Steve Bannon Gives Apparent Nazi Salute During CPAC Speech, Mirroring Elon Musk

America has a nazi problem and there is only one solution to a nazi problem

There are things that happen to people who are nazis.
The thing that should really give nazis pause is, even if they win, they still lose. It's not like they're gonna have a good life in whatever society they think they're making.

What do mean apprent.
- So far the only papers that I've seen cover this unequivocally are foreign ones
- It's super annoying isn't it? The video is superbly clear. He did it, he did it on purpose, and he knew what it meant. You can see it, and his intent easily.

Not another accidental Nazi salute! These clumsy Nazis keep accidentally throwing that Nazi salute around completely by mistake!
- Don’t you hate it when you accidentally do the Nazi salute when you’re a nazi?
  
  Just a little Freudian slip. Nothing to look out for!
- it's the autism bro. bannon is like totally aspie

This was in the same speech where he said that the Holy Spirit was working through Trump to do all of this, and that Trump should have a third term and beyond.
It's becoming obvious that we should be treating Trumpism as a religious cult, not just a political movement.
- And here I thought Steve had seen the light because he spoke out against some of the stuff Trump was doing but I guess that orange dick is just too good to take out of their butts/mouths.

What a piece of shit.

And every conservative in America is silent.
Silence is complicity.
No more excuses. No more feigned ignorance.
- Silent? They're cheering.
- Not @talon@lemm.ee
  DotBut looking over that accounts short history, it looks like a troll.
  
  Yes because someone new is commenting...must be a troll. You hit the nail on the head there sparky

Distraction & diversion. He's revealed his "secrets" in length in the past about his calculated moves in puppeteering the media and general discourse, preventing us from focusing on what's actually important. It's already working on the shoddy news media of 2025. Don't let it work on general discourse as well

It's not exactly the same as Musk's (doesn't thump his heart first) -- which is probably the point. Trying to sneak in more completely implausible "plausible deniability." Nobody's fooled. It looks like a duck, it's a duck.
- I agree mostly but #1 and #5 just look like a sideways wave. I don't think it's a duck and shouldn't be thrown in as a duck when there's 5 other pictures that very much look like a duck
- he didn't cover it though. that cunt from fox news was more savvy about it. this guy just did the salute but didn't grunt like a fucking troglodyte.

I cannot wait for these monsters to get their faces kicked in. Fuck these fascists!
- Fascists always end up swinging.
  The problem is a ton of decent people usually have to die first. Economies have to be destroyed. Rights have to be won back. Allegiances broken.
  They'll get theirs. But what do we lose in the process?

Good. I want more of them to do it. Let's get past the phase where people still try to rationalize ways in which it's not what it literally is.
- Let’s get past the phase where people still try to rationalize ways in which it’s not what it literally is.
  What's sad is that right now on my screen the comment above yours is someone trying to claim it isn't a Nazi salute because....blah blah blah.
  I'm with you though. I hope they all out themselves. Makes them easier to find and deal with.

"Apparent"
Chickenshit Nazi enablers.
- Atleast it's actually being called that now

This isn't new, right?
- I'm unfamiliar with the context for most of these. Plenty don't look like Nazi salutes. To me, anyway.
  But literally every word that has slithered out of that moldy potato's mouth for the last two decades is all you need to know he's a white supremacist.
  
  Totally agree. Most of those look very innocuous. If you watch the video of the particular event in question, it's blatantly obvious:
  https://youtu.be/bBOJAAujwb8
  
  Yeah a lot of those look moderately benign (waving away media, for example). Best case scenario it's an unfortunate habit what happens to make him look like a Nazi... At the same time, I'd expect someone to break the habit to distance themselves from it.

Arm up, folks. Nazis don't go away peacefully.
- Nah I think peacefully occupying a sidewalk that oligarchs never walk on or care about even maintaining is the best idea, we should keep doing that for 40 more years, that'll work!
  
  Can't you just change your avatar to something?

The real headline should be "CPAC audience cheers Bannon's Nazi salute", because they totally did, and it leaves no doubt that CPAC is full of Nazis.
- He knows his audience, that's for certain.
- There were cheers, but I think I also detected some shouts of anger. I'm not going to write off an entire audience.
  
  They were sitting down in a room in which the speaker gave a nazi salute. They did not leave when it became apparent that he would not be ejected.

There seems to be an epidemic of "awkward hand gestures" and "Roman salutes" and according to some people on Twitter we're not allowed to call them Nazis because we can't literally read minds. I'm so tired of enablers.

It's almost like the capitalist media has completely normalized and apologized for fascism.
- And even when reporting on it they link to the neo-Nazi site X for the video.
- I don't think this one is nearly as obvious as Musk's, and I feel like blowing something like this up makes us look bad and will only further them doing sarcastic, vague gestures "as a joke" until it gets normalized more.
  
  My friend, you can't have it both ways. If he "made a mistake" and then humbly and profusely apologized, then you could maybe pretend it was accidental... But that's not what happened, right? He didn't apologize because he meant it.
  We will never, ever, look bad for calling out racism when we see it as clearly as we did here. But we would certainly be horrible human beings if we decided to pretend it wasn't happening.
  Anyway, of course you can do what you feel is right. For me, it's simple. Fuck that racist motherfucker.
  
  Stop making excuses for fascists.
  This is Steve Bannon performing a poor man's Nazi salute so he can claim plausible deniability later.
  He even responds with a smile when the crowd cheers him doing it.
  Stop making excuses for fascists. Unless you are one....
  
  it is very obvious. he isn't waving, he isn't pointing at anything, he isn't emphasizing or illustrating anything because he's not even talking when he does it. there's a bunch of things you might be doing that can be screen grabbed to look like a salute. but the video is clear, he's just doing a salute.
  
  It could be a trap, where we make a big deal about it and they claim they're "joking" each time and then it gets normalized. But the alternative is preemptively normalizing it by buying into the plausible deniability. There's no 'winning' move, I'd rather call him a fucking Nazi
  
  My favorite song by the Dead Kennedys is "Nazi Punks Will Go Away on Their Own So Don't Make a Big Deal About It"

So at this point, the leaders of both major political wings of MAGA have openly done the fascist salute.
Maga America needs to be denazified.
- MAGA Americans need to cease to exist.
  
  You and what army?

Most people have muscle memory of like normal wave or maybe a clenched fist pump for "fight fight fight" right? It's not supposed to be difficult to avoid nazi saluting. Like I've never ALMOST sieg heil'd, you know? fuck sakes
- look there was no plausible deniability when Elon did it. He pretended like he was a weirdo autist the night of with his weird head bobbing and his exaggerated gestures to try and give plausible deniability. but the Nazi salute was putting the toe in the water. feeling the room
  it seems that the wannabe Nazis felt like the water was warm enough and they're gonna start descending the staircase into the pool
  
  The thing about musk that boggled my mind was that not only did he do it once, but he turned 180 degrees to do it again.
- After Mush did it, I wanted to give my bro my heart, but I literally couldn't bring myself to do it. No way this is accidents.

If it quacks like a nazi.....

Fuckin' Nazi fuck

I hate Illinois Nazis.

You'd think it would be easy to avoid doing this, but watch as the MAGA scum come out of the woodwork to rush to the defense of another guy who totally didn't mean it, honest.

I honestly think the feud with Elon is fueled by jealousy to be Trumps Nazi.
- I mean, Bannon started this whole thing. He was pushed out of the inner circle but he was the one with the vision back in 2016.
  Bannon is a visionary and he had the right idea. He just didn't have the ability to execute. Trump took the ideas from Bannon and found new allies who have the ability to execute. Musk (and Thiel) were more than happy to jump on board
  Edit: just in case it's not clear I'm not endorsing his views. I am firmly anti-Nazi
- He wants to be in control not Musk.

And nobody who refused to accept it the first time will accept it now.

I shall now remind the world that the USA didn't care all that much about nazis in WW2 until it got attacked by Japan in Pearl Harbor and felt the need to react.
- Bullshit. We supported Europe similarly to how we've been supporting Ukraine.
  We didn't have boots on the ground, but we did everything short of that. It's why Pearl Harbor happened.
  
  We turned away Jewish refugees, and we also had our own Nazi political party. Support for the Nazis during WW2 was at a high point among the population before the US entered the war. We did not as a nation support Europe, and in fact there were large protests across the US against FDR supporting the allies by bypassing Congress. Speaking of Congress, they specifically created and expanded the Neutrality Act to prevent FDR from providing aid to the allies.
  So no, there was much less help from Congress for supporting the allies than there is for supporting Ukraine, and it wasn't a popular move by FDR to boot.
  
  What about the role of IBM in the logistics of the Reich, from military logistics to railroad and camp management for the Holocaust?
  
  I agree with your first point, but it's not the main reason why US was attacked - even if it was 100% isolationist, it would have been attacked anyway, because Japan can't really fulfill its imperial ambitions, if they have the US pacific fleet in its backside.
  
  I'm not saying America was pro-nazi (though some were). I'm saying the US could've fought Japan and just continued to fund the Soviets. The red army was more than up to the task of sweeping through every country held by the Nazis after they broke them in the East.
  They didn't though, they prioritized victory in Europe ahead of victory in the Pacific. That is because they were racing against the communists to liberate as much as Europe as they could. They were already planning for the next war.
  Remember how the justification for nuking civilians in Japan was so American soldiers didn't have to give their lives taking the island? So why sacrifice American lives in Europe if you know the USSR is months away from totally steamrolling Nazi Germany? There has to be a geopolitical reason.
  
  America supported the axis and allies in ww2
  
  A lot of the US supported nazi Germany directly as well. They were supporting both the allies and the nazis for a while.
  
  No you didn't, you let your competitors destroy eachother and joined in at the end to reap the rewards.
  Maybe it is like ukraine. Let others do the fighting for you.
  And you know nothing about Pearl Harbor.
  Everyone knows you desperately wanted war with Japan.
  The oil embargo was almost a declaration of war.
  But you wanted Japan to do it.
  You deliberate placed the fleet in a remote place as bait, totaly indefensible.
  Everyone with brain knew this at the time but their objections were dismissed.
- Hell, we only got involved with the Nazis because Hitler declared war on the US after the US declared war on Japan for pearl harbor.
- I would go as far to say the reason they did d-day wasn't to defeat the nazis, but to liberate as much of western europe as they could before the soviets set up social republics in france and the netherlands.
  
  Then you go so far that you're off the map.

Apparent? Shut the fuck up.
- In this case I think the point is to be on the nose about how fucking ridiculous it is - just from this article:
  Steve Bannon made a gesture that is identical to a Nazi salute
  Bannon made the gesture — extending his arm, palm down, fingers straight, at an upward angle away from his chest, which is also what Nazi salutes look like
  the gesture was also identical to one made by billionaire Elon Musk
  extended his arm straight out, palm down, fingers straight, at an upward angle away from his chest. Which, whatever the billionaire’s intention, just happens to be precisely how a Nazi salute is performed.
  Musk repeated the gesture. Here’s how that looked.
  <pic of Musk doing a Nazi salute>
  
  I also wouldn't be surprised if the DoJ would be specifically ordered to look at this case. When you're challenging power, it makes sense to cross your Ts and dot your Is.
- Throwing in the word “apparent” is cowardly, but it’s also a lot cheaper than being sued for libel by a fucking billionaire.
  
  Nah. Getting sued for libel is what these outlets should be absolutely proud to have sent their way. That's literally a news story in itself. It would also means he'd actually have to defend it instead of posting Nazi puns on Twitter.
  
  Yeah. They're cowards because they don't want to lose any money saying the truth.
  
  So at what point of doing something does it actually become the thing that it was?
  Seems pretty obvious to me.
- Oxford's top definition for Apparent is "clearly visible or understood; obvious"
  
  And the second (which is how they are using it) is "seeming real or true, but not necessarily so".
- Dodging shackles of the new Ministry of Truth
- The space karen one was blatantly apparent, this was a pretty half assed attempt. Like he is too much of a bitch to put his contemptible fascist ideology on full display.
- Getting upset when journalists explicitly flag their interpretations is pretty fucked up and fragile.
  
  "Interpreting" a sieg heil is pretty fucked up and complicit.

I'd like to go back to a simpler time. A time when nazis got shot in the fucking face.
- Join your local SRA or PSL. We need more comrades. Us Socialist have the top score for killing Nazis and it's not even fucking close.
  Edit: Socialist Rifle Association. Party for Socialism and Liberation.
- You can help return to that time today!
  
  It's always incredible to see how so many people say they're willing to do something is contrasted with the close to zero people who do it.

I all invite them to come to germany and do it :)
- Germany is literally right on the edge of their own fascist issues right now. The symbolism may not be as directly 1to1 as America. But the outcomes are building up to be the same. Germans learned all the wrong lessons from their past and now the "never again" seems to be "well, again, but only to Muslims this time. We promise it stops there"
  How's that song go? "Tell them that the Nazis never really went away". They weren't kidding.
  
  There’s an AfD poster doing the rounds right now where the adults are doing the fascist salute.
  
  it's worse than that, we shift all the guilt about antisemitism and nazism onto muslims, so that they're perceived as the actual nazis and we're innocent happy fellows who are bestest of friends with The Jews™ who just happen to all support and live in israel and no other jewish opinion or existence is allowed or acknowledged. the palestinian genocide really is a denazification, israel is just cleaning up little hitler babies with daily bomb and drone strikes.
  
  What i mean with that is:
  They come over, do the Hitlergruß, then get arrested and heavily fined because its highly illegal to do that in germany
- They'd have diplomatic immunity and the AfD would cheer.
  If you were going to kick them out of the country for doing it, we'll, they've already done it. You can kick them out preemptively.
  
  Bannon has diplomatic immunity? He's just some loser.
- I'm not sure this one would have landed him in a prison cell (or citation or whatever they do).
- As long as they don't protest against genocide, they're safe in germany.

Let me guess the excuse: he also has autism and autistic people just can't help doing Nazi salutes all the time.
You know how you keep seeing autistic people give Nazi salutes?
- It's true, it was programmed into us by our creator Hans Asperger.
  
  Weird how Elon has never claimed to be officially diagnosed to be ASD, but has described himself as having Asperger's Syndrome before, isn't it?
  Very weird indeed.
- I'm autistic and I can't stop nazi saluting it's scaring my kids neighbors and friends send help
- "damn vaccines... All Fauci's fault" - RFK Jr?
- who is saying that?!
  
  It's an excuse that people are using for elmo's heiling...

Judge for yourselves ... pretty blatant Nazi salute if I've ever seen one. Short and quick but it was a plainly obvious gesture.
1930s German Nazis would have laughed at it for being so pitiful and weak but it was there from what I saw.
https://www.youtube.com/live/0BN-62AQT4Q?t=29801s
If the linked time doesn't work ... scroll through to the end of his 15 minute speech at 8:16:32
- the nod, like yeah I did that, right after.
- Short and quick, followed by a smile and a nod to what I assume was approval from the audience.
- I can't even think of a way that this could be given some veil of innocence either. The "my heart goes out to you" thing was always bullshit, but it was an attempt at plausible deniability. I don't think even that could be done here
  
  Yeah well my heart just went out when I slay nazis too it was an oops because I was just making my heart go out
  
  It's just an involuntary hand movement, like when someone reaches for glasses they are already wearing, or reach out for a phone that's not in the pocket. He got the habit from all the times he does the Nazi salute behind closed doors. /s (but I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually true)
- Like a weak handshake. The softest Nazi ever.

Omg don't wave different you might be called a nazi. All I can say is weak....desperate...grasping at straws.
- Wild that these perfectly normal unusual waves keep happening among Trump's inner circle during speeches. These perfectly average waves that look quite a lot like sieg heils and have never really been sighted or performed by US political figures outside of these perfectly normal waves that have started happening since Trump's inauguration.
- Everybody can see through your bullshit. You should educate yourself about the Nuremburg trials.
  
  Who is this "everybody" you speak of. I am familiar what the Nuremburg trials. But what do they gave in common with this pray tell...

In times past, anyone doing anything like that around the president would have put the president on the fast track to impeachment.
Today, this will just slide, and we'll have another piece of outrageous news tomorrow that nobody will be outraged about for more than 10 minutes. Different values today I guess...
- Impeachment in the US seems to be meaningless too, though
  
  It's because impeachment is a partisan process. If the Republicans had an ounce of integrity (or even self-preservation) they would have joined the Democrats in voting to convict when Trump was impeached multiple times previously.
  
  The goal of fox news post nixon was to prevent anything similar to what happened to nixon as a result of watergate. That and the fact that wall street robber barons were mot punished for the business plot fascist coup attempt against fdr and then the son and grandson of that coup attempt’s primary architect were both sitting presidents and now America has been obviously fascist to anyone paying attention the last 40-50 years now they are so emboldened they don’t even try and hide it.
  
  It really is. It does fucking nothing.
- It's not so much values as it is a lack of power in the working class. These things can be done because the greater population has no power or influence. Since their is no organization to resist it the mass of the population falls into two areas of "cope". The crowd that knows it's fucked up and has no one to organize against it. And the crowd that knows it's fucked up but "no one is doing anything" so they find a place to normalize or deny it. It's not "really" a Nazi salute.
  You may call this "values". But I'd say it's more about how well the ruling class has controlled and passified the population.
  Also, when half the country is worried about putting food on the table or paying rent. They really don't have time to give a fuck. Material conditions really shape what we might perceive as a "lack of values".

I posted it on the thread that was removed, but here it is again, video proof:
https://imgur.com/a/FIuEqCr
Timestamped link on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/live/0BN-62AQT4Q?t=29797
- He wasn't quite as confident with doing it as musk.
  Thats kinda funny.
  
  He looked very anxious doing it, tbh. Pathetic. Like a child muttering a swear under their breath before nervously scanning the room to see if anyone heard.
  
  Probably not as high on drugs as Musk either.
  
  musk is the type you call "stupid confidence" and bannon is unsure if its the wrong thing to do.
  
  Unlike Musk, he did have a taste of prison
- He fucking nodded in confirmation. “Yup, that’s what it was.”

Fuck me, I'm scared for my friends in the States
- Me too, and in my 17 years of living there many people were trying to tell them what was happening, but their "American Exceptionalism" and "I don't care about politics" or "I'd rather just work on myself" mentality they used to ignore the writing on the walls makes me feel for them a lot less. If anything it makes me more afraid for them than ever now that it's gotten this bad and there's still nothing close to the 1960's in terms of leftist movements. It's just hard to organize in a country that's willing to drop bombs on Philadelphia in 1985 when people start organizing.
  But then I remember how okay Americans are with all this, and that in reality all along they've been a fascist country that has wanted and practiced fascist ideals for a long long time now. I remember what Americans do to people that try to help - not just kill them, but worst of all ignore them afterwards. A big part of me thinks America needs to go through an unspeakable horror of their own making, otherwise they can never wake up. And you can bet that Russia and China will rush in to give weapons to both sides of the next American conflict (one could argue they already are.)
- I'm scared for my friends outside of the States.
- Send help :(
- I would worry much more about refugees and people outside the imperial core. Zios are literally genociding people in Palestine...

What a pussy. Do it with your chest you fucking Nazi coward.
- How can someone do a Nazi salute with his chest?

Well yeah, but he's not a cool Nazi: he looks like he sleeps in the street while the South African one is a kajillionaire who makes space rockets and electric cars.
Nobody likes an uncool Nazi.
Also, here's the actual source of the article instead of a link to an aggregator:
https://www.thewrap.com/steve-bannon-gives-apparent-nazi-salute-at-cpac-elon-musk/
- There are no cool nazis ffs.
  
  Yes, that's called sarcasm.

I think this is a stretch and i do this sometimes as well. An outreached hand as a greeting or similar. The Nazi salute is very obvious and has a strong flat hand at like 45 degrees. This doesn’t look like that.
- You don't need to make excuses.
  This is Steve Bannon. And he's doing a poor man's Nazi salute so he can claim plausible deniability after the fact. He even responds with a smile when the crowd cheers it.
  Stop making excuses for fascists.
- The top image but not the others. Do it now. Notice how your fingers are relaxed and spaced apart, not held rigid and bunched together like they would be for a salute.
  
  That’s what I’m saying. His hand looks too relaxed to be considered the Nazi salute. Musks hand was very rigid and straight
- Considering the current context of the political climate in America, if you didn't want to associate yourself with Nazis you would steer clear of anything that might associate you with being a Nazi. Especially while on a public podium.
- Americans are shit at saluting straight without considerable practice
- Do you think the other humans around you are as stupid as you are?
  
  You made your account a couple of hours ago. Pipe down.
- Hey look they mentioned you in the article
  ... though Musk has not as of this date specifically denied the accusations that the gesture was a Nazi salute. However, for reasons one can only guess at, others took the liberty of denying that on his behalf, unprompted.

More privileged fat middle aged white guys signaling their hatred
What a pathetic fucking loser

The cognitive dissonance over at r/conservative is showing cracks over this one. Same with the "dictator" comments about Zelensky. You can make MAGATs believe a lot of things, but telling them that, actually, Putin is the good guy, and Nazis are pretty cool, is a hard sell.
- I don't know.... I had a guy doing some landscape work for me and despite not engaging him he kept dropping comments about how great Trump was and how excited he was that he had just been reelected. Eventually he started asking directed questions and while I kept my answers honest and short, ("I think he is a terrible person by all metrics, including the 4 years he previously spent fucking things up, and anyone who voted for him is a fool at best and a psycho at worst") he kept driving home how great Trump was and how this will really save our country.
  He eventually asked me where I get my news and I told him, and he said "see I don't trust any of those guys anymore, I like to get my news from various sources, I'm actually listening to a lot of Russian news these days."
  I asked him if he knew Russian and he said no, and asked him who the target audience might be for those news outlet (he had asked about who my news sources were catering too), but he didn't seem to catch on.
  Also fun fact we are in Canada facepalm.
  He didn't like talking much about Canadian politics, I think because I had answers to most of his really dumb "questions", whereas I wasn't listening to 10 hours of Russian propaganda at the time so didn't know all the angles he was using about how smart Trump's picks were and how Harris was the literal devil.
- Stop going to reddit. That's why we're all here.
  
  you're not my dad
  ... are you?
- i assume its the subreddit, yea its mostly russian bots engaging the sub, keeping it active.

If it a salute it was a pretty shit and lazy one. Not that I would be surprised if that's what it was.
- He wanted plausible deniability. He didn't get there.
- It's a shit and lazy person.

Anatomically, there is no way for his arm to make this move involuntarily, unless he wants his arm to avoid all these shit coming out of his kings ass

Meh, that was a pretty weak nazi salute. I care less about that stuff and more about thier actions that affect actual policy and such. Those actions are usually worse anyway.
- To be fair Bannon was/is....pretty not good.

The Roman salute has no such loft
- The "roman salute" never existed.
  https://thegrimhistorian.substack.com/p/the-ancient-roman-salute-that-never