The fascist dog-whistle
The political campaign poster features a red, white, and blue color scheme and a smiling family of five in a living room. The three blond children sit on a couch; above, their parents’ arms are held at a stiff ninety degrees, rigid fingertips barely touching, in what to most viewers look like Nazi salutes.
This advertisement was issued last year by the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, a far-right German political party known for its virulent anti-immigrant and antisemitic rhetoric and facetious reference to Nazi slogans, which are illegal in Germany.
In response to the ad, a chairman for the AfD, Wilko Möller, tried to justify the gestures as “a roof over the head, which the adults symbolically represent with their arms to protect the children.” On January 20 of this year, during President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Elon Musk made a similarly awkward, hardly-ambiguous gesture. Musk’s response to the outcry over his gesture followed Möller’s tactic: making it seem like any parallel between his action and fascist dog-whisling was preposterous.
While it seems like the American far right is emulating its European counterparts, the reality is more symbiotic, and more sinister: What looks like powerful Americans drawing inspiration from European fascist factions is more often powerful Americans selecting factions to champion. When Musk speaks at AfD rallies, he elevates the AfD from a fringe party in Germany to a valid player in international politics. When Trump embraces Hungarian prime minister Victor Orban, he legitimizes Orban’s authoritarian nationalism as a friend of the United States. Now that Trump is President and Musk is one of his closest advisors, the legitimacy they lend has more weight: they are no longer offering ideological legitimacy alone, but a potential infusion of American political power and financial aid.
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