An activist group projected a photo of billionaire Elon Musk making a controversial gesture that resembled a Roman salute on a Tesla factory near Berlin this week, with a single word above the world’s richest man: “Heil.”
The image, and an accompanying video of Musk’s remarks at one of President Donald Trump’s inauguration events this week, was crafted by a British political campaign group called Led By Donkeys. Critics have compared Musk’s gesture to the salute adopted by the Nazis, although he has dismissed such comparisons as “tired” Democratic attacks.
“Last night we were up on the Tesla Gigafactory in Berlin, the main European manufacturing site of Elon Musk’s car business,” the group wrote in an email to supporters on Thursday. “It’s the company that makes him the world’s richest man, money he is increasingly using to boost the far-right across Europe.”
“We need to reduce Musk’s power and that means no longer buying his cars,” the group added.
Led By Donkeys did not respond to a request for comment. HuffPost has reached out to Tesla for a statement on the matter.
Musk doubled down on the controversy on Thursday, posting a series of puns invoking Nazi leaders on his social media site, X.
“Some people will Goebbels anything down!” the billionaire wrote, before writing: “Bet you did nazi that coming.”
He ended the missive with a laughing emoji.
The Anti-Defamation League, a group that works to fight antisemitism, initially sought to defend Musk after he made the gesture, saying it wasn’t a Nazi salute and that the man deserved a “bit of grace” or the “benefit of the doubt.” But the ADL took umbrage at the jokes, calling them highly offensive.
“We’ve said it hundreds of times before and we will say it again: the Holocaust was a singularly evil event, and it is inappropriate and offensive to make light of it,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the group’s CEO, wrote on X.