Elon Musk & Weird Roman Gestures

In which my observation of the behavior of Elon Musk sets off a firestorm.

I am very new to Substack. I love what I read on the platform, but my contribution is new and minimal. Just little essays that are funny and sometimes sad. For me, Substack is where I can jot down my thoughts on something random, like my total ignorance of the importance of flint or the heartbreak of learning that someone I care about has been diagnosed with dementia. I have spent the past eight years writing and creating content about the Holocaust. Sometimes, a girl needs a break.

All of this is to say that what I am about to say next is way out of what I intend for my Substack. Yet, I think I need to address it.

I expressed myself on Facebook about Elon Musk and made it public because I figured four or five FB friends would want to share it. But that’s not what happened. Thousands of people shared it. And thousands. Journalists began calling me. I was and still am absolutely gobsmacked because that was not my intention. I don’t like to be in the middle of a shit show. Yet here I am.

You like me, you really like me!

Elon strikes me as the kid nobody liked then, and everybody likes now. And he’s loving the attention. Rolling Stone covered the (extreme) right-wing, white supremacist reaction to Musk’s “Roman salute,” and this underscores my point. Musk is reckless, and that causes harm. This should not be a controversial statement.

But let’s focus on the most important person in this conversation - see the good-looking guy in the picture below? That handsome devil and rascal extraordinaire? Yeah. That’s Gidon Lev. And he’s my boyfriend. (Some people think we are married, and we sometimes refer to ourselves as husband and wife, but the truth is, we are two renegades in love!) Gidon is also a survivor of the Holocaust. You can learn more about him here. You might have seen Gidon on TikTok or Instagram.

Last week, I was having an ordinary day when I checked my LinkedIn and saw that a prominent rabbi I know had posted that people were overreacting to the weird gesture Musk made. You know what I am talking about. The “Roman salute.” The rabbi was pretty vehement in his objections. I was taken aback.

As proof that people were overreacting, the rabbi posted a photo of Musk at Auschwitz taken in January 2024. In the image are the rabbi, Musk, and my beloved Gidon. I’m standing blessedly out of sight, shivering in the freezing cold. To be clear - Gidon was the only Holocaust survivor at this “delegation,” this special event. There was no way to miss him.

This photo, the rabbi said, should prove to us all that Musk is not antisemitic.

Prominent people in the media “on the right” (are these distinctions even helpful anymore?) are howling to the moon that people have lost their minds and are so ignorant that they compare everybody to Hitler and have become hysterical. Would an antisemite visit Israel? Would an antisemite visit Auschwitz?! Of course not! This, folks, is some serious bait-n-switch gaslighting or perhaps - but I doubt it - simply not getting it.

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It matters not whether Musk had an ideological motive for his Nazi salute but his intention as a free speech absolutist was to enable the use of Nazi symbols to enter normative political space, up to and including the gala event prior to the US presidential inauguration.

In that, he succeeded. Having let him get away with it and even praising him, it was clear as day he would go to the next stage. Now, he jokes freely about the Holocaust.

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After four years of creating content on TikTok about Holocaust education and amassing half a million followers, I know from antisemites.

I am horribly familiar with the whole awful Venn diagram of Holocaust deniers, conspiracy theorists, and white supremacists. After October 7th, I was introduced to the newest form of Jew hatred, the antizionists. I have received so many hate-filled, threatening, ugly, Jew-hating comments in the past four years that I began to screenshot and submit them to a study at Hebrew University. The study, incidentally, won the Shimon Peres Award. For me, being a small part of that felt empowering, though it will never erase comments like “You lie, you old Jew!” Someone actually left that comment for Gidon to see. I made it my life’s mission for Gidon never to see such a thing, and therefore, I absorbed, was traumatized by, then deleted, and blocked all messages like that - to the extent that I could keep up with it. Gidon and I have a lot to say about TikTok and their “community guidelines,” FYI.

I can’t put too fine a point on this - I don’t think Musk is an antisemite.

But Musk has done some pretty dubious things. His support of the AFD, for example. His use of the Pepe the Frog meme. His “this is the actual truth” tweet. But I don’t think he hates Jews. He loves attention. And he loves to troll. Look what he posted yesterday in response to the uproar of his “weird gesture.”

Elon loves the attention surrounding this. He has many outspoken, virulently antisemitic pals/adherents/fans/followers who find validation in what Musk says and does. And his behavior - his “Roman salute” has already become a meme.

A friend of mine, studying for his ph.d in Europe, told me that in his language class, the teacher raised her hand in the “Roman salute,” imitating Elon, and saying something along the lines of “Oh no! Don’t do that!” The classroom erupted in laughter, and several students followed suit by also doing the Nazi salute - en masse. In a social media video apparently created in Germany, a man asks his dog to perform several commands and then to raise his paw. The dog does. Nein, nein, not that one! Insert laugh track.

Eighty years after the liberation of Auschwitz, Elon Musk, whether he was trolling or performing a dog whistle for his followers, or literally is this unaware, has now made the Nazi salute a joke.

Incidentally, I’m glad the ADL has finally come to its senses and condemned the puns that followed on X, though I must admit to being more than a little disillusioned that they initially defended Musk’s “weird gesture.”

It is frightening that the wealthiest man in the world, who has the maturity of an 8th grader, now has an office in the White House and has re-popularized the Nazi salute.

And yeah, Musk was rude to my Gidon. My darling Gidon. Who had sworn never, ever to set foot in Auschwitz, much less Poland, because his father died on a death march out of Auschwitz and numerous other relatives were murdered in Poland.

(left to right: Gidon’s great-grandmother, Rosa. Murdered in Treblinka. Gidon’s grandfather, Fritz. Murdered in the Warsaw ghetto. Gidon’s mother Doris. Survived. Gidon’s father, Ernst. Murdered in Auschwitz.)

Gidons father was only 45 when he died. We discovered at Yad Vashem that he had been issued transportation papers from Auschwitz to Buchenwald in early January 1945. But he never arrived. Gidon will never know whether his father was shot on the side of the road or whether he collapsed from cold and malnutrition. Gidon doesn’t know where his father’s remains are, and he never will. Multiply this experience in the millions.

“Bet you did nazi that coming.” Elon Musk

I feel guilty because I encouraged Gidon to attend the private tour with Elon Musk. He really didn’t want to go, and it was a freezing cold January. But I thought - wow, this is Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest, most influential man. Yes, I already knew that he was problematic, as the kids say, but I actually fell for the idea that being at Auschwitz would, in some way, move Elon. So we went. I thought that surely, when Elon met Gidon, he would be touched. He wasn’t. No need to go over that again here.

Steve Schmidt wrote more powerfully about the Auschwitz visit and Elon than I ever could. But reader, I have one advantage: I was there.

To me, naturally, the greatest offense during that visit was that Musk did not express interest in or respect for Gidon outside of polite greetings. He had no idea who Gidon was or how hard it was for him to be there. No, Musk did not plan or organize this event, and it wasn’t his fault that Gidon was overlooked when it came time to lay the wreaths. That’s not his responsibility or fault.

But as Gidon and I stood in the freezing cold looking for a rock to lay down since we had no wreath, Musk et al. briskly walked away toward the next stop in the tour. Gidon and I said kaddish for his father and the six million and tried to catch up again, but we were too far behind. Gidon doesn’t move so fast these days.

Being dismissive of Gidon, or not really seeing him - is bad behavior. But big picture, it’s just a tiny window into Elon’s putative soul. Maybe Elon did not see Gidon, but we saw him. And what we saw was him checking an errand off his list:

“Went to Auschwitz. Placated Jews.”

Like so many of us, I find Musk repugnant. He’s immature, unpleasant, reckless, and frighteningly close to real power. Full stop; this is terrifying. If you are defending Elon Musk right now, you might want to have a think.

At the risk of being repetitive, it all goes back to my beloved Gidon. The little boy who lost his papa (and grandpa, and grandma and 26 family members.) If Gidon was not the focus or focal point of this important “delegation” with Musk at Auschwitz in January 2024 - who are we doing Holocaust remembrance for? Yes, I understand we are looking to the future. Yet much is made about how few Holocaust survivors are still living. But how much did this delegation really care about the solitary Holocaust survivor who accompanied them there, to the site of his father’s brutal death? I know Musk didn’t care - and I don’t care that he didn’t care. He’s incapable of caring. But for those defending him and using that visit as your leverage, or evidence - friends, we have lost our way. We owe it to the six million to do better.