>and it's going to be fucking awful.

Which it isn't already.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAG0dC8l3SU

I could have sworn that ten years ago, governments got really concerned about people buying political influence and tried to stop it happening. Perhaps the governments of at least three different countries just can't afford to do that any more.

Why are you crying, you wished for twitter to go under and here we are.

>>100885
This stuff has advanced really fast over a couple years.

>>100886

> Perhaps the governments of at least three different countries just can't afford to do that any more.

Politics has just become too intertwined with the media and other industrial complexes. It's not that there haven't been instances in the past where there was a concerning lack of distance between elected leaders and people of industry. But we're seeing a trend in the last one or two decades of major governments of the civilised Western world giving up all pretence of separation between them and the wealthy elite. It shouldn't really be a shock to anybody that somebody like Trump is now taking that to extremes, by essentially making his incoming administration a loyalist billionaire's club.

But pendulums always swing both ways. It could well be that a critical mass of Americans will grow so disgusted with the way the new Trump administration will be hollowing out their democracy that there is going to be a great backlash in the end. And maybe as a result of the shambles his Presidency will leave behind, there will be safeguards put in place to ensure something like it won't happen again.

That, or Trump succeeds at completely turning the U.S. into an autocratic regime, where power is passed on not through elections, but through favouritism or bloodline. Evidently there were enough thick as fuck American voters who were willing to give Trump a landslide victory in this election, after all that happened during his first term. Many would probably be ok with him becoming Supreme Leader until his deathbed.

>>100887

>This stuff has advanced really fast over a couple years.

The engines that let you do this online for free are still a bit shit.

Without some more advanced software that's often not cheap, you'll have trouble generating something like the Will Smith video.

I don't think I've said this in any of the other Elon Musk threads, but I want to make my prediction before it is revealed to be true:

He's going like Charlie Sheen. He's lost his mind, but he's so rich that nobody is willing to section him and lock him away. He's going to scream about tiger blood and WINNING for a few more months, then suddenly he will just disappear. I don't actually know what happened to Charlie Sheen so I can't predict what happens next.

>>100891
I can see the parallels. However, Charlie Sheen was a washed up actor-cum-cokehead, whereas Musk's the richest man on Earth, has the ear of the most powerful man on Earth and has trenches of insecurity that run so deep YouTube's been recommending me videos whose titles suggest he's been lying about how good he is at video games. Embarrassing enough for a fifty-something father of several, even discounting all the other factors that should be put him above actions unbecoming of a thirteen year old.

>>10089

I think that that level of wealth probably makes you feel like you are completely untouchable. It can give you a God complex. And acquiring twitter was probably what made it even worse, as he now has quite far-reaching control over one of the world's biggest and most impactful media services. And the fact that he now meddles with other countries' politics and went even as far as asking Keir Starmer to resign or supporting Germany's far-right party only fits that picture. And there isn't much that countries like ours can do about it.

But that's not really because there literally isn't anything anybody can do about it. It's just that somebody like Musk is without precedent. There are no laws against him because there never had to be any laws to protect us against that kind of thing before.

Then again, short of blocking access to X altogether at country level, I doubt that those laws would make any difference. We certainly won't see the U.S., much less under Trump, passing any laws to rein in his influence. And the UK or other countries like Germany could fine X for aiding foreign political interference, but Musk will write off those fines in no time and see it simply as the cost of doing business.

>>100894
>whose titles suggest he's been lying about how good he is at video games.
I watched one of them, for my sins, and it's pretty obvious he barely plays it.

>>100894

Also he's shagging the Prime Minister of Italy.

>>100895

It's worth reflecting on just how rich Musk is. He could buy Rupert Murdoch twenty times over. He's twice as rich as all of Britain's billionaires combined. He has more wealth than Qatar.

>>100896

I noticed a few people on twitter saying things like "wow, if any DEFINITIVE proof comes out that he lied about this, I might have to change my mind about him!"

I watched one of those videos too, I think even if you only had a passing cultural knowledge of games, or technology in general, you'd know that a greyed out map icon means you can't click on it. The other stuff is more game mechanic specific but still.

>>100898

Never mind all the awkward piloting and incredibly obvious stuff he should have known but clearly didn't - the amount of time it takes to grind 12 characters to that level is a full-time job itself. Whatever else he does with his time, his life is obviously not dedicated to the game, so it's not him playing.

Thing is Musk might be the world's richest man, but that doesn't necessarily make him a part of the true elites, he doesn't come from the right background and no matter how much money you have some doors remain closed to you even still. I think that is on some level what allows him to maintain this cult of personality status. Normal people can sense that, even if he is oscenely wealthy and categorically is not on their side or part of their class, he can short circuit those cultural signifiers.

The other half of this is that he's an idiot- Anyone else in his position would have don't everything they can to try and wedge their foot in the door, but Musk remains an outsider because he doesn't know how. He thinks he's a disruptive force, some rogue agent who's going to blow the whole house of cards down and be a premier in the new order; but he's not, he's someone who's on the blacklist from all the very exclusive clubs and influential societies and so on.

Trump is a pawn who thinks he's the mastermind, Elon isn't even that, he's some kind of sperg with a set of special interests that just so happened to make him very very wealthy. He's no idea what to do about it. Where does he go after the Charlie Sheen melt down? Well, for my money he'll be dead within a decade.

>>100904
>Elon is some kind of sperg with a set of special interests that just so happened to make him very very wealthy. He's no idea what to do about it.
Does anyone who isn't already old money?

>>100904

I think you're severely underestimating Musk. I'll say it again for emphasis - he is richer than Qatar. If he was so inclined, he could buy every newspaper and commercial broadcaster in the Western world, but he's already shown that he doesn't need to do that in order to dictate the news agenda. Musk doesn't care about status, he cares about power; those who believe themselves to be part of a "true elite" may be unpleasantly surprised by how little protection that status affords them when Western businesspeople and politicians start falling out of windows.

>>100907

Nah. I think you both overestimate him, and misunderstand how power actually works. Money is only one half of the equation, knowing what to do with it is the other half. Add into that that he's the type of new money who are only rich in theory by the valuation of his businesses, if people turn against Musk™️ as a brand he'd be a pauper again within the week. He had to do some serious financial gymnastics to come up with the cash to buy Twitter.

Compare and contrast him with somebody like Rupert Murdoch, who has been mentioned in this thread already, and he's a complete amateur. That's a man who understands how the game is played and has been quietly setting the worlds agenda for decades; Musk has never achieved anything of the sort. If anything he's achieved the opposite- He's made a lot of loud noise and stood on a lot of toes, he's got governments considering regulations that would never even have occurred to them as necessary if he could have just kept his trap shut and stayed in the background.

And I don't know if you missed it but my implication at the end there was that Musk will be one of the people falling out of a window.

>>100907
He can’t necessarily spend this money you say he has. He could buy every privately-owned media outlet if he wanted (still not the BBC or any foreign equivalents like ZDF), but he would have to buy them one at a time. His wealth is the cash value of all the shares he owns in his companies. If he suddenly sold every Tesla share he owns, they wouldn’t all sell for the current price and he would have less money than Qatar. I don’t know if he would lose so much money that he couldn’t still buy every cash-strapped local newspaper on the planet, but there comes a point where the corporate super-rich don’t actually have access to all of the money they purportedly have.

>>100909
Indeed, and this is where the difference lies with your Bilderburgers and Rockafillas and whatever comes in. They actually have the money, and they control a great amount of everyone else's access to their money.

That's how they get to be in the proper space lizard Illuminati mason club, while guys like Musk are just banging on the door wanting in.

>>100909

You may wish to Google terms like "securities-backed line of credit" and "leveraged buyout". The very wealthy do not spend money in the way that you or I would recognise, because they don't have to. Musk could buy the entire Western media without selling a single share.

>>100911

I don't think that's really how it works. I'm not an expert but as somebody mentioned look at how he had to finance buying Twitter. The access they have to finance is so that they can effectively have zero wealth/income on paper but still get cash for things like buying a new Bentley or an impromptu chartered jet to Barbados. Or in other words it's a tax dodge.

But when it comes to buying out other companies or serious assets, they can't just stick that on the AmEx, because those assets are what the line of credit is secured on, so effectively that'd be an infinite money cheat if they could wouldn't it?

>>100910

>Indeed, and this is where the difference lies with your Bilderburgers and Rockafillas and whatever comes in. They actually have the money, and they control a great amount of everyone else's access to their money.

Liquidity is everything. Wealth on paper is worth almost nothing unless that wealth is fungible, which in the finance world means the ease with which you can transfer it from one asset class to another. It's one reason, but not the all-encompassing reason why the true wealthy elite, most of whom have been wealthy for generations, have their wealth invested in many different asset classes.

If all your wealth is in majority shares of a publicly traded company, then there will never be a time when you will be able to liquidate a significant portion of those shares at market value.

>>100913

This is interesting, I've not actually heard this point being made before. Are there specific asset classes that are especially targeted by "old money"? I imagine land and physical property go a long way, but also things like gold?

Hang on howcome I can't just take out a 500 billion dollar loan and buy BP and Shell and ExxonMobil, then? I'd definitely be good for the repayments because I'd own all the oil companies and instantly be one of the richest people on earth.

Bankers don't want you to know about this one simple trick I suppose.

>>100915

On a long enough timescale, you practically can't go wrong with land and real estate. Eventually, it has always withstood all crises that have ever happened. And many of the Old Money elite especially in Britain have profited immensely from the property boom in the last 20 years or so. I've read that some wealthy landowners, among them a good number of aristocrats, have grown their net worth by 300 to 500 percent just by passively owning the right kinds of properties. Property as such is also relatively fungible. You can't just sell it at a click like your handful of stocks, but by and large you'll always find buyers, with a bit of patience, and at the going market price.

Gold is a bit trickier. For much of its existence, it has just about kept up with inflation. Gold may look expensive nowadays, especially in comparison to price levels of the 1980s and 1990s, but inflation adjusted, it just about breaks even.

But yeah. Land ownership has historically always been a good way to increase your wealth. You can always become a tech bro and build up an insanely valuable company, which is essentially what Musk did. But if, for whatever reason, Tesla ever goes tits up and Musk hasn't cashed out, then he'll end up going back to just being an ordinary, unremarkable billionaire.

>>100917

That's basically the business model of private equity. You're lacking three things - a big lump of capital that the bank can take as security, a proven track record of running big companies and a convincing explanation of how you'll wring enough extra profit out of the business to repay the debt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leveraged_buyout

>>100919
>Leveraged buyout

Ah, yes, that one weird trick whereby you can take control of a company, get it to borrow enough money to buy itself for you, then structure the business to pay you a return while the company struggles under the burden of debt, whereupon it sinks and you don't have to go down with it.

>>100915

All the rennaissance to classical era artwork that was looted from Europe during world war two. Old and one of a kind antiques. Very exclusive jewellery. But yeah, mostly big old houses and flats in London.

Also it's not even remotely conspiratorial to suggest the entire category of abstract "modern art" where it's just splodges on an empty canvas and so on exists as a wealth store and tax fiddle for the ultra rich. NFTs way ahead of their time.

Joe Biden’s farewell address makes reference to Dwight Eisenhower’s warnings about the “military-industrial complex” (warnings which absolutely came true, of course) and warns us now of the similar threats of the “tech industrial complex”. A bit late, perhaps, but it’s nice to know that at least it’s not just us who have noticed it.

>>100923
Read that article by Stewart Lee yesterday about how he's going to switch off from social media. It's nice to see that the old git has finally realised it's poison. The only problem is, many of the great and good of the celebrity Left, including Stephen Fry, a man I much admire, have decided that internet is not going to lead us to an amazing new future but instead will lead us to dystopia. Whereas the nerds of my generation grew up talking about how cool it is, but knew it had problems from the start, hating social media as a result, and are very concerned but notblowing it out of proportion.

I think a lot of celebrity nerds of that generation were in denial for a long time, and now it can't be denied they're freaking out and saying Bezos and Zucky are fascists and Twitter is terrible now. No, Bezos and Zucky are just greedy and Twitter always was shit. Go in knowing that and you won't blow it out of proportion, roll over and accept its shittification as somehow inevitable. Unfortunately I see a lot of them doing that and losing the will to fight. That, and American antifascists can be a pretty performative lot.

>>100939
>Bezos and Zucky are just greedy
You know what the word for Germans who supported the Nazis purely out of economic self-interest is? Nazis, fuckwit.

>>100939
I wouldn't have called you a "fuckwit" myself, but I would emplore you to read Ur-Fascism by Umberto Eco. I'm also suprised to hear Are Stew was on the socials at all, because I distinctly remember him talking about hating Twitter on an episode of RHLSTP. Then again, that was over a decade ago now and I've just turned to dust as I realised that.

>>100923
>A bit late, perhaps, but it’s nice to know that at least it’s not just us who have noticed it.
Honestly I think that's horrible. He was determined to run again, despite having said he wouldn't, despite internal polling by his team being apocalyptically bad and, ignoring even these comments, despite repeatedly saying that this election was of existential importance for America and the world. If he was also aware, insomuch as Biden's "aware" of anything these days, that Earth was going to become Neuromancer-but-even-more-shite, then that's just another example of what an arrogant, careless, bastard he, and his team, are.

>>100946 Thank you for the civil reply. I have in fact been meaning to read that for a while. I apologise if it sounds like an irrelevant distinction but sometimes it is necessary to dissect what is going on in the minds of horrible little bastards like Zuck and Bez in further detail. I could be wrong, they could be Nazis.

>>100941 But on the other hand they could be collaborators. Sadly, not all people who collaborate with an authoritarian regime have the exact same worldview; they can be partially sympathetic, or even not at all; they could be other people under the thumb of the Nazis or your regime of choice acting out of cowardice. Obviously, people who collaborate with Nazis for the sake of greed might have Nazi beliefs. But that's not always the case. Money is in itself a motive, and sometimes politics doesn't even come into it beyond a fear of losing customers who voted them in.

So what do I call people who collaborate with Nazis out of economic self-interest? Nazi scum, but sometimes just scum.

>>100959
To add: look up the collaboration of Polish citizens with Nazis; certain groups on that list contain people are very much not the sort to have Nazi beliefs such as a desire to commit genocide on Jews. Some are just out for survival and self preservation. Different motives for collaboration are very much relevant. I'm not taking part in an exercise in moral distinction, for sure it's irrelevant who is worse. This is about accuracy and predicting what they're gonna do.

>>100959

I concede my 'fuckwit' remark was unjustified.

>>100959
It is always important to remember that an awful lot of people in an awful lot of places collaborated with authoritarian regimes out of a general desire to not die, and they're not to be criticised for that.

>>100966 No biggie.

>>100967

Theoretically, yes, but who is going to make that distinction, if somebody was collaborating to save their own arse, or out of conviction?

After WWII, there was no shortage of former Nazis who said they were only following orders, and of course they were against the regime from the word go, and only went along with it because they had no choice.

What's worrying now in the early stages of Trump 2.0 is that all the Tech Bros and media conglomerates are willfully and voluntarily cosying up to Trump, in a way that is unprecedented and has the potential to completely undermine political dissent. All Musk and Zuckerberg have to do is tweak their algorithms so that liberal and left-wing perspectives are duly suppressed on facebook and X. And Jeff Bezos has already shown what his ownership of the Washington Post means for political bias and free speech. With that much power in the hands of so few, who all lean towards Trump, you practically don't even need any formal Gleichschaltung anymore like under the Nazis. They're willfully doing it themselves. Which may just seem unfortunate for now, but if Trump really goes off the deep end and turns the U.S. into an autocracy, then what do we do.

>>100969
>Theoretically, yes

No, it's very much not "theoretically". It was and still is a very real concern for a significant number of people.

>>100970

> It was and still is a very real concern for a significant number of people.


Yes, but how is it a concern for Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos? Nobody will throw them into a prison dungeon, yet, for opposing Trump's agenda.

https://www.thelocal.at/20250121/austrias-greens-demand-entry-ban-for-elon-musk-over-suspected-nazi-salute

>Austria's Greens demand entry ban for Elon Musk over suspected Nazi salute

>Austria’s Green Party has called for Elon Musk to be banned from entering the country, accusing the billionaire of making a suspected Nazi salute during Donald Trump’s inauguration.

>During US President Trump’s inauguration, Musk was seen raising his right arm twice in a gesture that some interpreted as a Nazi salute. The incident has caused outrage, particularly in Austria, where sensitivity to Nazi symbols is exceptionally high due to its historical context.

Good on them. The entire EU should ban him.

>>100977
>Elon supposed nazi alute
I think it was just a spergy thing he intended as a triumphant gesture like a fist pump, semi-realised it might look dodgey and tried to redirect it to the flag (patriotism), then overcorrects signalling his hand is firmly at his chest, not raised high.
If you really want to analyse the gesture, you can see he's casting something from the heart rather than reaching up to an authority - his arm movement is horizontal (literally over the horizon, like a rocket), not vertical. You can even see in his eye the acknowledgement of a mistake, when he looks to his advisor(s).
Ofcourse the press is going pounce on anything they can, just how Kamala is recieving the same treatment for a similarly unfortunate screengrab.

Mental health awareness, acceptance for odd behaviours and all that.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VfYjPzj1Xw

>>100980

Bollocks. The AfD supporting edgy memer who did the same gesture twice before referencing securing the future of civilisation just did it by accident. You know you're lying, we know you're lying, why bother at this point?

>>100981
>You know you're lying, we know you're lying, why bother at this point?
Mate, I don't give a fuck about it either way. Just throwing in my no-context opinion. On the look of things this is as nazi-adjacent as enthusiastically hailing a bus.

>>100981

Are the ADL lying? If so, why would the world's foremost NGO for combating antisemitism lie to protect a man who they have previously accused of antisemitism?

>>100981
It’s always nice to assume the best about people, but…

>>100980
I am confident he did it on purpose. I don’t think he’s a Nazi; he just has that sort of personality where he really loves triggering the libs and he knows he’s powerful enough to go full 4chan in public. Everything we see of him now matches that assertion, so I see no reason to believe this is any different. He did the Nazi salute on purpose, but he did so ironically, for bantz. That “I am giving my heart to you” comment, or whatever he said, makes me think he planned it, because that’s definitely a lie (when you mime giving someone something, you universally hold your palm facing upwards) and I don’t think he could make up that lie on the spot.

>>100982

If you didn't give a fuck you wouldn't be telling us your opinion.

Ultimately, it's irrelevant why he did it. What matters is that we have a platoon strength group from UKSF to intercept and eliminate Musk at the soonest opportunity.

>>100974 Not that anon, but the difference is a concern for political analysts and, well, most other ordinary people who want to know the ways they're likely to fuck them.

Also, everyone, I have a solution:
1. Let's just agree that he is, at least, a cunt that did something cunty, which is obvious.

2. We laugh at how pathetically edgy he is.
3. We laugh when he inevitably cries about being called a Nazi. He deserves it even if he isn't one because he made people think he was.

Got nothin' else.

>>100989
>3. We laugh when he inevitably cries about being called a Nazi.
He's allegedly pinned the video of him doing it to his twitter profile.

>>100990
Well then, okay, you still have #2. #3 is now that he's an idiot who failed to realise the glaring obvious, and take the piss out of him accordingly

>>100992 I just went there via Nitter for a quick skim and to be honest I can't see it so perhaps that's academic (same guy here as that post).

The question still remains why Musk saw the need to use a hand gesture whose significance and meaning even the spergiest sperg on Earth can't say they've got no clue about. There are loads of ways you can express excitement, however undue that excitement is, but this shouldn't be it, ever.

For some weird reason, it kind of reminded me of that scene from The Wall where Bob Geldof is a fascist.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlWmcli5o2Y

Okay okay so someone just tell me straight. Did he actually deliberately intentionally do a Hitler salute (regardless what guise of being edgy and subversive he thought it was), or was he just raising his arm in a way that can be interpreted as resembling a Hitler salute if you grab the screenshot at just the right moment?

Because I don't find it out of character at all that he would, but at the same time it's not like the internet doesn't have form for just being completely hysterical about this kind of thing. And of course I am completely unwilling to do any research of my own on this matter, so I would like you three to tell me.

>>100995
While we can't perfectly divine anyone's internal processes, he made the motions of a full Nazi salute, twice. It's categorically not just a momentary screenshot thing.

>>100995

It does look quite sieg heilish. Musk says that he was gesturing that his heart goes out to the audience; that claim is made somewhat more credible by the fact that he said "my heart goes out to you" immediately after making the gesture. Frankly, I think it's a bit daft to spend days analysing the body language of a ketamine-addled autistic man who moves like a malfunctioning robot.

>>100996 Lke I said above, he deserves the backlash, but as this dood says >>100997 it would be better if it was less obsessive. I think mockery towards Elon channeling that anger is better. Jeering at him and calling him a fucktard would be funny. Doing a Basil Fawlty salute with a mustache finger and a raspberry would be funny - hell, the Tommies did that to German soldiers captured in the War, at least according to Milligan. Especially as, to continue the theme, Elon looks like Captain Scarlet with Downs.

>>100995

We categorically cannot know, only he knows his intention. However, we *do* know the following, and I think it's damning enough to be taken seriously.

Elon - as per the link at the bottom of this post - has historically made at least one 'Heart goes out to you' gesture before, only this time forming an actual heart with his hands, placing it to his chest, and then moving both arms outwards as he drops the shape. [1]

There's a fraction of a chance that he doesn't know what a Nazi salute looks like, but it's not worth consideration and for the purpose of this argument, his knowledge of the gesture is taken as fact and he perfectly replicates the same motion as Hitler. [2]

Elon is aware of the associations of the gesture he made, and the extreme right/Nazi movement. He has made absolutely no attempt, despite knowing the association between his gesture and the movement. He has also spoken explicitly in favour of the AFD, Germany's far right party who have a history of antisemitism and holocaust denial, and links with Nazism. [3]

I've included links for everything below. If anyone takes a look at all this and still believes this man is not aligning himself with Nazism, then either there is something deeply wrong with my perception of reality, or that person is a fucking moron.

>That claim is made somewhat more credible by the fact that he said "my heart goes out to you" immediately after making the gesture.

What he actually does is make the gesture twice, and then put his hand on his heart and say "My heart goes out to you". There's arguably a separation there, but I wouldn't offer it as evidence considering how it's very possibly an attempt at plausible deniability.

I know that Orwell quote is doing the rounds right now, but...he knows exactly what he did, and he did it on purpose. Whether it was to see if he could get away with it, to court right ring support, or to ascertain the direction in which a man went who is roughly as tall as my upper lip, it doesn't matter - what matters is his reaction now, and it's utterly damning.

He doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt, he's proven that.

[1] This is a gif of Elon making a gesture that would be recognised as giving ones heart out: https://www.rudgwicksteamshow.co.uk.com/r/gifs/comments/1i7u5td/elon_musks_gesture_of_giving_his_heart_out_to_the/

[2] This is a comparison image of Hitler saluting, and Elon saluting. They are essentially identical motions: https://www.rudgwicksteamshow.co.uk.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fva3ul0iaglee1.gif

[3] Links regarding Elon's support for the AFD, and the AFD's stance on holocaust denial and antisemitism:
https://truthout.org/articles/elon-musk-to-host-x-event-promoting-neo-nazi-afd-party-ahead-of-german-elections/
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/25785648.2022.2069337

[Bonus] Elon stating that antisemitic speech is 'the truth': https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-deletes-nazi-apologist-tweet
Elon stating that the episode of Tucker Carlson's show wherein he platformed a holocaust denier to be 'very interesting': https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-deletes-nazi-apologist-tweet

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/elon-musk-donkeys-tesla-german-nazi-b1206723.html

>UK group projects ‘Heil Tesla’ and Elon Musk’s hand gesture onto German factory

>Led By Donkeys teamed up with German activist group Center for Political Beauty to beam the hand gesture onto a Tesla building in Germany.

Mirth.

Also, German authorities are now investigating the incident at the factory on suspicion of "displaying unconstitutional symbols," which is a felony according to the German Penal Code, with the relevant sections expressly stating their applicability to Nazi symbols. If it tracks, then that means Germany will officially recognise Musk's salute as a Nazi gesture.

https://www.threads.net/@trugbild_photography/post/DFL2HZoqlFd

>>101000

That's legally kind of ingenious. If it's not a Nazi salute, presumably the daft bastard won't mind having images of him doing it all over the place.

>>101002

There's a bit more legalese to it. German authorities are arguing that the gesture has been taken out of its original context and put into an obvious National Socialist context, not least because of the word "Heil" appearing next to it, which is what their Penal Code wants to prevent.

Even if they conclude that this violates their sections against displaying illegal symbols, then that doesn't necessarily mean that it's illegal also in its original context.

It's a bit like showing a picture of a swastika as part of Hindu religious imagery, where it was used quite innocently as a symbol of luck and good fortune for centuries. You can probably do that with impunity even under modern German law, but as soon as connotations with Nazism can't be denied from the viewpoint of the average, reasonable observer, then it becomes a felony.

It will probably still do damage to Musk, because what's going to stick is that Germany have branded Musk's salute as a Nazi gesture. And it's not like the Germans can't speak with any authority on the subject.

>>101000
That's great but it also means a group taking the piss out of Elon for his stupidity will be the ones getting in the neck and not him. Because typical police.

>>101005

> but it also means a group taking the piss out of Elon for his stupidity will be the ones getting in the neck and not him. Because typical police.

Probably. Because most police have no concept of satire.

What are you guys talking about? The Germans are notorious for their sense of humour, it'll be fine.

>>101007

Oh, but of course they are.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKpOWj8LkaQ

>>101005

Well I mean in complete fairness, it wasn't Musk that chose to project his Nazi salute onto the side of a building in Germany. He did a Nazi salute in a country where it's not illegal to do a Nazi salute. I don't really see how he is legally culpable for this.

Can we all three at least agree that Elon Musk did a shit edgy fascist salute because he is an autistic edgelord and also a massive fascist?

>>101010

I think that is once again giving him too much credit. If he were fully aware what fascism even is, maybe he would qualify as one, but really I just think he is a bellend with a great deal more money than sense. He's quite literally what happens when the average 00's era /b/tard becomes the world's "richest" man.

>>101011
Aware or not, I fully concur with otherlad that he's still a fascist. Plenty of folk are too daft to fully explain their own politics, but that doesn't change them being a Tory, a libertarian or a social democrat. This rule still applies to a burgeoning Hitlerite who's richer than King Midas.

>>101012
Yeah, this is it. One of my mates pointed out that he's certainly the type to have done something like this exclusively to 'troll the libs', and I agree, but then if you're the type to throw those salutes to piss off the libs, then you're aligning yourself with Nazism to piss off the libs, then you're aligning yourself with Nazism.

It sounds a bit simple and syllogistic but feels correct. That's basically it, isn't it?

>>101013

Agreed.

Likewise, there's much debate if Donald Trump is a fascist, there certainly was that debate during his first term and its aftermath, and now that he's back and it's pretty much shaping up to be the old Trump shithow on absolute steroids, it's getting increasingly hard to argue that he isn't a fascist. If you ask Trump himself if he believes he's a fascist, he'll tell you he's the furthest from, and maybe even accuse Democrats of fascism. But if you look at his actions and not his words, then I dare you to make a convincing argument that he really isn't.

And I don't buy that Musk is too spergy or too uneducated about 20th century history to be oblivious to the fact that he's aligning himself with fascism. I don't buy it for one second.

Meanwhile, Musk's antics have started hurting Tesla sales in the EU, and in Germany in particular, where companies no longer buy them as fleet vehicles because they are worried that Musk's recent reputation will damage their own brand.

https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-falls-out-of-favor-among-german-businesses-over-elon-musk-behavior/

>>101008

>>101009
It's not about him being guilty of doing a Nazi salute in Germany; it's just about putting the German government in a position where they have to decide whether or not it was a real Nazi salute. If Led By Donkeys get in trouble for what they did, then they will defend themselves by saying it wasn't a Nazi salute. If the German authorities don't buy that, then they are implicitly saying it was a Nazi salute. This will have some PR repercussions for Mr Musk, inevitably, and it might also affect whether or not he is allowed to travel to Germany in future, although I'm not sure about that.

>>101014

>But if you look at his actions and not his words

This is where I always come unstuck on Trump, I start reading a post like this and I'm fully on your side but when you say something like this I'm like... Hang, what actually did he do? What actions has he carried out? What specific things are you referring to here?

To me the biggest thing about Trump, both regarding his fans and his critics, is that as far as I can tell he is entirely all talk and no action. He had a very uneventful presidency, and most of it was entirely overshadowed by that little virus thing. So I am asking in complete earnest here, what are these actions you speak of?

>>101015

As previously discussed, they fucked that up by putting "heil" on the projection. You can legitimately argue that his gesture was ambiguous, but the caption they chose to attach to it removes all ambiguity.

Anyway, nothing ever happens. In four years time, America will basically be the same as it is now, except there'll be a load of Republicans having a meltdown about how the newly-elected Democrat president is literally Chairman Mao. The deep state is real and it doesn't give a fuck about who's in the Oval Office, because it's busy running a superpower.

>>101016
All due respect, but pick up a bloody newspaper.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/25/trump-administration-first-week-back-in-power

And what you call an "uneventful" first term saw the death of the Iran nuclear deal for no good reason, the reigniting of a hostile diplomatic stance with Cuba, another four years of inaction on climate change and a conservative majority on the US Supreme Court. And that's just off the top of my head, I'm sure there's more.

>>101015

> This will have some PR repercussions for Mr Musk, inevitably, and it might also affect whether or not he is allowed to travel to Germany in future, although I'm not sure about that.

The problem is that unlike in the U.S., where foreign election intereference is a federal crime and where they take that sort of thing very seriously, to the point of banning people from entry into the country or deporting them, it's not illegal per se in the EU or in Germany.

Musk has already dipped his toes into that kind of water in the UK but also much more outrageously in Germany, where he has had an op-ed published in their biggest tabloid endorsing the right-wing AfD in the upcoming general elections, as well as interviewing AfD head Alice Weidel live on X, and just today speaking via video link to a crowd of 4,500 AfD supporters at a rally.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/elon-musk-addresses-afd-rally/

Musk will probably get away with these endorsements because, again, they are not technically illegal. But that's not because nobody thinks they shouldn't be, but because nobody has really broken that taboo before. Nobody saw a need for such a law because there was always a tacit agreement that you don't meddle with other countries' elections. At least not in such a glaring way.

I could see Musk's actions leading to similar laws against foreign election interference in the UK and Germany in the near future like the ones that already exist in the U.S., but for now, unfortunately, he's not doing anything illegal.

>>101018

We've yet to see how any of that will play out, but this is pretty much my point- The Guardian (and their transatlantic liberal cousins WaPo, NYT etc) all had exactly the same kind of articles in 2016, and what happened to all of it? If any of it really made much of a difference you'd be able to remember more than just these examples.

>death of the Iran nuclear deal for no good reason
That's the one really meaningful thing I could think of, so I'll give you that.

>the reigniting of a hostile diplomatic stance with Cuba
Oh no.

>another four years of inaction on climate change
As opposed to...? Seriously.

>conservative majority on the US Supreme Court
I guess? I don't know enough about all of that.

In broader terms I feel like Trump alarmism is daft for the same reason it's stupid when a Democrat wins and all the conservatives are calling them a godless commie who will put trans hormones in the drinking water or whatever. After 8 years and being one of the most celebrated presidents ever, what did Obama achieve? That shitty half baked healthcare thing? The reality is America is too much of a lumbering autocratic oligarchy controlled by the interests of various powerful super-lobbies, and they get their way come what may. It almost appears, at times, as if the fact he is doing things at all is the very cause for alarm.

If Trump turns out any different this time then fair play, but I really doubt it. So far as I can see he's just going to play the heel for a lot of "bad" decisions the US has seen in its self interest for a while anyway, such as dumping Ukraine to focus on keeping Taiwan out of China's hands.

At least we didn't have to go into that whole January 6th kerfuffle anyway.

>>101024

>I guess? I don't know enough about all of that.

This might be your sign to learn enough before you continue down this path.

>>101024
>conservative majority on the US Supreme Court
>I guess? I don't know enough about all of that.

Luckily, strangers on imageboards really enjoy it when we encounter someone who doesn't already know all the exact same facts that we do. So buckle in: in America, they occasionally get court cases which are challenged as being unconstitutional. Because Americans are so tumescently horny for the Constitution at all times, when a big challenge comes along, the approach to such a challenge is to go back and reread the Constitution to try and guess what the Founding Fathers would have said about the current case if they were alive today. It's a mental way of doing things, but that's not important right now. The people who try to interpret what George Washington would think about abortion, or whatever, are the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court is made up of Diana Ross and the nine most prestigious and best judges in the country. Those judges are hand-picked by whoever is president at the time, and it's a lifetime appointment - if you're a Supreme Court judge, you're there till you're dead. So it's a big deal when one of these judges dies, because Republican presidents will nominate people who interpret the law in a Republican way, and Democrat presidents will nominate Democratic-leaning judges. The Supreme Court used to have a fair(ish) balance between the two parties, so their rulings wouldn't be too partisan. But a couple of judges died and got replaced during Donald Trump's first presidency, so now things are skewed towards the Republicans in quite an obvious way.

The most notable case they had to deal with under Trump I was the abortion law: back in the 1970s, a court case called Roe vs Wade went all the way to the Supreme Court, and they ruled at the time that a woman's right to an abortion was more important than an unborn foetus's right to not be killed before it could grow into a baby, be born, and grow up into a fresh new American voter. But with the conservative-leaning Republican majority of Supreme Court judges, somebody challenged that ruling, and the judges had to look at it again. By pure coincidence, the judges picked by the party of pro-choicers all decided that actually, each individual state should have the right to decide whether or not abortion is legal in that state, meaning states could now ban abortion if they wanted to.

So abortion didn't get fully banned, but if you're a poor teenager in a hillbilly family and you get pregnant, you probably won't be able to sneak off to your local doctor for an abortion any more. And the judges who decided to take that right away from American citizens will be there until they die, and they outnumber the lefties, so Americans are now looking at literal decades of every law being re-examined and made more conservative whenever possible. There are ways to fix this (for example, Joe Biden could have said that nine judges isn't enough and he wanted there to be a couple more, that he would obviously choose, and of course they would be ones who stick up for Democrat ideals), but it would be very blatant and unpopular if anyone did that.

And I think that is absolutely everything I know about the US Supreme Court. Oh, and one of Trump's nominees was doubly controversial because he was a sex pest or a drug addict or something like that.

>>101024

If you don't think the US president intimating war on a European country and member of NATO for refusing to simply hand over 836,330 square miles of territory for the asking is a big deal, what exactly do you think would be concerning?

>>101028

That's very informative, thanks lad.

>>101030

That's not the point, the point is if it makes any difference that it's Trump or if it would still have happened under Kamala. Clearly America lost its appetite for Ukraine a long time ago.

>>101031

>the point is if it makes any difference that it's Trump or if it would still have happened under Kamala
Trump attempted to buy Greenland in his first term, neither Biden nor Kamala did or suggested they wanted any such thing so your equivocating seems totally unfounded.

>>101031
>>101030

Scratch that, I somehow thought you were on about Ukraine and not the farcical "we'll invade Greenland" thing.

If he invades Greenland I will actually buy a MAGA hat and eat it.

>>101033

>If he invades Greenland I will actually buy a MAGA hat and eat it.

Careful, lad.

The best rule-of-thumb I've heard about Trump is that you should take him seriously but not literally.

I don't believe for a second that he wants to invade Greenland, but I do think he is very serious about reshaping the balance of power in the North Atlantic, partly because of Russia but also because of the long-term strategic implications of the opening of the Northwest Passage. It's inextricably linked with Trump's previous threats against Panama, but most of the press don't seem to have twigged. The fact that Denmark have announced a massive increase in their defence spending is an immediate win, considering that he has long been pressuring other NATO members to increase their spending and stop relying on the US.

I'm sure that Trump has been told that there's no way in a million years that Egypt and Jordan will take loads of forcibly displaced Gazans, but that's not the point of what he's saying. He has already told Netanyahu "get the ceasefire done or else", which clearly worked. He's now telling the Gazans "wind your neck in and play nice with the Israelis or else", which is a bigger ask but might plausibly work. He has certainly lit a fire under the Egyptians, who have a key strategic role.

>>101007
Well, actually, that's true. There is a large Fawlty Towers following out there. Henning Wen is a very funny man too.

>>101038
Question to everyone: why is it illegal in our fair Isle to throw a Nazi salute in front of our PM when all it's for is to congratulate him on working with Nazis in the White House?

Obviously I'm joking but someone with a free speech bent should ask Kier that and it would be funny to watch his face.