Dog whistles aren’t loud
At first, I thought I was imagining it.
It couldn’t be: At one of the most public events ever, Elon Musk extended his arm outward and upward, fingers together, palm down.
The gesture made my skin crawl and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
This wasn’t a wave. It definitely wasn’t a fist pump. It looked disturbingly like a salute ripped straight from a rally in Hitler’s Germany, at the fevered height of fascism.
Feel free to disagree but I know what I saw—and I wasn’t alone.
And the backlash came swiftly. Critics accused Musk of stoking the flames of hate, whether through deliberate intent or reckless thoughtlessness.
True to form, Musk turned to X (formerly Twitter), dismissing the uproar as “a tired attack” and mocking detractors for needing “better dirty tricks.” Rather than engaging with the concerns in good faith, his response epitomized a pattern of deflection and gaslighting—hallmarks of his leadership in this new era of unchecked hate speech on X.
Let’s be clear: this wasn’t just a one-off moment.
It’s part of a broader pattern, one that thrives in the liminal space between plausible deniability and the unmistakable pulse of something darker. A gesture here, a meme there—and suddenly, the floodgates open on X, a platform where antisemitism flows like raw sewage after a storm.
Dog whistles aren’t loud; they’re insidious. Pitched just low enough to let some people feign ignorance, while others nod in silent recognition. A half-smile, a shrug, and then the gaslighting begins: “Why are you overreacting? It’s just a gesture. A joke. Calm down.”
But for those of us who carry the weight of history—the voices of parents and grandparents who bore witness to what happens when whispers turn into roars—we know these moments matter. The wave starts small, but it swells. And platforms like X, under Musk’s laissez-faire leadership, don’t just permit it—they amplify it. Like a megaphone handed to the worst among us.
You want to talk about free speech? Yalla. But let’s also talk about responsibility. Let’s talk about the algorithms pushing Holocaust denial to the top of the feed. Let’s talk about the unchecked hate festering in the replies. Let’s talk about how “just a joke” becomes “just a policy,” and how, all too quickly, history starts to repeat itself.
Symbols matter.
Gestures matter.
And the refusal to call them out matters most of all.
So we’ll keep naming it, screaming into the void if we have to, because we’ve seen this story before.
And this time, we refuse to let it end the same way.