The whole Nazi salute thing was kind of debunked, meaning, first, that what people thought they saw didn’t line up with what he actually meant, and second, that a lot of the footage made the gesture look worse than it was. I’m not saying it wasn’t careless or that people shouldn’t be upset, just that we can’t really decide what someone’s intent was for them. Something worth pointing out (which not many seem to mention) is that the actual salute, historically, involved the arm being stretched forward, not out to the side like in that photo of him.

My way of looking at things is to break them down carefully and try to be constructive, which is why, when someone brought up that he’d also shared antisemitic conspiracy stuff, I did criticize him then instead of brushing it off the same way. It kind of reminds me of when I was a kid and Pokémon had to change Registeel’s sprite because the original pose accidentally looked like a Nazi salute. Obviously that one was almost definitely unintentional, but honestly, it looked more like the salute than Musk’s did, and of course, the internet turned it into a meme fest. Musk’s gesture, while it could arguably be interpreted that way (and maybe we’ll learn more about what he meant), still looked more like something out of a Team Rocket pose.