Fascist -Adjacent, At a Minimum

Scott Adams, a Trump supporter and creator of Dilbert, evidently believes Donald Trump is a moron.

You need to be a complete moron to believe Musk gave a Hitler salute. https://t.co/SAb8e6qmy1

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) March 14, 2025

If you have to be a complete moron to believe that Elon Musk knew he was giving a Nazi salute, those (and there are many) who have labeled Musk a "genius" apparently are morons.

"You have to give [@ElonMusk] credit," President Trump tells @JoeSquawk. "He's one of our great geniuses, and we have to protect our genius."

"He's going to be building a very big plant in the United States. He has to, because we help him, so he has to help us." pic.twitter.com/WIlBJS0saE

— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) January 22, 2020

However, it isn't only Donald Trump who has pegged Musk as a "genius."  There are many others, including a Jeannine Mancini, who interviewed Elon's mother, Maye Musk. in 2021 and on the day after the last presidential election gushed

 "At 3, I knew he was a genius," she said, quickly adding that it didn't automatically mean he'd succeed. "You still don't know if he's going to do great things because many geniuses end up in a basement being a genius but not applying it."

Picture it: a young Elon, just a few years old, with a mind that was already racing. But Maye, like any mother, had a practical side. Sure, she knew her son was special, but the thought crossed her mind – what if he ended up as a recluse, tinkering away in some basement? It's a funny image now, considering that potential "basement genius" has morphed into a multibillionaire who, quite literally, aims for the stars.

Maye watched Elon's mind start taking on big problems at an early age. "I was so excited when he started Zip2 because it just made life easier with door-to-door directions and then newspapers could have a link that took you to a restaurant," she explained. That sounds routine now, but back then, Maye noted, "People didn't believe that that's possible and so that's why I invested in that at the very beginning." She saw what others couldn't yet see – a digital world that Elon would help shape.

But Elon wasn't the type to stop at one venture. According to Maye, it was almost like he couldn't help himself. "And then, of course, he thought the banking system needed some help, so then he did PayPal," she said.

It's classic Elon – spotting inefficiencies and jumping in to solve them. She even tried to rein him in a little when he started eyeing even bigger ambitions: "I said just choose one and of course, he didn't listen to me." And thank goodness he didn't. Where would we be if Elon Musk had picked just one? No electric cars, no private rockets, no flamethrowers, for that matter.

Fast-forward to now and Elon's relentless ambition hasn't just made him successful; it's made him the richest person on the planet. With a net worth of $263 billion, he's crossed financial milestones in almost incomprehensible ways. In October alone, his wealth reportedly surged by $34 billion in a single day due to a spike in Tesla's stock – a figure most people can't imagine.

Maye's early fears of a basement-bound genius were more than unfounded; they now feel almost comical. Instead of hiding away, Elon Musk transformed his genius into groundbreaking companies that have changed entire industries.

Sure, Mancini is the journalistic equivalent of a groupie but that's how Musk was viewed until he recently emerged as a co-president, a formidable foe of democracy and the national interest. He is smart enough to have become the richest person ever and was a "genius" until.....

                

 

Musk was criticized by many, yet had his supporters, including influential right-wing podcasters such as Charlie Kirk, who tweeted "Elon Musk says his heart goes out to the patriots in Capital One Arena, so he pounds his chest and waves at the crowd."  In a slight twist, Dave Rubin X'ed  argued "humor is the fascist way to defeat these people!" with Musk tweeting in response "they can't stand being mocked."   

Meaning well unlike Musk's other defenders, the Anti-Defamation League characterized it as "an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm."  

Having escaped backlash over the Nazi salute with only minimal damage, on March 14 Musk

shared a post written by an X user about the actions of three 20th century dictators — then quickly deleted it after it sparked a backlash.

The post falsely claimed that Joseph Stalin, the communist leader of the Soviet Union until 1953; Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi party in Germany; and Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic of China, didn’t cause the deaths of millions of people under their watch. Instead, the post said, their public sector workers did.

Mr. Musk shared the post without any other comment. He removed it soon after users on X criticized the post, saying it was antisemitic and dismissive of genocide. Historians have widely chronicled that millions of people died under Stalin, that millions of Jews were massacred under Hitler during the Holocaust, and that millions of Chinese were displaced or killed during Mao’s cultural revolution.

It was the latest post by Mr. Musk to devolve into controversy. In 2023, Mr. Musk endorsed an antisemitic post on X as “the actual truth” of what Jewish people were doing, prompting advertisers to flee.

So maybe mother knows best, and her son is a genius. Smart enough to know that the shout out to Hitler was only a minor speed bump, which did not block him from assuming even more power in the Trump Administration. Smart enough to remind his influential far-right tech bros that he's still out there pushing a fascist line, then sufficiently wise to back off by deleting the extremist tweet.

There being a First Amendment, Elon Musk is entitled to his sentiments and to expression of them. However, those sentiments are especially dangerous in context of Putin's war against  Ukraine ,supported by the Trump-Musk regime, which Putin envisions as a prelude to expansion against Poland or Lithuania.   in which the Trump-Musk regime obviously supports Russia  After meeting with Adolf Hitler in March of 1941, General Governor Hans Frank wrote

"The Führer is determined to make this country a purely German country within 15-20 years. From now on, the term "seat of the Polish people" will no longer be used to refer to the GG and adjacent areas [...] The General Government is to become the German zone in the future. In the place inhabited today by over 12 million Poles, 4-5 million will live in the future. The General Government is to be a country as German as the Rhineland."

From the beginning of the occupation, various places of imprisonment, police jails, judicial prisons, transit camps, labor camps, reeducation camps, penal camps and, above all, concentration camps played an important role in the process of the systematic extermination of the Poles, the weakening of their intellectual potential, and the imposition of unquestioning obedience.

Maya Angelou is believed to have been the person who first stated "when someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time." Elon Musk has told us, and no excuses should be made for him.

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