Then Elon did not apologize or make any attempt to explain it away, and in fact made jokes about it.
Imagine that you were a neo-Nazi. Would you take this gesture and his lack of apology as a sign that Elon is on your side?
This is also not the first time that Elon has done something like this. His Twitter history is not something I would be proud of.
Anybody who thinks it was accidental seems extremely gullible to me. Nobody does a Nazi salute by accident. A “my heart goes out to you” gesture looks absolutely nothing like this gesture for normal folks.
Fact is, one does not simply do a Hitler Gruß without being either extremely dumb or intentionally doing it. Maybe he is both. Nevertheless the influence he has and normalizing this kind of action are scary.