Arm, Presented

There have been a lot of pictures of Elon Musk and his stiff-armed salute at the inauguration floating around. Like this one that I encountered on LinkedIn:

What I would like to know, to be honest, is what's up with that face he's making?

Each photograph, it seems come with a different take on whether or not Mr. Musk was or was not making the Nazi salute (I find the idea that he was making a supposedly Roman-inspired Fascist salute to not be much better), or if Mr. Musk is or is not a (wannabe) Nazi.

And I think that is, basically the point. The ambiguity of the Musk salute is a feature, not a bug. It allows him to speak to two different groups of people, who may not themselves get along, and each can see in his actions what, and who, they want to.

For starters, let's face it, there are still Segregationists and other forms of White Supremacists in the United States today. There were a good number of them when the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s were passed, not all of them have died and some of them have passed their beliefs on to their children and/or other people younger (Or maybe older, who knows?) than themselves. And it's a safe bet that some percentage of these people would happily, if privately, call themselves Nazis, neo-Nazis or Nazi sympathizers. Just because a movement winds up being history's villains doesn't mean that everyone thinks that they were wrong. And regardless of what one thinks of such people, their votes still count as much as everyone else's, and accordingly, they can still swing elections. And this means that people, like Donald Trump, will court them. And when Elon Musk gives what can be plausibly described as a Nazi (or even a Fascist) salute, they feel valued. And may even feel buoyed that Mr. Musk is owning some Libs and/or Jews.

As an aside, while this is what's sometimes referred to as a "dog whistle," that's a misnomer, because, as seen in the photographs, it's being done out in the open. Dog whistles, more properly, are almost a form of Cant, where "if you know, you know," and if one doesn't know, one doesn't suspect. A genuine dog whistle is insider-speak that comes across as innocuous to the uninitiated.

But there are also people who want and/or need something from the Trump Administration and Mr. Musk, who would really rather not be associated with anything Nazi. (The Nazis are, after all, some of history's biggest villains.) For them, the ambiguity of the situation allows them to keep their hands clean. They're not supporting a Nazi, because Mr. Must isn't a Nazi. He even said so. It was just some ancient Roman thing... everyone's blowing this all out of proportion. So they can continue to support the cause, without having to admit that they're backing the Bad Guys.

This works because the United States has an aspect of what one might call Confessional Culture to it, where things become "real" only when they are admitted to. So as long as Mr. Musk doesn't confess to being a would-be Nazi, he isn't. Now there might come a time when the label is forced in him whether he wants it or not, but that time hasn't come yet.

And a good portion of American politics works on just this sort of ambiguity. It's part of the reason why social trust is so low, especially between different political groups; hiding dishonesty in ambiguity is such a commonplace activity that most people simple assume that anyone they don't like who does anything slightly unclear is up to something malign.