put on fedora hat

I see what you did there

You have a point in that, in the general case, accuracy and evidence is good.

In this specific case, I think it’s obviously a nazi salute and whether that is “just to trigger the libs” or not in the heart of Musk simply does not matter.

Making a nazi salute several times while on scene for an extreme right party isn’t regular stupidity. We don’t need different boxes for “consistent supporter in word and action of extreme right wing white power etc things who likes using nazi imagery and dogwhistles, but who possibly wouldn’t really call themselves a nazi” and “actually technically subscribes to the entirety legacy nazi party’s old agenda”. They both fit in the nazi box

Everyone is a bit lost at first… That’s the fiest step to becoming an expert.

Great that you’re trying to learn something new!

There are people who realised musk is awful many years ago, and there are people who will keep cheering even if there are tesla branded concentration camps, and people all along the gradient between.

The reason it’s useful to call out the apparent nazi salute is that some additional people might now notice that perhaps that musk guy isn’t great. They didn’t notice the twitter stuff, or the trump support or all the other things, but this is pretty obvious.

The idea that we should just go “well, we already knew he was a nazi supporter, no need to comment when he does an apparent nazi salute on the inauguration of the president he bought” is pretty silly

That might be too narrow of a definition though. There may be self-identifying neo-nazis who don’t fit that. There were probably nazi party members who didn’t fit that, during the war.

There’s also no level of nuance that will impress the musk/trump supporters… they’ll consider “the libs” to be overreacting if someone said it was a gesture in slightly bad taste.

I think it’s fine to consider a fascist who does nazi salutes a nazi

It’s not a very interesting hair to split unless you’re perfectly fine with fascists who do nazi salutes but draw the line at people who identify as nazi

This is overly charitable given his strong and consistent support of the extreme right

Failing to see it is dangerously naive at best

It is up to you though. I get that you can make the choice that supporting zuck and musk is an OK price to pay to not have to do a little more work or be the annoying person saying “I only have Signal” but it is very much your choice. You could choose differently, if your priorities were different

You can of course, you’re just chosing to support zuck, musk and durov because it’s slightly inconvenient for you not to

Of those three, telegram isn’t as bad though. They’re insecure and share data with law enforcement etc, but they’re not as active and enthusiastic collaborators with Trump

It’s what the nazis did against the resistance so it makes sense…

This is a great time to take stock of which of your news sources, friends or family can’t be trusted

… they said while supporting more genocide

You fucked up, regardless of what you tell yourself now