost-prohibitive. Ideally, you’d want to be able to pronounce the words on a label. Red dye 40 and sugary breakfast cereals were no-nos — though sometimes she could be convinced otherwise. All of these principles, she said…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • “Why organize the future? Because the present we face is repulsive.” With these words, Marta Collot began her speech at Potere al Popolo’s national assembly in Rome on March 15, marking the culmination of months of organizing and political discussion. The assembly launched a new program, developed through a bottom-up process rooted in labor and territorial struggles, outlined to serve as a framework for truly organizing the future.

    According to Maurizio Coppola, a member of Potere al Popolo’s national coordination, the process was launched for multiple reasons.

    The post ‘Organize The Future’: Potere Al Popolo Charts Resistance To Militarization And Cuts appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The race to ReArm Europe showed no signs of slowing during a debate in the European Parliament on Tuesday, as political representatives across the spectrum threw their weight behind the military expansion plans of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa. The only occasional rebuke from centrist and right-wing parties was that the proposal doesn’t go far enough in light of Donald Trump’s return to the White House and the widening disconnect between his administration and European governments.

    The post The European Union Fast-Tracks Militarization; Pushes Rearmament appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • South Korea’s U.S.-backed President Yoon Suk Yeol was released from the Seoul Detention Center on March 8. Yoon was impeached on Dec. 27, 2024, for his role in ordering a right-wing coup, an order that failed earlier that month. Yoon’s release was based on a legal technicality, and it is already sparking some resistance and some chaos.

    Yoon had declared martial law on Dec. 3 during a televised address. The declaration aroused fierce and massive resistance, particularly from organized labor, students and two opposition parties that participate in the Korean Congress.

    The post South Korean Workers Unite Against The US-Backed Far Right appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.


  • This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • For Kathy Zappitello, it was the Dobbs decision. For Mary Kunesh, it was the gutting of licensing requirements for school media specialists. For Ilana Stonebraker, an academic librarian who ran for — and won — a seat on the Tippecanoe County Council in 2018, it was the first election of Donald Trump. “I felt it viscerally,” she told Truthout. “I needed to do something tangible.

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • In 2021, Steve Berger, an evangelical pastor who has attacked the separation of church and state as “a delusional lie” and called multinational institutions “demonic,” set off on an ambitious project. His stated goal: minister to members of Congress so that what “they learn is then translated into policy.” His base of operations would be a six-bedroom, $3.7 million townhouse blocks from the U.S.

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The results of Germany’s February 23 election have cemented a chilling trend that has increasingly characterized European politics in the 21st century: the collapse of social democracy and the subsequent resurgence of far right parties and movements, with some of their followers openly glorifying fascism. The snap national election left no room for doubt about Germany’s sharp rightward shift.

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.


  • This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Seg1 3way split

    Friedrich Merz is poised to become the next German chancellor after his conservative Christian Democratic Union placed first in Sunday’s key election. Social scientist David Bebnowski, speaking from Berlin, tells Democracy Now! that Merz is likely to join with the diminished SPD of outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz for another “grand coalition” of establishment parties, which has ruled Germany for much of the last couple decades. He also comments on the alarming rise of the “Nazi-curious” AfD party, which was endorsed by Elon Musk and made significant gains in the election, winning the second-most votes. “The AfD is a party that is definitely part of the extreme right in Germany,” Bebnowski says.


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.


  • This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

  • During his first month in office, President Donald Trump has signed a plethora of executive orders that have proclaimed a dramatic expansion of the powers of the executive branch. In his latest, issued on February 18 and entitled Ensuring Accountability for all Agencies, Trump aims to bring all independent federal regulatory agencies under the direct control of the chief executive. Unsurprisingly…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • As Germany heads toward a snap election for its Lower House of Parliament on February 23, signs dotting the nation’s cities ask voters: Is your rent too high? The red and white placards belonging to Die Linke, Germany’s Left Party, speak to how a worsening housing crisis has become a battlefield in German and European politics. It is an issue politicians must meet with meaningful solutions or risk…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Fears that the United States is in the midst of a constitutional crisis — or something significantly worse — intensified Saturday after President Donald Trump wrote in a social media post that “he who saves his country does not violate any law,” a variation of a quote attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte. Trump’s post on X — the platform owned by billionaire shadow government leader Elon Musk…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Is Trump embracing the authoritarian playbook of far-right Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán? Princeton professor Kim Lane Scheppele walks us through Orbán’s sudden rise to power and how the Trump administration’s recent actions appear to follow his anti-democratic “blueprint,” with Trump “echoing a lot of Orbán’s rhetoric,” consolidating power in the executive branch and bypassing federal checks…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.


  • This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by The Intercept.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Billionaire Elon Musk made virtual appearance at a Saturday campaign event for the far-right Alternative for Germany party — known by the initials AfD — ahead of a snap federal election in Germany next month. The campaign appearance comes less than a week after Musk was accused of performing a Nazi salute twice on stage at a post-inauguration celebration for U.S. President Donal Trump.

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

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    PBS: Nazi salutes ‘done in a spirit of irony and exuberance,’ alt-right leader says

    Elon Musk was not the first supporter to celebrate a Trump victory by evoking Nazi Germany (PBS, 11/22/16).

    There’s something about the start of a Trump presidency that makes grown men do strange things, like heiling Hitler.

    Eight years ago, after Trump’s first election, white nationalist Richard Spencer couldn’t resist flashing a Nazi salute as he addressed a rally just blocks from the White House (PBS, 11/22/16).

    This time around, a more prominent Trump supporter gave a Nazi salute in a bigger forum. “I never imagined we would see the day when what appears to be a Heil Hitler salute would be made behind the presidential seal,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler wrote on Twitter/X (1/20/25).

    Nadler was referring to Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and Trump’s major patron. Having spent over $275 million backing Trump, Musk secured a speaking slot at Trump’s Inauguration Day rally at Capital One Arena.

    Addressing the crowd from the same podium Trump would soon speak from, Musk gave a passionate Nazi salute. Then he did it again.

    ‘A Hitler salute is a Hitler salute’

    NYT: Elon Musk Ignites Online Speculation Over the Meaning of a Hand Gesture

    The New York Times (1/20/25) reported “speculation” that Musk had given a Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration.

    The New York Times (1/20/25) described the moment:

    [Musk] grunted and placed his hand to his heart before extending his arm out above his head with his palm facing down. After he turned around, he repeated the motion to those behind him.

    “My heart goes out to you,” Musk then said. “It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured.”

    The Times story was headlined, “Elon Musk Ignites Online Speculation Over the Meaning of a Hand Gesture.”

    But speculation wasn’t needed. “Whoever on a political stage, making a political speech in front of a partly far-right audience, elongates his arm diagonally in the air both forcefully and repeatedly, is making a Hitler salute,” wrote journalist Lenz Jacobsen. His story for the German newspaper Die Zeit (1/21/25) is headlined “A Hitler Salute Is a Hitler Salute Is a Hitler Salute.”

    NYU history professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat was no less certain. “That was a Nazi salute—and a very belligerent one too,” she wrote on X (1/20/25).

    Ben-Ghiat was commenting on a widely shared video posted by PBS’s NewsHour, which reported that “Musk gave what appeared to be a fascist salute.”

    In a sign of the dangers that lie ahead for media, particularly public media, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene gave Musk a pass for his racist salute, and instead took aim at PBS for posting video of it. Greene wrote on X (1/20/25):

    I look forward to PBS NewsHour coming before my committee and explaining why lying and spreading propaganda to serve the Democrat party and attack Republicans is a good use of taxpayer funds.

    We will be in touch soon.

    Meanwhile, the axe has already fallen on a Milwaukee meteorologist. CBS 58—whose call letters, coincidentally, are WDJT—dropped Sam Kuffel the day after she posted about Musk’s salute on her personal Instagram account (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 1/22/25). Over a picture of Musk, Kuffel’s post read: “Dude Nazi saluted twice. TWICE. During the inauguration.”

    ‘The actual truth’

    Twitter: Jewish communties have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them. Elon Musk: You have said the absolute truth.

    The idea that “Western Jewish populations” are “pushing…dialectical hatred of whites” is at the core of Nazi ideology. Musk declared it “the actual truth” (X, 11/15/23).

    Reared in apartheid South Africa, Musk is no stranger to extremism. Like many on the far right, a favorite target of Musk’s is George Soros, the Jewish billionaire who funds lefty candidates and causes.

    As Israeli newspaper Haaretz (1/20/25) reported:

    Much of Musk’s criticism centers around Soros’ supposed role in the racist “great replacement theory,” whose proponents allege that Soros is funding waves of immigration that are meant to deliberately dilute the white population in order to reshape society and its politics. This conspiracy has been cited by white nationalists who have perpetrated deadly attacks in Charlottesville, Pittsburgh, El Paso and Buffalo.

    Soros is bent on “destroying Western civilization,” says Musk, who after making his Nazi salute thanked Trump’s supporters for assuring “the future of civilization.”

    Musk has endorsed explicitly antisemitic conspiracy theories. He responded “You have said the actual truth” (X, 11/15/23) to a user who posted:

    Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them. I’m deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about Western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that [they] support flooding their country don’t exactly like them too much.

    Trump, of course, is also fluent in far-right ideology. His first wife, Ivana, said Trump kept a book of Hitler’s speeches near his bed (ABC, 12/20/23). As president, after white nationalists romped through Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us” in 2017, Trump famously said that some of them were “very fine people.”

    And Musk isn’t just backing Trump; he’s also voiced support for far right candidates in Europe. “He has made recent statements in support of Germany’s far-right AfD party and British anti-immigration party Reform UK,” reported the BBC (1/21/25), which noted Musk’s “politics have increasingly shifted to the right.”

    ‘Musk stirs controversy’

    WaPo: The missing context from the Elon Musk salute

    Megan McArdle (Washington Post, 1/21/25) argues that democracy requires us to pretend that those who openly promote Nazi ideology are not actually doing so.

    The only word my wife could utter as she handed me her phone Monday night was “watch.” And we did. Again and again, with our stomachs in knots.

    My only comfort was knowing that Musk would be excoriated in the coming news cycle. But when I searched our hometown newspaper, the Washington Post, all I saw was a headline that read, “Elon Musk Gives Exuberant Speech at Inauguration.”

    The post consisted of a one-minute video of Musk’s “high-energy speech,” and left out the jaw-dropping part: Musk, head on, eagerly giving a Nazi salute for all the world to see. The Post video only showed Musk’s second, comparatively lackluster salute, with his back to the cameras.

    By late Tuesday morning, the Post had uploaded a new video that included a straight-on shot of Musk’s first salute, but under the anodyne headline: “Elon Musk Stirs Controversy Over Hand Gesture at Trump Rally.”

    By Tuesday night, the Post had finally published its own story, as well as republished an AP story. The latter began:

    Right-wing extremists are celebrating Elon Musk’s straight-arm gesture during a speech Monday, although his intention wasn’t totally clear.

    Meanwhile, Post columnist Megan McArdle claimed Musk’s salute may have been nothing more than “an awkward attempt to embody what he said next: ‘My heart goes out to you.’” In her column—headlined “The Missing Context From the Elon Musk Salute” (1/21/25)—McArdle wrote that Musk “made other awkward gestures” in his speech:

    That may just be how he moves when he’s excited. Musk has said he is mildly autistic, and even high-functioning autistic people struggle with reading, and sending, accurate social cues.

    A mogul with prime seating

    Donald Trump as photographed by Jeff Bezos.

    Jeff Bezos (X, 1/20/25) posted this close-quarters view of Donald Trump’s inauguration, declaring himself “excited to collaborate.”

    For the Post, its weak coverage of Musk’s salute comes at a time when the paper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, has been busy supplicating himself before Trump (FAIR.org, 1/22/25).

    Just ahead of the election, Bezos personally killed the Post’s endorsement of Trump’s opponent, Kamala Harris (FAIR.org, 10/30/24). Since Trump’s win, Bezos and the company he founded, Amazon, have lavished Trump and his family with millions of dollars. And the Post recently spiked a drawing by Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes, which depicted Bezos and other tech billionaires groveling before Trump (FAIR.org, 1/7/25).

    That groveling is what enabled Bezos to view Trump’s inauguration up close. “Donald Trump did everything but invite the tech moguls to join him in taking the oath,” wrote the Post’s Ruth Marcus (1/20/25):

    The scene—moguls with prime dais seating inside the cozy Rotunda, while lawmakers and governors and other luminaries were relegated to watching on screens—could not have been more revealing.

    Amid Bezos’s politicking, the Post is in freefall, hemorrhaging talent and readers—yet another gift to Trump.

    ‘Pure propaganda’

    Zeit: A Hitler salute is a Hitler salute is a Hitler salute

    Zeit Online (1/21/25) masked an image of Musk’s gesture in deference to Germany’s anti-Nazi laws.

    Musk, notably, hasn’t denied that he made a Nazi salute. Instead, he’s lashed out on X (1/21/25, 1/22/25), the platform he owns, blaming the “pure propaganda” media and “radical leftists” for stirring up controversy. Musk also wrote on X (1/20/25) that “the ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.”

    But as Vanity Fair’s Kase Wickman (1/21/25) noted, “people weren’t calling him Hitler”:

    They were saying that he made a gesture that people who really dig Hitler typically make. It would be very easy to just plainly say that that wasn’t the intention, but Musk just let that pass.

    Still, Musk has defenders, most notably Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu (X, 1/23/25) and the Anti-Defamation League. The latter claimed Musk “made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute.” Let’s all “take a breath,” the ADL posted on X (1/20/25).

    Despite billing itself as a defender of civil rights and the final arbiter on antisemitism, the ADL has long prioritized its right-wing agenda above all (In These Times, 7/21/20).

    With its defense of Musk, “ADL opted to gaslight,” Haaretz’s Ben Samuels wrote on X (1/21/25). Samuels’ recent story (1/21/25) is headlined “Musk’s ‘Fascist Salute’: US Jewish Establishment Failed Its First Test With Trump 2.0.”

    Much of US corporate media also failed that first test.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.