Musk quickly thanked the Israeli prime minister for his support.
The Tesla and SpaceX chief sparked a firestorm of controversy Monday by giving a stiff-armed, flat-palmed gesture to a crowd at a rally following U.S. President Donald Trump’s inauguration. The gesture resembled the Roman salute which was appropriated by European fascists including Nazi führer Adolf Hitler and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in the first half of the 20th century.
Musk’s gesture went viral, and critics around the world lambasted the man who has recently become one of Trump’s most prominent advisers.
The billionaire sparked outrage in November 2023 when he publicly agreed with an antisemitic tweet claiming that Jewish communities have been “pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.”
Musk has also faced widespread criticism that he has allowed hate speech against various minority groups to run wild on X since he purchased the social media platform in 2022.
