Is Elon Musk good representation for Autistic people? (and also my thoughts on that ‘was it/wasn’t it salute’)

I was asked a question in my monthly Membership question and answer session a few weeks ago about whether I thought Elon Musk was a ‘good representation for Autistic people or ‘Neurodiversity‘.

My answer back then was no, that we have had enough representation of white, male, right-leaning, ‘intellectual yet socially awkward’ people, especially those who loosely defined as savant in some way – be that fictional or real life.

Also I’m not really a fan of billionaires as good representations of anything really, other than massive wealth inequality and privilege.

This was prior to Trump’s 2025 inauguration. And prior to Musk’s ‘did he or didn’t he make a fascist salute’.

And on that I have many thoughts. Not just about the salute, but on Musk, and also on why so many people seemed surprised by it.

I’ve seen plenty of arguments for and against whether or not it was a fascist salute.

Most of the arguments against the fact that it was what it looked like, from what I can see, have come from people who are ‘fans’ of Musk (I’m not really sure why a billionaire needs fans), ‘fans’ of Trump, people who lean towards and espouse more ‘right wing’ type views, people who clearly have not been paying attention to Musk; and finally people whom seem to think that being Autistic equals a justifiable excuse to behave awfully.

I’ve seen more ‘middle-ish’ views, using various reasons to explain the gesture ranging from ‘it was just an in-the-moment gesticulation expressing his [Musk’s] excitement’, to the fact that Musk is Autistic – with the terms ‘socially awkward’ and ‘stimming’ being thrown around. Interestingly, there is a bit of an argument here that can be made towards the fact that potentially this could have happened because he is Autistic (written knowing that there will be sharp intakes of breath upon reading this!)

Genuinely, excitement, anxiety or nervousness can lead to dysregulation, which if you are Dyspraxic, which many, many Autistic people in different degrees are (including many who don’t know they might have dyspraxic tendencies, and might have been labelled clumsy) can lead to uncontrolled, exaggerated or jerky motions or movements. Dyspraxia can be described as a difference between what the brain intends the body to do physically, and what the body actually does, and this genuinely can lead to all sorts of accidents and misinterpretations from others. This is why I carefully put down the notion that all behaviour is communication. All behaviour may be communicating something, but it isn’t always intentional, purposeful, or meaningful communication.

Is this what’s happening here? Is it a flailing arm or awkward gesture as a result of a miscommunication between what Musk intended and what it ended up looking like? Maybe… But if we are applying that context, we have to apply others too and then look at what is most likely.

I do have to add at this point that, in my opinion, the gesture does not look like a dyspraxic gesture to me. And, as someone who has kept half an eye on Musk (I tend to keep half an eye on any influential Autistic people, and also I am a close follower of world politics), watched videos, seen his talks on stage etc, I have never seen him make an awkward gesture like that before. Obviously I cannot say categorically that he hasn’t made a dyspraxic-like gesture like that before, but whenever I watch people I know who are Autistic my brain tends to throw up lots of commentary not only about what they are saying, but also about what they are doing (I don’t mean that in any weird stalkery way, merely that my brain is relating to ‘Autistic-type’ things like body language). I would have thought that I would have noticed something. So was it a socially awkward gesture? Perhaps, but my head keeps being drawn to those other contexts, so let’s explore them.

The pic was ‘caught’, as part of a live video of him on a stage, on his own (not with other politicians).

I’ve seen other images of other politicians being shared as examples of how lots of people have made similar gestures. There is a genuine point of difference here: Musk’s gesture is not a freeze-frame of him mid-gesticulation, or waving an arm around in reference to something – with all the other examples I’ve seen, that is the case.

Musk’s gesture is the whole gesture. And he repeated the same whole action twice. There is no hesitation before he does it either time. It appears to be not only purposeful and intentional, but something about the lack of hesitation prior to the first one makes me think it was rehearsed and planned. He appears to be confident in his action, there is visually nothing awkward about it. With the first gesture his arm is tensed and held outright, his fingers together, palm flat, facing downwards. If it were awkward I would have expected some looseness to it. Even though the second gesture appears more relaxed, with a slightly bent arm, I believe it only does so because he put so much effort into the first gesture. That effort is underlined by the fact that as he makes the first gesture and snaps his arm into place he actually grunts with the effort he puts into it, which can be clearly heard in the following video at the time stamp 00.19s:

To my mind this is a gesture which, as a whole, strongly resembles a fascist salute.

So, let’s dig into some of this context that applies other layers to this and might increase or decrease that possibility.

Musk has a track record of being controversial. He is also, I would add, the very definition of a Twitter troll, which is quite the irony as he now owns Twitter. I say this as someone who has, over the years, invested a lot of time on Twitter, and witnessed the good that has come through Twitter advocacy in lots of areas via movements and networking not only in Autistic advocacy, but for all sorts of marginalised identities. I have watched in horror and sadness as his purchase and running of Twitter has destroyed all that. Oh and I refuse to call it X.

Musk also has an open track record of espousing what could be determined as politically Right, to Far-right talking points.

I’m not going to cite them, they are very, very easily searchable, and honestly I don’t wish to add traffic for him, but there are a litany of Musk-isms in relation to comments, shares, retweets, interviews and platforming where he has preached on what he defines as ‘Wokeism’ and, obviously, he is a hardcore capitalist. He spouts misogynistic viewpoints, is often racist, and has made anti-Semitic comments in the past. He certainly has extreme views on immigration (which I find perpetually interesting considering he himself is a South African burying himself in US politics, calling the US his home, via his years living in Canada of course. One rule for one, other rules for others.

Often, the things he shares, or states, could be described as dog-whistles, and sometimes, there are more explicit examples. And not to mention that much of what he shares and platforms is explicitly false. Elon loves a good lie if it backs up his talking points.

Are you aware, for instance, that recently Musk had over an hour-long live conversation on Twitter with the head of the Alternative for Deutschland (AfD), Alice Weidel. The AfD are a German Far right political organisation that Musk has publicly endorsed to the point that he wrote an editorial in German national newspaper (Welt am Sonntag) calling for Germans to vote for them. In the conversation he and Weidel engaged in a common Far Right tactic of attempting to claim that Hitler was on the political Left.

During the conversation, Weidel declared, to Musk’s agreement, that Hitler had in fact been a “communist”, despite the notable anti-communism of the Nazi leader, who invaded the Communist Soviet Union and repeatedly, publicly, addressed his opposition to Communism. Hmm, they seem like the actions of a communist. As a student of modern European history, I am not even going to justify why Hitler wasn’t a communist. He wasn’t. To argue against that completely made-up notion somewhat validates the claim and provides doubt. If you have doubts, I would suggest you go and do some study of the rise, politics and socio-economics of Nationalsozialismus.

“He [Hitler] wasn’t a conservative,” Weidel said. “He wasn’t a libertarian. He was this communist, socialist guy.”

She also described Hitler as an “antisemitic socialist.”

On other matters, she and Musk chimed – and at times giggled – over Germany’s infamous bureaucracy, its “crazy” abandonment of nuclear power, the need for tax cuts, free speech and “wokeness”.

In the UK (where I am from). Not only has Musk regurgitated misinformation on a number of Far-Right talking points about the UK government, and also called for the UK Government to be overthrown (which got 2million interactions on Twitter), he has promoted, endorsed and supported Stephen Yaxley Lennon (Tommy Robinson), a repeatedly imprisoned, former head of the English Defence League (a white nationalist group whose members are commonly covered in tattoos of swastikas, who chant proto-fascist, and race-baiting chants in the name of ‘defending England’; and whom are frequently people who have been imprisoned from things ranging from violent assault, to paedophilia). He was also a former member of the British National party (another proto-fascist, racist organisation).

Musk is good friends with the Argentine prime minister, another hard right leaning politician who in January, at Davos, at the world economic forum, said “We’ve reached the point that in many supposedly civilized countries, if a woman is killed, it’s called femicide, and the punishment is harsher than if you kill a man, just because of the sex of the victim, legalizing that a woman’s life is worth more than a man’s.”

Of course, we’ll put to one side his relationship with and support of Trump, who, as I write, is rolling back back any federal policy related to the rights of anyone who isn’t a white, Christian man; who only a few days ago blamed disabled people for a plane crash disabled people had nothing to do with; and today, on the 4th February 2025, casually spoke about ethnically cleansing Gaza…

As a sprinkling of sardonic fun, we could add that the font on his black ‘Make America Great Again’ baseball cap, Musk uses a font remarkably similar to Fraktur (The font used by the Nazi Wehrmacht). Musk describes himself as a “Dark Gothic MAGA“…

I could go on and on and on, bringing literally hundreds of examples of how the richest and most powerful man in the world, might as well have the word ‘fascist’ flashing in neon above his head. If he’s not serious about it, or isn’t doing what it looks like he’s doing, he’s doing a terrible job of not making it appear that way.

There is a last context which is fundamentally important. Musk grew up the son of a millionaire in apartheid South Africa. Now this doesn’t automatically presume that every white person who grew up in Apartheid South Africa is a fascist. I do (and please ignore the joke about the racist white person saying they have Black friends) have white South African friends who grew up in Apartheid South Africa and they are incredibly reflective about their upbringings and work incredibly hard at being anti-racist. They ‘aint Musk. Having this context for Musk though is important, because very close members of his family were incredibly fascist, and he grew up literally swimming in fascist-driven privilege. This article makes a great summary of his early life and those Musk worked closely with and built his empire alongside. They are known as The Paypal Mafia.

There is also an important point to make here. That many, uneducated people think that facism = Nazi. Not all fascists are Nazis, fascism can and has looked like all sorts of political groups and ideas. Is Musk a Nazi? I don’t know. Does he hold fascist views? I believe he does. At worst he is an authoritarian with the money and power for that actually to mean something on a global scale. Excuse my language, but that fucking scares me.

In the world of Autistic Advocacy there is a powerful mantra and guiding principle that states “Presume competency.”

The need for that mantra has had to come from battling the historical legacies of:

a) The assumption that being Autistic is a ‘childhood thing’, and that children are not competent witnesses to their own narratives; and:

b) an assumption that people with communication differences, particularly those who are non-speaking or minimally speaking, lack the intellectualism to understand their own needs, understand others, or are able to advocate for themselves.

Musk is Autistic, according to his own announcement on Saturday Night Live and his biography.

Interestingly, he announced on SNL that he has ‘Asperger’s Syndrome’.

Why is this interesting? Well, as I explored in “Asperger’s Syndrome: What’s in a name?”; not only is Asperger’s a defunct diagnosis, and because its development was based on arbitrary language acquisition, and came with massive unevidenced associations with high intellect (itself an incredibly problematic concept). There is a possibility that Musk has swallowed the latter mythology, and that he considers himself to be somewhat special. The notion of Aspie Supremacy is a very real thing often driven by people who are white, male, intellectual, have Incel-type views, and ideology. It’s also common for them to hold politically Right views that lean towards, at the very least, authoritarianism. The notion of Aspie supremacy often comes with the idea that some Autistic people are better than others, or separate from those who they would not define as ‘Aspie’. These ‘other people’ tend to be those who are non-speaking, or have intellectual disabilities, are not academic, or have co-occurring physical disabilities. Anecdotally, in my experience, those who view themselves through this lens often do not understand themselves very well, dramatically fear what they cannot control and often attempt to exert that control over others, and sometimes project a strong sense of feeling like others owe them something. I think Musk fits that profile fairly well.

I don’t know if Musk views himself this way. I don’t know how much of his identity factors around the fact that he is Autistic at all, or how well he understands himself or the narratives around us (i.e. the wider, global, autistic community) – I would say his repeated attempts to develop a chip that would “solve autism” (his words). This chip is at the human trials stage of development, by the way. I believe this and his thinking speaks volumes about how he perceives himself, and how he perceives Autistic people who aren’t like him, and don’t possess his privilege.

Anyway, back to presuming competence.

Let’s presume for a moment that the richest and most powerful man in the world has some level of competence. Surely he must have, in order to have gotten to the position he is in?

And let’s also presume that at least a number of the people criticising and calling him out also have a level of competence too, whether they are Autistic or not.

What does that mean and why is them having competence important?

That means that while some people are shocked and surprised by Musk’s gesture; many people aren’t suddenly shocked and surprised by Musk waving his arm in a way that resembles a fascist gesture, but their shock and surprise is being expressed after having put together a level of evidence that points to the increased likelihood that Musk knew exactly what he was doing when he did it. I have to admit that it shocked me, and yes it’s blatency even surprised me and I have an understanding of Musk’s behaviour and the views he holds. I think I was shocked and surprised because Fascism creeps, it doesn’t often get expressed overtly until there is a confidence that it won’t be stamped on.

And also that only talking about his arm gesture now (as I have seen people being accused of) does not mean that this evidence building hasn’t taken place, nor that they haven’t continuously called him out or noted the patterns I have described here.

Applying a level of competence to Musk points to the fact that a highly educated, ‘intellectual’ man, indeed the richest and most powerful man on the planet, who has built an empire of business up from the dirt (as his ‘fans’ would have us believe – I wish I’d had $25,000 dollars as a start-up fund along with a millionaire father’s business connections), who is intelligent enough to position himself as the ultimate social media troll, indeed a troll who owns social media; who regurgitates right wing rhetoric consistently, and has been accused of, at the very least, having fascist and authoritarian leanings; would know that making a gesture like that would lead to this connection being made.

And, that if it was not a fascist salute, he would have seen the connotation and the outcry, and immediately said ‘Oops, my bad’.

Presuming competence for Musk implies that there was then, in all likelihood, a level of purposefulness to his action.

And if we presume he is incompetent, then heaven help us all, because he is the richest and most powerful man on the planet.

If you hang around with fascist-leaning idealogues, if you espouse fascist ideology, if you platform fascist views and promote fascist ideas, if you literally wear fascist symbolism, and then you twice make a gesture which ‘resembles‘ a fascist salute, how can anyone be expected to draw any other conclusion than that you are indeed a fascist?

In my view, Musk’s ‘buffoon-ness’, along with his trolling, fascistical tendencies, and an obvious lack of care of who he craps on, are as a result of him lacking control, lacking insight into himself, Masking hard, lacking identity, and being bloody afraid.

Amazing isn’t it, that the richest and most powerful person on the planet can still be scared and lack control? After all, Fear drives the need for power, which in turn, if you get it, can bring some element of control…

He grasps for control of that which he doesn’t control, or doesn’t understand. He grew up in an uber-privileged environment that was built on dominating people, taking advantage of people, and viewing yourself as better than others (as above, he was brought up in a millionaire family, who profited from and supported apartheid in South Africa; members of which held extremely fascist views – all fascist views are extreme, but some are held more strongly than others).

So, after all that: Was it a fascist salute?

I still don’t know, but in light of the evidence and context, I would say that at the very, very least, some unconscious part of him knew exactly what he was doing. But in all likelihood it wasn’t just the unconscious part. He was having fun, excited and showed his true self.

In a way it doesn’t matter.

It’s just one thing, in an endless cloud of other things, that point to the fact that for whatever reason, he appears, at the very least, to be just not a very nice person. He says and does not very nice things. He wields his power and notoriety in vastly irresponsible and harmful ways. None of that has anything to do with being Autistic.

Whatever the reason, be it trauma, upbringing, if it’s just who he is, or all of those things: he is who he is and that’s all that matters.

So, back to the question I was asked originally: “Is Elon Musk good representation for Autistic people?”

My answer is a very, very firm ‘No’.

Being Autistic does not prevent someone being a dickhead, or from acting monstrously. All humans are humans, after all, and capable of all things. Nor does being Autistic make someone a dickhead, or cause them to act monstrously. To argue any other way presumes incompetence and absolves the person from personal responsibility. And I am of the firm belief, if you can make yourself the richest and most powerful man in the world, no matter how you get there, you certainly don’t do it be being closed minded and non-creative; you are capable of making moral and ethical decisions. You just choose not to.

On a last point. Republican strategist Scott Jennings spent an entire Tv debate defending Musk and claiming it was not a fascist salute. But when asked to repeat the action, he ignored the request. You can see that at the following timestamps in this video: 00:02:23 and 00:05:10

It definitely wasn’t a fascist salute, says Scott, who refused to perform the same gesture on television.

It’s ok though, because it’s not like Musk appeared on screen at an AFD rally just days after (definitely not) saluting in a fascist style, to tell the Far Right organisation to: “Fight for a better future for Germany” and that “…[Germany] has too much of a focus on past guilt.”

Oh, except he did do exactly that.

I wonder what the man who has endorsed anti-semitic conspiracy theories speaking to a German Far Right organisation could possibly have meant by that…

I’m not really sure how to finish this other than by saying I really hope I’m wrong about Musk.

I hope one day Musk might reflect deeply on what he is doing and has done. On the harms he has caused, in the name of his beliefs, his business or his having ‘fun’, if that’s all he is doing. I hope he might consider the needs of the one child he has publicly identified as Autistic. Also for his daughter, Vivian, who Musk has publicly crapped all over because she is trans.

So, just a final note, to again reiterate: Being Autistic does not preclude a person from being a person that acts awfully. And being Autistic isn’t a reason why someone might act awfully.

After all, as someone well-versed in the academic and clinical literature, I don’t ever recall ‘waving your hand in the air in something resembling a fascist salute’, ever being mentioned as a ‘trait’ of being autistic, or being part of the diagnostic criteria.