By Euronews | Created at 2025-01-22 11:46:50 | Updated at 2025-01-22 15:39:24
4 hours ago
The South African-born billionaire has drawn increasing international outrage with his embrace of extremism, including an incident in which he appeared to give the Nazi salute to a crowd in Washington on Monday.
Students protesting against Elon Musk's extremism have hung him in effigy in Milan's Piazzale Loreto, stringing up a fake body upside down in an imitation of the hanging of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini's corpse in the very same square in 1945.
As reported by Italian agency ANSA, the protesters belong to a left-wing collective known as Cambiare Rotta, or Change Course.
The group, which identifies as communist, posted an image of the effigy on social media, writing: "There's always room at Piazzale Loreto, Elon."
Cambiare Rotta has made headlines in Italy in the past for its radical stances, including pro-Hezbollah chants at demonstrations, domestic media reported.
Musk, who publicly embraced ever-more extreme right-wing politics since buying Twitter and rebranding it as X, has lately drawn further outrage for his statements and behaviour.
Having endorsed the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the German elections and called for the release of imprisoned British anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant activist Tommy Robinson, Musk has this week been condemned for giving what appeared to be multiple Nazi salutes to a crowd in Washington.
Some have claimed he was simply waving his arm in uncontrolled exuberance.
The Anti-Defamation League, an international NGO known for its campaigning against antisemitism, said in a statement on Monday that Musk made an "awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute."
On his first day in office, Donald Trump pardoned more than 1,000 people who violently attacked the US Capitol in January 2021 in an attempt to overturn Joe Biden's election victory.
Among those pardoned were leaders of the Proud Boys, an extremist street gang, who had been sentenced on charges of seditious conspiracy over their role in the riot.
The sight of the group marching in Washington after four years of relative retreat from the public sphere has been flagged as a sign that American extremists, including those with strong international networks, have significantly been emboldened by the political momentum in the US — and by Musk's increasing embrace of their rhetoric, online and otherwise.
