North Idaho specifically has been a hub for white power movements for a while: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2024/mar/27/north-idaho-an...

Yeah, I don’t get why they aren’t cheering on Iran, Hezbollah and furry no kings protests. Go figure

Sorry, hard disagree. Bad faith entirely precludes debate because debate is about updating and improving a position through exchanges of views, and that starts with the ability and willingness to budge from said position in the first place.

Which incidentally means that there is by definition no debating tenants of a position that can't survive one minute of good faith review. They're not there to debate. They're there to drown out and silence a truth about material reality that they're upset about.

There is no debate. He’s a Nazi and Nazis are bad. There’s nothing to debate.

I'd suggest you dig a little deeper into American history. For example, "America First" isn't a new slogan. It's been used in its current sense for at least a century. Murdoch via Roger Ailes poured oil on the fire, but that was only possible because the sentiment already existed here and always has.

Those hundred million people who voted for all this, however, are Americans and show us what American values are.

LOL

American values?

Manifest destiny? Trail of tears? Japanese internment camps? Madison Square Garden Nazi rallies in the 1930s?

I'd argue that at least 30% of Americans throughout history have been white supremacists. Heck, the country was founded by rebelling against the British, that amongst other measures (many to do with taxes) wanted to limit Western expansion against non White peoples.

Shouldn't like, half of Oklahoma - LEGALLY - belong to Native Americans? Based on treaties the US has signed.

The entire history of the US is founded on white supremacy. From the genocide of Indigenous people, to slavery, to Hiroshima, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine...

Only Titanic and Avatar earned more money (inflation adjusted) than this film:

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

I could put my signature on your comment as if it was mine, wouldn't change even a comma.

One of the five fundamental pillars of conservative thought, as phrased by wikipedia (which is itself merely paraphrasing Russel Kirk, a foundational of post-war American conservativatism), is:

> A conviction that society requires orders and classes that emphasize natural distinctions.

Racism and bigotry are not errant additions to conservatism, they're a logical extension of one of its foundational pillars. (Though that is not to say that the left is not without its racism and bigotry as well, it's just less of a natural fit)

Political ideas don't come in isolation. You cited some relatively benign aspects of conservatism. But those are symptoms of a deeper process, and that same process brings both the benign aspects and the malignant aspects. People's stances on these issues aren't independent. They are correlated by some common factor that causes all of them, and we're not quite sure what that is and it may have evolutionary underpinnings. We call the common factor conservatism (or progressivism, when it's flipped the opposite way).

> I'm still unable to process that people like Trump, Putin, Orbán, et al

I am sure you put these people in the same basket by no logical reason, as they are very different and the reason behind each of them is very different. As an Eastern European I understand a bit more Orban and Putin, I don't have to agree with them to understand how things work, and they the 3 have almost nothing in common but being targeted by the political left as the enemy.

I think there are better things to focus on about Elon Musk, like his role in getting Trump elected, the misinfo tweets he reposts with "Exactly" and "Concerning" (where the top community note trivially debunks the tweet -- he doesn't care whether it's real), making a stink about the Epstein files until he was cool with Trump again, promoting right-wing slop like Gunther Eagleman, changing Twitter in general like how you can freely say the n-word now, how he went about DOGE, what he promotes vs what he's silent on.

But I've yet to see someone show video of a prominent democrat doing the same salute as Musk. Which is probably why it's left as an exercise for the reader to find.

That said, we don't need to speculate about his salute when you can look directly at the slop he posts on Twitter.

I guess we're at "it's your fault for having eyes" part of the defense of the action.

It seemed pretty blatant to me if you watch the whole video, the chest pound and the clear arm/hand extension really makes it difficult to see as anything else.

It was distinctly different from the stills of other politicians waving that often get used as comparison by trolls trying to defend it... when you compare videos the difference is not even questionable.

Anyone who doesn't think what Musk did was a Nazi salute, I encourage you to watch the video over and over, enough times so that you can memorize and replicate it, then go into work and do it in front of your manager, and see what happens.

Of course, as expected, the Elon Musk Defense League showed up right on time. Does he give out $100 for every post defending his honor online?

> What about

No, that doesn't work here.

My friend, please reflect on who in this exchange might be easily manipulated by clips on the internet.

Only one of the individuals in this comparison has a Wikipedia page dedicated to the event and coverage of it.

They are very demonstrably not making the same movement and I strongly feel like it would take someone trying to reason backwards from a predetermined conclusion to see this

When has that happened?

When have they done that?

Also, when have they joked about it being a Nazi salute after the fact like Elon Musk did? https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1882406209187409976

>What about when Zohran Mamdani or AOC or Kamala makes the EXACT SAME MOTION?

If they did, they'd make international news for the same reason.

They did not. A freeze frame of someone waving their hand ain't remotely close to the specific "from my heart to the stars" gesture that Elon Musk did twice in a row.

Which doesn't even matter as much as his long, established history of pushing white-supremacist views, supporting white supremacist movements, and using neo-nazi dog whistles (like posting 14 flag emojis at 14:14PM EST).

Personal question: are you a bot?

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Your comment on vagueness misses its mark.

> business leader throwing those salutes and backing it up with talk of a "white homeland"

It is not every commenter's duty to cite their sources when you have the ability to easily infer the context and search the internet. These are very well documented actions that they refer to. Your attempts to drive sentiment through casting doubt are noticed.

>What do you mean _exactly_? Covering your statement is a shroud of vagueness doesn’t help form an opinion, only infuse more polarisation

Oh come on. Everyone who's been paying attention enough to warrant having opinions on the subject knows what the reference is to.

But if you just came out of a cryogenic freeze, they're talking about:

1. Elon Musk appearing to be giving a Nazi salute at Trump's inauguration [1]

2. Elon Musk espousing and propagating white supremacist views nearly on a daily basis[2]

3. Elon Musk openly supporting borderline Neo-Nazi[3][4] German AfD party[5]

4. Elon Musk promulgating the myth of "white genocide"[6]

I guess if you somehow missed all of that over the past few years, you wouldn't know what the parent comment is about.

But in that case, you shouldn't be taking a part in this conversation, or opining about what would "infuse[sic] more polarisation".

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

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/12/elon-musk...

[3] https://www.tpr.org/podcast/the-source/2024-07-31/frontline-...

[4] https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/dangerous-liais...

[5] https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/25/europe/elon-musk-germany-afd-...

[6] https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/p0lhfn68

[3]

He's most definitely talking about a white homeland [1][2]

[1] https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1962406618886492245 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remigration

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2030202550259962338

"Whites are under threat" + "immigrants are bad" ~= white homeland. Strip away the name and his posts could be any generic white supremacist.

Here it is:

https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/2030202550259962338

That's just disgusting stuff. Gutter white nationalism.

I personally am not interested in the bigots of previous generations making those decisions any more than I want contemporary ones to.

> Not sure their ideology was such a win.

South Africa's transition away from being a nuclear apartheid state was an objective win for everyone, everywhere.

> It's grossly unfair to conflate white nationalism and white supremacy

No, it isn't. It's a distinction without a difference.

I know exactly how my grandparents would've reacted because I've seen it first-hand, and it's ugly and carries precisely zero validity. It's not to be emulated any more than someone who was born in 1850's skepticism towards automobiles and airplanes is.

You can call it white nationalism if you like but you are spouting the exact same talking points as white supremacists, you just prefer to buy it under a different brand.

This feels like the "technically it's hebephilia" argument in that drawing the distinction just makes your argument weaker for regular people.

> It's grossly unfair to conflate white nationalism and white supremacy. Your grandparents lived in a state that was close to 100% european descent

Why do you think that makes a difference?

Hint: white supremacy (believing whites are superior).

As someone who is so white they glow in the dark, no. They are exactly the same.

You don't speak for me, and I find you embarrassing.

What exactly would happen according to you? The state in question got more Mexicans or South Americans which are also descendants of European colonists? Almost every American have European heritage. In my opinion this doesn't make much sense for Americans.

What exactly means to be culturally white in US?

You can be racist and still hate fascism and Nazis.

Everyone should hate fascism and Nazis.

Just like how the "antifascists" who stormed the beaches of Normandy would support the "antifascists" of today! "my grandpa was antifa!!"

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It's grossly dishonest to conflate a complexion with an ethnicity. 'White' is a complexion, not a culture.

For most of the past five centuries, the people you're lumping into this thing called 'white' would've considered it fighting words to do so.

Yeah, similar situation for me. All the promises of an optimistic sci-fi future become hollow when one remembers that the person espousing them is openly and actively opposed to those optimistic ideals.

Even just the disingenuous boosting of obvious lies that are convenient to his worldview (claiming genuine curiosity), by a supposedly intelligent man, is gross enough.

I feel like you should have a much higher bar for the label of Nazi than you clearly do.

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One of the biggest accounts on X hosts one of the most listened to podcasts on Spotify/Apple and has a huge following that's grown exponentially since 2023. He's an active Holocaust denier, proud antisemite, and dined with the president and members of his cabinet on more than one occasion.

To say there's no growing movement towards Nazi and anti-Jewish ideologies is to be willfully ignorant of the world around you.

You wish to lead with "dumb shit" in framing why people have a problem with Elon Musk? Why not lead with the Nazi salute at the presidential podium? That would more quickly get to the point.

GP is saying neo-Nazis are "not just politics, but also something worse". You're not really disagreeing with them, maybe just missing their point about some ideologies being worthy of planned exclusion from a civilized society. Aka the paradox of tolerance. That's what makes some political stances "not just politics".

This is entirely framing.

To most people “I want to deport minorities” would imply nothing about citizenship status.

Someone with the opposite opinion would frame it as “open borders”, which is an extremist viewpoint globally and also not what people on the left in the US are advocating for.

Media coverage in the US is partisan. This is not an insightful viewpoint or nearly as incendiary as you’re making it out to be.

In the case of X, the business owner is aggressively pushing his political views on users by heavy-handed methods like prioritizing his own posts in algorithmic feeds and overriding the context of his AI bot to parrot his pet ideas.

If you went to a restaurant and it had Confederate flags and pro-slavery memorabilia on the walls, would you think: “Well, that’s just their political view, I don’t have to share it to eat here?”

In the past, most business owners would perhaps quietly donate to a party or candidates, but probably wouldn't hang their ideology out in front of people all day, every day. Think about someone like Warren Buffett. He has political views, but they are not something he's out there loudly airing on a huge platform.

And like I pointed out, these are not just any old "political views". It's extremist stuff that in the past would have gotten you ostracized. I'm old enough to remember Trent Lott losing his Senate leadership position, for instance.

Also, because of "network effects", simply providing content to Twitter makes the site more valuable.

It didn't used to be nearly as common for owners of midsize to large businesses to be loudly outspoken politically, especially those holding more extreme views. It used to be common sense to keep that sort of thing to oneself, if only to avert PR disaster. Not knowing when to shut up was more of a hallmark of the stereotypical two-bit owner of a crappy local business that perpetually struggled to grow.

This helped keep a neutral or at worst ambivalent image of these owners in the minds of the larger public and thus for the most part didn't factor into purchase decisions.

It's now easier than ever to see the true character of a business owner and so it's only natural that customers have begun to factor in this information in purchase/usage decisions.

That's because they don't stay in their lane as business owner, but use the proceeds of that business (and a bunch of others) to influence world politics in a way that no single individual should ever be able to.

I expect people to be different.

I don’t expect them to provide a platform for people who make it a point to hate others and advocate for removal of their / my rights and so on.

X/twitter is a media company. choosing which media products to purchase based on political values is how it has always worked.

Do you believe that boycotting is a new behavior?

Well, part of the product is Elon's posts and his editorial choices that go into the algorithm. Also your example of the newspaper is also odd, because newspapers were and are well known to be influenced by their publishers and people very often will trash them if they have a contrary ideological bent

Why should I contribute to the wealth of a man who wants people like me dead? Why should I tolerate others who happily contribute to my own oppression?

It isn't strictly required and it hasn't changed; it's always been complicated and it's always been a balance. This isn't speculation or a hot take. Consumer boycotts are as old as the hills, so it's an observable fact that our relationship with firms and their politics has been complicated and negotiated for a very long time.

Regarding your later edit:

> PS. It's amazing to me, and worrying, the anger and vituperation this position is provoking. It was once almost consensus. To take the obvious parallel, buying a newspaper did not imply agreement with the reactionary press baron who owned it.

It really shouldn't surprise you that if you express something that's a bit of a hot take that you'll get a reaction to it. You shouldn't draw any more of an inference from it then "people are passionate about this and some of them disagree with me." Whether people do so amicably or not has at least as much to do with the problems with the Internet as a means of communication as the issue itself.

Regardless, this status quo you refer to was mostly imagined. How much pressure people exert to boycott some platform or another waxes and wanes, because the underlying disagreements wax and wane in relevance. That doesn't really make it a new thing, just a new phase in the same unfolding history.

That's why you refer to the press barons in the era of yellow journalism - the past is not an undifferentiated mass where everyone held some set of values that have fallen from favor. To the people who were alive at the time, things were contentious and in flux and the future was uncertain.

We have a tendency to flatten the past and imagine it as a straightforward narrative where we necessarily arrived at where we are today because of the inevitable interaction of historical forces, and similarly to flatten the people who lived at the time as being caricatures who reliably held a certain set of values. But they disagreed with each other, viewed the future as up for grabs like we do, and they changed their minds as history unfolded.

Im not sure where your sense of history is coming from. One of the US‘s founding events was a boycott of British goods for political reasons.

I keep saying this, but do you remember a single political remark made by owners of Toyota or BMW? Do you even know who owns these companies without looking it up?

People aren't raking through Musk's obscure remarks to find something objectionable. Musk has been force-spraying his political opinions onto everyone for quite a while, and people have gotten tired of it.

Aptly, given Elon's ancestry, did the whole anti-apartheid movement simply pass you by?

Probably around the same time as the Citizens United decision. Supporting a business with your money also means supporting the things they choose to spend that money on

First, as others have pointed out, it's always been like that up to a point. But that's not the problem with X.

I didn't leave X when Musk acquired Twitter, and I'm not scandalised by people's political positions, even when they're extreme. But a position and behaviour are two very different things (e.g. being a racist vs making a Nazi salute on live television). I left when the atmosphere amplified by the site became... not for me. I won't go into a pub full of football hooligans not because I disagree with their club affiliation but because their conduct creates an atmosphere that's not for me.

As for newspapers (even ignoring those with political party affiliations, something that was common in newspapers' heyday), most of them preserved some kind of civil decorum, and those that didn't weren't read by those who wanted some decorum. How civilised some environment is is not a matter of political position.

Also, there were always some people of influence that held extreme views. But such people behaving in an uncivilised manner in public was less common (and certainly less accepted).

Buying a newspaper has always been a political act

Most people hold a set of political views, while also admitting a spectrum of competing views into their personal, financial, etc. lives. For the average person, doing business with a neo-Nazi (or someone who is "merely" neo-Nazi adjacent) exceeds that spectrum. This is eminently reasonable, and has not changed significantly in a long time.

No one would say they used "David Duke's Whites Only Car Wash" but "didn't support the owner's politics."

You might investigate the origin of the term 'boycott.' It turns out that ostracizing someone's business for political reasons has a long and cherished history. Colt and S&W were targets because their owners cooperated with Clinton's gun control efforts. And to your point, there are plenty of examples of that: https://www.unz.com/print/SocialJustice-1939may22-00001/

> To take the obvious parallel, buying a newspaper did not imply agreement

That ... does not hold at all. You wouldn't buy or subscribe to an openly Nazi paper unless you are a full blown white supremacist.

The conflict seems as old as ever. Labor vs union-busting robber baron.

There are plenty of business' products that I use where I'm unaware of if I share or don't share the owner's political views and I'm totally fine using them. Elon Musk has made it impossible to not be aware of his political views by constantly shoving it down our throats.

It is the way they express those views.

I mean, there are a lot of conservatives I respect including Mitt Romney, Robert Nisbett, George Will, and Thomas Sowell. Then there are the jerks like William F. Buckley and David Horowitz. [1]

Then there is Musk who's below even them -- but I am not particularly offended by Hobby Lobby or Chicken-Fil-A.

[1] if you want to know the criteria I use take a look at this book https://www.amazon.com/Watch-Right-Conservative-Intellectual...

Not really. People have boycotted products for political and ideological motivations for a very long time. The change recently is that people stopped caring as much. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_boycotts

When the business owner is in control over the algorithm that determines what you see on the product he owns.

It's not like they are separate at all, the owner is very active on the site as both a user and a god-moderator.

Personally I left Twitter less because Musk owns it now, and more because Musk's changes turned my previously tolerable feed into a deluge of far right drivel. Expecting me to keep using it is like expecting me to keep shopping at a grocery store that replaced its bread aisle with a swastika-festooned exhibit glorifying the conquests and exploits of Hitler and his Nazis---even if I am generally apolitical, I will have to start shopping somewhere that sells bread.

Notwithstanding the above, given how powerful network effects are in social media, I think boycotting platforms operated by people like Musk (I struggle to find the words to fully encompass how repulsive he has become) is arguably one of the more effective forms of protest available to people, and I encourage them to exercise it.

The Body Shop was fairly vocal about animal testing and Ben and Jerrys was famous for their political messages on their products and that was in the 80s. And Levi Strauss and their LGBTQ+ support.

If you were not aware of it, it is not because it wasn't happening. Historically, excepting media companies, left leaning companies have always been outspoken about this while right leaning ones believed in the idea of focusing on business and avoiding overt political messaging.

So companies like Exxon were not broadcasting their views but were still lobbying government directly to change the laws in a way that benefit them (see deregulation).

Social pressure has literally always existed. Nothing has changed lol.

And I wouldn't call white nationalism a "political" view, like it's some ordinary kind of opinion. That's sanewashing something disgusting and disgraceful. That type needs to get shoved back under the rock they crawled out from.

Musk’s account is the most engaged and followed account on Twitter. So Twitter is de facto his global soapbox.

(And most of the other top-engaged accounts are MAGA accounts: https://www.natesilver.net/p/social-media-has-become-a-freak...)

>But since when did using a business's product come to require sharing (or not sharing) political views with the business's owner?

Since 18th century at the very least; see: anti-slavery sugar boycott[1].

That's if you absolutely ignore the parent's point that political views are things like specifics of policy, not whether some people should be considered subhuman.

>Seems to me that this is what has changed.

It seems so because you don't know history, and didn't do a one-minute Google search for history of successful boycotts.

The article I'm linking is in the "bite-sized" category.

Enjoy.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z3rj7ty/revision/7

This question is a deflection and I suspect is intentionally disingenuous since it literally ignores the main point of the parent's comment.

TWFKAT (the website formerly known as Twitter) is not a product, it's Elon Musk's safe space. He bought it to be his sandbox and to use it to soothe his constantly battered and fragile ego. His own personal clubhouse where he sets the rules, and he's the ultimate authority. You can join if you want to be a part of his cult of personality, but don't fool yourself that you're dealing with a "product" and a "business".

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I'd rather turn into reddit than turn into a nazi.

Say you're Elon Musk, billionaire and really smart guy. And you're asked to give a speech. That speech will be viewed by millions.

You probably have a speechwriter, and a PR consultant, and hey, why not a body language consultant. When you get on stage, you're going to present exactly the message you mean to. Anything less would be a waste of your time, right?

Key thing being pictures, not videos. Far easier to make the same false equivalence you are making that way.

Sad to see folks continuing to twist themselves into knots to defend an indefensible gesture performed by an objectively terrible human being.

> It was an awkward gesture that he did once in the moment

He was quite self aware of what he did. He immediately followed it up by visiting a rally for the far right in Germany.

He did it twice and knew exactly what he was doing. The crowd he was in front of ate it right up.